SUCH, then, was Lucinda’s state of mind with regard to the matter. Her encounter with Nina at Cimiez had opened her eyes; after that, no evasions or lies from Arsenio could avail to blind her. The keys of the fort had been sold behind her back. The one thing that she had preserved and cherished out of the wreck of her fortunes, out of the sordid tragedy of her relations with her husband, had been filched from her; her proud and fastidious independence had been bartered; Arsenio had sold it; Nina Dundrannan had bought it. It was in effect that wearing of Nina’s cast-off frocks which, long ago at Ste. Maxime, she had pictured, with a smile, as an inconceivable emblem of humiliation. Arsenio had brought her to it, tricked her into it by his “presents” out of his “winnings.”
A point of sentiment? Precisely—and entirely; of a sentiment rooted deep in the nature of the two women, and deep in the history of their lives, in the rivalry and clash that there had been between them and between their destinies. The affair of the blue frock (to sum up the offense under that nickname—there had probably been other “presents”) might be regarded as merely the climax of the indignities which Arsenio had brought upon her—the proverbial last straw. To her it was different in kind from all the rest. In her midinette’s frock, in her Venetian shawl, she could make or sell her needlework contentedly; if on that score Nina felt exultation and dealt out scorn, Nina was wrong; nay, Nina was vulgar, and therefore a proper object for the laughter which had amazed and impressed Godfrey Frost. But she had been made Nina’s dependent, the object of her triumphant contemptuous bounty. That was iron entering her soul, a sharp point piercing to the very heart of it. This deadly stroke at her pride was fatal also to the last of her tenderness for Arsenio. The old tie between them—once so strong, so imperious, surviving so much—was finally broken. She was willing to be friendly—if friendliness can co-exist with undisguised resentment, with a sense of outrage bitter as death itself. But, in truth, how could it?
That same afternoon I made my way to the palazzo, rather a gloomy, ruinous-looking old building, on a narrow side canal, facing across it on to the heavy blank bulk of a convent. This, then, was the scene of “Venice,” of the old romance. To this they had come back—not indeed quite in the manner that I had imagined their return in my musings at Paris, but still, I could not doubt, on his part at least with something of the idea and the impulse which my fancy had attributed to him. How was he now finding—and facing—the situation as it stood?
I climbed up the stone staircase—past the piano nóbile, now let, as I had learnt, past another apartment al secondo—to the third floor. There I knocked. The door was opened by a small wizened man, dressed in seedy black. He looked like a waiter or a valet, run to seed. I asked for Valdez. Yes, Monsieur was in, and would no doubt see Monsieur. He himself was Monsieur Valdez’s servant—might he take my hat and stick? He talked while he did it; he had come with Monsieur from the Riviera—from Nice; he had been—er—in the same business establishment with Monsieur at Nice before—before Monsieur’s great coup. In fact—here he smiled proudly and detained me in the passage, laying one grimy finger on my arm—Monsieur considered him a mascot; it was from him that Monsieur had purchased ticket 212,121. Imagine that! “A pity you didn’t keep it!” said I. He just shrugged his shoulders, a weary smile acquiescing in that bit of bad luck. “However, Monsieur is very good to me,” he ended as he—at last—opened an inner door. Apparently Monsieur’s wonderful luck gave him a sort of divinity in a fellow-gambler’s eyes.
I found myself in a long narrow room, with three windows facing on the canal and the convent. The furniture was sparse, and looked old and rickety, but it had the remains of elegance; only a small rug or two mitigated the severity of the stone floor; one could see by dirty marks where pictures had once hung on the walls, but they hung there no more; altogether a depressing apartment.
Arsenio Valdez was sitting at a big bureau between two of the windows, with his back towards the door. He turned round a dreary-looking face as he heard my entrance. But the moment he saw who I was, he sprang up and greeted me warmly, with evident pleasure. He even held my hand while I accounted for my presence as best I could. I had a holiday, I thought that perhaps the change in his fortunes would bring him back to Venice, and I couldn’t resist the chance of congratulating him. I tried to make a joke of the whole business, and ended by squeezing his hand and felicitating him anew on his magnificent luck. “It took my breath away when I read it in the papers,” I said.
“Oh, but I knew, I knew!” he declared, as he led me to where a couple of armchairs were placed by a small table in the third window, and made me sit down. “It was a question of time, only of time. If I could keep afloat, it was bound to come! That was what nobody would believe. People are so queer! And when Louis, that poor little chap who showed you in, offered me the ticket—he worked at that little den in Nice—when he offered me that ticket—well, it was growing dark, and I had to spell out the figures one by one—two one, two one, two one! You see! There it was. I was as certain as if I had the prize in my pocket. Hard luck on him? No—he’d never have won with it—though the little fool may think he would. That number would never have won except for me. It was my number—and again my number—and once again!”
He poured this out in a torrent of excited triumph, every bit of him from top to toe full of movement and animation. It was a great vindication of himself, of his faith, that he was putting before the skeptic’s eyes. He stood justified by it in all that he had done and suffered, in all that he had asked others to do and to endure. He was more than justified. It was a glorification of him, Arsenio Valdez, who had never doubted or faltered, who had pursued Fortune for years, unwearied, undaunted. He had caught her by the mantle at last. Voilà! He ended with a last tumultuous waving of both his hands.
“Well, you’re entitled to your crow, old chap,” I said, “even if it doesn’t alter the fact that you were a damned fool.”
“Ah, you never had any poetry, romance, imagination in you!” he retorted, now with his old mocking smile. “You haven’t got it, you Rillingtons—neither you, nor yet Waldo. That was why I——” He stopped, looking monkeyish.