She turned to me, actually laughing; and I began to laugh too. Well, Godfrey looked absurd—like a dog being whipped by two people at once, not knowing which he most wanted to bite, not sure whether he dared bite either—possibly thinking also of a third whipping which would certainly befall him if he followed Lucinda’s good advice. And Arsenio, cruelly let down from his heroics, looked funnily crestfallen too. He was not allowed to be picturesquely, rhetorically indignant—not with Godfrey, not even with himself!
“Besides,” she added, “he did offer to stick to his engagement to lunch with me that day at Cimiez!”
The mock admiration and gratitude with which she recalled this valiant deed—to which she might, in my opinion, well have dedicated a friendlier tone, since it was no slight exploit for him to beard his Nina in that fashion—put a limit to poor Godfrey’s tongue-tied endurance.
“Yes, you were ready enough to take my lunches, and what else you could get!” he sneered.
Lucinda gave me just a glance; here was a business reckoner indeed! Of course he had some right on his side, but he saw his right so carnally; why couldn’t he have told her that they’d been friends—and who could be only a friend to her? That was what, I expect, he meant in his heart; but his instincts were blunt, and he had been lashed into soreness.
Still, though I was feeling for him to that extent, I could not help returning Lucinda’s glance with a smile, while Arsenio chuckled in an exasperating fashion. It was small wonder really that he pushed back his chair from the table and, looking round at the company, groaned out, “Oh, damn the lot of you!”
The simplicity of this retort went home. I felt guilty myself, and Lucinda was touched to remorse, if not to shame. “I told you not to come to-night,” she murmured. “I told you that he only wanted to tease you. You’d better go away, perhaps.” She looked at him, and his glance obeyed hers instantly; she put out her hand and laid it on one of his for just a moment. “And, after all, I did like the lunches. You’re quite right there! Arsenio, can’t we part friends to-night—since we must part, all of us?”
“Oh, as you like!” said Arsenio impatiently. A sudden and deep depression seemed to fall upon him; he sat back, staring dejectedly at the table. He reminded one of a comedian whose jokes do not carry. This banquet was to have been a great, grim joke. But it had fallen flat—sunk now into just a wrangle. And at last his buoyant malice failed to lift it—failed him indeed completely. We three men sat in a dull silence; I saw Lucinda’s eyes grow dim with tears.
Godfrey broke the silence by rising to his feet, clumsily, almost with a stumble; I think that he caught his foot in the tablecloth, which hung down almost to the floor.
“I’ll go,” he said. “I’m sorry for all this. I’ve made a damned fool of myself.”