“But I thought that she was fitting you for polite society!”
“That’s good—jolly good, Captain Rillington!” he was kind enough to say. “I shall tell Nina that; it’ll amuse her.”
He seemed disposed to take me for a Mentor—to think that I might supplement the social education which his cousin proposed to give him; that I might do the male, the club side, while she looked after the drawing-room department—or deportment. On the other hand, he instructed me rather freely on business, until he happened to gather—from Sir Paget—that in the piping times of peace I held a fairly good position in Ezekiel Coldston & Co., Ltd.; after which he treated me, if not with a greater, yet with a more comprehensive, respect. “That’s a big concern,” he remarked thoughtfully. “Of course you and we don’t come into competition at all—quite separate fields, aren’t they?”
“Oh, quite,” said I, tacitly thanking heaven for the fact.
As I have said, an engaging young man, and interesting. I wondered what he and life would make of one another, when they became better acquainted. Meanwhile our intimacy increased apace.
Human nature is, and apparently always has been, prone to poke fun at newly acquired greatness; I suppose that it hangs on the person stiffly, like a frock coat fresh from the tailor’s. If Lady Dundrannan wore her dignity and power rather consciously, she also wore them well. She made an imposing figure in her mourning; but her stateliness was pleasantly and variously tempered to suit the company in which she found herself. For Aunt Bertha and Sir Paget there was an infusion of the daughterly; for Captain Godfrey of the elder-sisterly. I myself still found in her that piquant directness of approach which, in an earlier moment of temerity, I have ventured to call her impudence; it seasoned and animated her grandeur. She was, behind her dignity, mockingly confidential; she shared a half-hidden joke with me. She was naturally impelled to share it, if there were anybody with whom she could; it was to her the spice of the situation. Not the situation itself, of course; that was to her entirely serious and all important; she was attached to Waldo with all her limpet tenacity, with all her solidity of purpose, with all the tenderness, moreover, of which her heart was capable; finally, with an intensity of straight downright passion, of which I know by hearsay, but should hardly have divined from her own demeanor. But the joke, though not the situation itself, was a lively element in it. She could not share it with Waldo, or Aunt Bertha, or Sir Paget; nor would she share it with young Godfrey Frost, since it hardly became the status of an elder sister. But she could and did share it with me. The joke, of course, was Lucinda.
It would have been a still better joke, had she known all that I knew about Madame Valdez, or Donna Lucinda Valdez, or Madame Chose’s needlewoman; she might not have been so ready to share it with me, had she known that I knew about the girl on the cliffs, passionately, shamefully sobbing in wounded love, pride, and spite. As matters stood to her knowledge, the joke was good enough, and yet fit to share. For here was she—the uninvited skeleton at the abortive feast—triumphant, in possession of the field, awaiting in secure serenity the fruition of her hopes. And so placed, moreover, that the attainment of her object involved no stooping; a queen bowing acquiescence from her throne is not said to stoop. Yes, here she was; here she was, with a vengeance; and—where was Lucinda?
Well, that was just what she wanted to know. Not in any uneasiness or apprehension, but in good, straight, honest, human, feminine curiosity and malice. Moreover, that was what, before we had been much together, she came to have a suspicion, an inkling, that I could tell her—if I would. This was no marvel of feminine intuition. It was my fault, or my mischief. It was my side of the joke, without which the joke would have been to me rather a grim one. I could not help playing with her curiosity, inciting and balking her malice.
She used to come to see Waldo almost every day, sitting with him an hour or more. Being a young woman of active habits, she generally came on foot, and, since he could not escort her home, that duty fell to my lot; we had several walks back from Cragsfoot to Briarmount, just as twilight began to fall on those winter evenings, her clear-cut, handsome features still showing up boldly above her rich dark furs. She really looked very much My Lady!
But it is one walk that stands out conspicuous in memory. It was the afternoon on which Waldo had asked her to be his wife—though I did not know it.