“If you’ve any difficulty about the journey,” wrote Nina, “let us know, because we can pull a wire or two, I expect.”
“Pull a wire or two!” I believe they control the cords that hold the firmament of heaven in its place above the earth!
Besides—so another current of my thoughts ran—if wires had to be pulled, could not Ezekiel Coldston & Co., Ltd., pull them for themselves? Did the Frosts engross the earth? I had no intention of letting Nina Dundrannan graciously provide me with “facilities”; that is the term which we used to employ in H. M.’s Government service.
CHAPTER XII
A SECRET VISIT
I STAYED longer at Cragsfoot than I had intended. The old folk there seemed rather lonely and moody; and, if the truth must be told, not quite so fully in harmony with one another as of yore. Aunt Bertha was ailing, showing at last signs of age and feebleness; Sir Paget was suffering from a reaction after his war-time anxieties and activities. A latent opposition of feeling between them occasionally cropped out on the surface. In Sir Paget it showed itself in humorously expressed fears that I too—“the only one of my family left”—should be “swallowed” if I went to Mentone; but Aunt Bertha met the humor peevishly: “What nonsense you talk, Paget!” or “Really, one would think that you regret Waldo’s marriage! At all events, things might have been worse.” Words like these last skirted forbidden places, and we steered the conversation away. But the opposition was real; when they were alone together, it was probably more open, and therefore worse. I lingered on, with the idea that my presence in the house softened and eased it.
Moreover, I must own to a feeling in myself which seemed ridiculous and yet was obstinate—a reluctance to go to Villa San Carlo. What was the meaning, or the sense, of that? Was I afraid of being “swallowed” there, of being drawn into the Dundrannan orbit and thereafter circling helplessly round the Dundrannan sun? No, it was not quite that. I took leave to trust to an individuality, an independence, in myself, though apparently Sir Paget had his doubts about it. It was rather that going to the Villa seemed a definite and open ranging of myself on Nina’s side. But on her side in what, my reason asked. There was no conflict; it was all over; the battle had been fought and won—if indeed there could be said to have been any battle at all, where one side had declined victory and left the prize at the mercy of the other. But here again, however irrationally, the feeling persisted, and, when challenged to show its justification, called to witness the two combatants themselves. In the end it was their words, their tones, hints of some vague foreboding in themselves, which had infected my mind.
What in the end overcame my reluctance and took me to Mentone? Not the attraction of the Villa, nor the lure of a holiday and sunshine. It was, unexpectedly and paradoxically—a letter from Arsenio Valdez! Addressed to my club, it was forwarded to me at Cragsfoot. After a silence of more than four years, he resumed his acquaintance with me in this missive; resumed it without the least embarrassment and with a claim to the cherished privilege of old friendship,—that of borrowing money, of course.