Lucinda. Hope Anthony
I didn’t. Father wasn’t very well, and I had to stay down with him.”
As we walked, I had been slyly studying her face: she had grown handsome in a style that was bold and challenging, yet in no way coarse; in fact, she was very handsome. As she gave me her most respectable reason for not having attended – or attempted to attend – Waldo’s wedding, she grew just a little red. Well, she was still only eighteen; her education, though I remained of opinion that it had progressed wonderfully, was not complete. She was still liable to grow red when she told fibs. But why was she telling a fib?
She recovered her composure quickly and turned to me with a rather sharp but not unpleasant little laugh. “As it turned out, I’m glad. It must have been a very uncomfortable occasion.” She laughed again – obviously at me. “Come, Mr. Rillington, be sensible. There are servants at Cragsfoot. And there are servants at Briarmount. Do you suppose that I haven’t heard all the gossip through my maid? Of course I have! And can’t I put two and two together?”
I had never – we had never – thought of this obvious thing. We had thought that we could play the ostrich with its head in the sand! Our faithful retainers were too keen-sighted for that!
“Besides,” she pursued, “when smart society weddings have to be put off, because the bride doesn’t turn up at the last moment, some explanation is put in the papers – if there is an explanation. And she gets better or worse! She doesn’t just vanish, does she, Mr. Rillington?”
I made no reply; I had not one ready.
“Oh, it’s no business of mine. Only – I’m sorry for Waldo, and dear Miss Fleming.” A gesture of her neatly gloved and shapely hands seemed to dismiss the topic with a sigh. “Have you seen anything of Don Arsenio lately?” she asked the next moment. “Is he in England?”
“Yes. He was at the wedding – well, at the church, I mean.”
She came to a stop, turning her face full round to me; her lips were parted in surprise, her white teeth just showing; her eyes seemed full of questions. If she had “scored off” me, at least I had startled her that time. “Was he?” she murmured.
At the point to which our walk had now brought us, the cliffs take a great bulge outwards, forming a bold rounded bluff. Here, seeming to dominate, to domineer over, a submissive Bristol Channel, Mr. Jonathan Frost (as he then was – that is, I think, the formula) had built his country seat; and “Briarmount” he had called it.
“Good Heavens,” said I, “what’s happened to the place? It’s grown! It’s grown as much as you have!”
“We’ve built on a bit – a few more bedrooms, and bathrooms. And garages, you know. Oh, and a ballroom!”
“No more than that?”
“Not at present. Come in and have a look – and some tea. Or are you in too deep mourning?”
I found myself not exactly liking the girl, but interested in her, in her composure – and her impudence. I accepted her invitation.
Since he could very well afford it, no blame need rest on Mr. Frost for building himself a large house and equipping it sumptuously. The only thing was that, when he had got it, he did not seem to care a bit about it. Probably he built it to please Nina – or to enshrine Nina; no doubt he found in his daughter a partial and agreeable solution of the difficulty of how to spend the money which he could not help making. He himself was a man of the simplest ways and tastes – almost of no tastes at all. He did not even drink tea; while we took ours, he consumed a small bowlful of one of those stuffs which, I believe, they call cereals – this is a large domed hall of glass – conservatory, winter-garden, whatever it should be called – full of exotic plants and opening on a haughty terrace with a view of the sea. He was small, slight, shabby, simple, and rather nervous. Still I gazed on him with some awe; he was portentously rich; Mother Earth labored, and her children sweated, at his bidding; he waved wands, and wildernesses became – no, not quite paradises perhaps, but at all events garden-cities; he moved mountains and where the ocean had been he made dry land. Surely it beseems us to look with some awe on a man like that? I, at least, being more or less in the same line of business, recognized in him a master.
He greeted me very kindly, though I think that it had cost him an effort to “place” me, to remember who I was. He spoke warmly of the kindness which my uncle and Miss Fleming had shown to his motherless girl. “They’ve made you quite at home at Cragsfoot, haven’t they, Nina? And your cousin Waldo – Mr. Waldo taught you billiards, didn’t he?” (There was no billiard room at Cragsfoot; these lessons presumably took place at Briarmount.) “And he made company for your rides, too! I hope he’s very well, Mr. Rillington? Oh, but didn’t you tell me that he was engaged to be married, my dear?”
One must allow for preoccupation with important affairs. Still, this was Saturday; as recently as the preceding Tuesday week, Mr. Frost would have attended Waldo’s wedding, but for his own indisposition. I stole a glance at Nina; she was just a little red again. I was not far from embarrassment myself – on Waldo’s account; I gave a weak laugh and said: “I’m afraid it’s not quite certain that the event will come off.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he murmured apologetically. “It was the pretty girl who came here with him once or twice – Miss – Miss – yes, Miss Knyvett?”
“Yes, it was, Mr. Frost. But the – well, the arrangement is sort of – of suspended.” With that distinctly lame explanation I rose to take my leave.
I rather thought that Nina, being by now pretty plainly convicted of fibbing, would stay where she was, and thus avoid being left alone with me. However, she escorted me back through Briarmount’s spacious hall – furnished as a sitting-room and very comfortable. She even came out into the drive with me and, as she gave me her hand in farewell, she said, with a little jerk of her head back towards the scene of my talk with her father, “After that, I suppose you’re wondering what was the real reason for my not coming to the wedding?”
“Perhaps I am. Because you seem to have kept up the old friendship since I’ve been away.”
“Sometimes people don’t go to functions because they’re not invited.”
“What, you mean to say – ”
“I should have been the skeleton at the feast!” She looked me in the face, smiling, but in a rather set, forced fashion. Then, as she turned away, she added with a laugh, “Only, as it turned out, there was no feast, was there, Mr. Rillington?”
When I got back to Cragsfoot, I met Waldo in the garden, walking up and down in a moody fashion and smoking his pipe. “Been for a walk?” he asked.
“I started on one, but I met Nina Frost and she took me in to tea.”
He stood still, smoking and staring out to sea. “Did she say anything about me?” he asked.
“Hardly about you yourself. She referred to – the affair. The servants have been chattering, it seems. Well, they would, of course!”
He gave a nod of assent. Then he suddenly burst out in a vehement exclamation: “She wasn’t there to see it, anyhow, thank God!” With that he walked quickly away from me and was soon hidden in the shrubbery at the end of the walk.
How did he know that she had not come to the church? He had not been in the body of the church himself – only in the vestry. Many people had actually gone in – early arrivals; Sir Paget had told me so. Many more had been turned away from the doors. Waldo could not have known from his own observation that Nina Frost was not there. Possibly somebody had told him. More probably he had known beforehand that she would not be there, because she had not been invited. But why should he thank God that she was not at the church?
So there was the coil – unexplained, nay, further complicated by the intrusion of a fourth party, Miss Nina Frost. Unexplained I had to leave it. The next morning – Sunday though it was – Sir Paget carried me off to town, by motor and rail, to interview some bigwig to whom he had mentioned me and who commanded my attendance. I had not even a chance of a private talk with Aunt Bertha, whose