Lucinda. Hope Anthony
of years. That made a great difference.
CHAPTER V
CATCH WHO CATCH CAN!
I DO not want to say more about the war or my doings during it than is strictly necessary to my purpose. The great man to whom I have referred took a note of my qualifications. Nothing came of this for a good many months, during which I obtained a commission, went through my training, and was for three months fighting in France. Then I was called back, and assigned to non-combatant service (it was not always strictly that, as a nasty scar on my forehead, the result of a midnight “scrap” in a South American seaport where I happened to be on business, remains to testify). My knowledge of various parts of the world and my command of languages made me of value for the quasi-diplomatic, quasi-detective job with which I was entrusted, and I continued to be employed on it throughout the war. It entailed a great deal of traveling by sea and land, and a lot of roughing it; it was interesting and sometimes amusing; there was, of course, no glory in it. I was a mole, working underground; there were a lot of us. For the best part of a year I was out of Europe; I was often out of reach of letters, though now and then I got one from Aunt Bertha, giving me such home news as there was, and copying out extracts from what she described as “Waldo’s miserable letters” from France – meaning thereby not unhappy – he wrote very cheerfully – but few, short, and scrappy. Sir Paget, it appeared, had found some sort of advisory job – a committee of some kind – in connection with the Foreign Office.
It was when I came back to Europe, in the spring of 1916, and was staying for a few days at a small town in the South of France – I was at the time covering my tracks, pending the receipt of certain instructions for which I was waiting, but there is no harm in saying now that the town was Ste. Maxime – that I ran into Lucinda Knyvett. That is almost literal. I came round a sharp corner of the street from one direction, she from another. A collision was so narrowly avoided that I exclaimed, “Pardon!” as I came to an abrupt stop and raised my hat. She stopped short too; the next moment she flung out both her hands to me, crying, “You, Julius!” Then she tried to draw her hands back, murmuring, “Perhaps you won’t – !” But I had caught her hands in mine and was pressing them. “Yes! And it’s you, Lucinda!”
It was about midday, and she readily accepted my suggestion that we should lunch together. I took her to a pleasant little restaurant on the sea-front. It was bright, warm, calm weather; we ate our meal out of doors, in the sunshine. In reply to her inquiries – made without any embarrassment, – I told her what Cragsfoot news I had. She, in return, told me that Arsenio – he also was mentioned without embarrassment – had gone to Italy when that country entered the war, and was at this moment on the staff of some General of Division; he wrote very seldom, she added, and, with that, fell into silence, as she sipped a glass of wine.
She had changed from a girl into a woman; yet I did not divine in her anything like the development I had marked in Nina Frost. In appearance, air, and manner she was the Lucinda whom I had known at Cragsfoot; her eyes still remotely pondering, looking inwards as well as outwards, the contour of her face unchanged, her skin with all its soft beauty. But she was thinner, and looked rather tired.
“Arsenio told me that you saw me in the taxi that day,” she said suddenly.
“He must have been very much amused, wasn’t he? He certainly made a pretty fool of me! And put the cap on it by coming to the – to the church, didn’t he?”
“I suppose, when once he’d met you, he was bound to go there, or you’d have suspected.”
“He could have made some excuse to leave me, and not turned up again.”
She did not pursue her little effort to defend Valdez; she let it go with a curious smile, half-amused, half-apologetic. I smiled back. “Monkey Valdez, I think!” said I. She would not answer that, but her smile persisted. “You were looking very happy and bonny,” I added.
“I was happy that day. I had at last done right.”
“The deuce you had!” That was to myself. To her I said, rather dryly, “It certainly was at the last, Lucinda.”
“It was as soon as I knew – as soon as I really knew.”
The waiter brought coffee. She took a cigarette from me, and we both began to smoke.
“And it’s true that I didn’t dare to face Waldo. I was physically afraid. He’d have struck me.”
“Never!” I exclaimed, indignant at the aspersion on my kinsman.
“Oh, but yes! – I thought that he would fight Arsenio that night at Cragsfoot – the night Arsenio first kissed me.” She let her cigarette drop to the ground, and leant back in her chair. Her eyes were on mine, but the shadow of the veil was thick. “It all began then – at least, I realized the beginning of it. It all began then, and it never stopped till that day when I ran away. Shall I tell you about it?”
“We were all very fond of you – all of us. I wish you would.”
She laid her hand on my arm for a moment. “I couldn’t have told then – perhaps I can now. But, dear Julius, perhaps not quite plainly. There’s shame in it. Some, I think, for all of us – most, I suppose, for me.”
At this point a vision of Aunt Bertha’s “nice woman” flitted before my mind’s eye; it was a moment for her ministrations – or ought to have been, perhaps. Lucinda was rather ruminative than distressed.
“We were very happy that summer. I had never had anything quite like it. Mother and I went to lunches and teas – and I’d just begun to go to a few dances. But people didn’t ask us to stay in country houses. Three days’ visit to Mrs. Wiseman at Oxford was an event – till Cragsfoot came! I love that old house – and I shall never see it again! – Oh, well – ! The boys were great friends; all three of us were. If anything, Waldo and I took sides against Arsenio, chaffing him about his little foreign ways, and so on, you know. Waldo called him Monkey; I called him ‘Don’ – sometimes ‘Don Arsenio.’ I called Waldo just ‘Waldo’ – and I should have called Arsenio just by his name, only that once, when we were alone, he asked me to, rather sentimentally – something about how his name would sound on my lips! So I wouldn’t – to tease him. I thought him rather ridiculous. I’ve always thought him ridiculous at times. Well, then, Nina Frost took to coming a good deal; Miss Fleming had pity on her, as she told me – her mother wasn’t long dead, you know, and she was all alone at Briarmount with a governess. Do you remember Fräulein Borasch? No? I believe you hardly remember Nina? You hardly ever came on excursions, and so on, with us. The boys told me all that sort of thing bored ‘old Julius.’ Nina rather broke up our trio; we fell into couples – you know how that happens? The path’s too narrow, or the boat’s too small, or you take sides at tennis. And so on. For the first time then the boys squabbled a little – for me. I enjoyed that – even though I didn’t think victory over little Nina anything to boast about. Well, then came that day.”
Lucinda leant forward towards me, resting her arms on the table between us; she was more animated now; she spoke faster; a slight flush came on her cheeks; I likened it to an afterglow.
“Nina had been there all the afternoon, but she went home after tea. We’d been quite jolly, though. But after dinner Waldo whispered to me to come out into the garden. I went – it was a beautiful evening – and we walked up and down together for a few minutes. Waldo didn’t say anything at all, but somehow I felt something new in him. I became a little nervous – rather excited. We were at the end of the walk, just where it goes into the shrubbery. He said, ‘Lucinda!’ – and then stopped. I turned sharp round – towards the house, suddenly somehow afraid to go into the shrubbery with him; his voice had sounded curious. And there – he must have come up as silently as a cat – was Arsenio, looking so impishly triumphant! Waldo had turned with me; I heard him say ‘Damn!’ half under his breath. ‘Do I intrude?’ Arsenio asked. Waldo didn’t answer. The moon was bright; I could see their faces. I felt my cheeks hot; Waldo looked so fierce, Arsenio so mischievous. I felt funnily triumphant. I laughed, cried, ‘Catch who catch can!’ turned, and ran down the winding path through the shrubbery. I ran quite a long way. You know