Lucinda. Anthony HopeЧитать онлайн книгу.
I heard a swallow in his throat, and he went on again steadily. “Never mind that. Look at it as a case, a problem, impersonally. A girl is due to marry a man; another is besieging her. She can’t make up her mind—can’t make it up even on the very day before the wedding; or, if you like, won’t admit to herself that she has really resolved to break her promise, to be false to the man to whom she is already——” Again there was a falter in his voice—“already really a wife, so far as anything short of—short of the actual thing itself—can make her——”
He came to a sudden stop; he was unable to finish; he had invited us to a dispassionate consideration of the case as a case, as a problem; in the end he was not equal to laying it before us dispassionately. “Oh, you see, Father!” he groaned.
“Yes,” said Sir Paget. “I see the thing—on your hypothesis. She couldn’t make up her mind—or wouldn’t admit that she had. So she told the other man——”
“Valdez?”
“Yes, Julius. Arsenio Valdez. She told Arsenio to be at a certain spot at a certain time—a time when, if she were going to keep her promise, she would be getting ready for her wedding. ‘Be at the corner of St. James’s Street at one o’clock.’ That would be it, wouldn’t it? If I drive by in a taxi, alone, it means yes to you, no to him. If I don’t, it means the opposite.’ That’s what you mean, Waldo?”
Waldo nodded assent; but I could not readily accept the idea.
“You mean, when I saw her she’d just seen him, and when I saw him, he’d just seen her?”
“Wouldn’t that account for the animation and excitement you noticed in her face—for the flush that struck you? She had just given the signal; she’d just”—he smiled grimly—“crossed her Rubicon, Julius.”
“But why wasn’t he with her? Why didn’t he go with her? Why did he come to the wedding? Why did he go through that farce?”
Sir Paget shrugged his shoulders. “Some idea of throwing us off the scent and getting a clear start, probably.”
“Yes, it might have been that,” I admitted. “And it does account for—for the way she looked. But the idea never crossed my mind. There wasn’t a single thing in his manner to raise any suspicion of the sort. If you’re right, it was a wonderful bit of acting.”
Waldo turned to me—he had been looking intently at his father while Sir Paget expounded the case—with a sharp movement. “Did Monkey ask for me when he came to the church?”
“Yes, I think he did. Yes, he did. He said he’d like to see you and—and say something, you know.”
“I thought so! That would have been his moment! He wanted to see how I took it, damn him! Coming to the church was his idea. He may have persuaded her that it was a good ruse, a clever trick. But really he wanted to see me—in the dirt. Monkey Valdez all over!”
I believe that I positively shivered at the bitterness of his anger and hatred. They had been chums, pals, bosom friends. And I loved—I had loved—them both. Sir Paget, too, had made almost a son of Arsenio Valdez.
“And for that—he shall pay,” said Waldo, rising to his feet. “Doesn’t he deserve to pay for that, Father?”
“What do you propose to do, Waldo?”
“Catch him and—give him his deserts.”
“He’ll have left the country before you can catch him.”
“I can follow him. And I shall. I can find him, never fear!”
“You must think of her,” I ventured to suggest.
“Afterwards. As much as you like—afterwards.”
“But by the time you find them, they’ll have—I mean, they’ll be——”
“Hold your tongue, for God’s sake, Julius!”
I turned to Sir Paget. “If he insists on going, let me go with him, sir,” I said.
“Yes, that would be—wise,” he assented, but, as I thought, rather absently.
Waldo gave a laugh. “All right, Julius. If you fancy the job, come along and pick up the pieces! There’ll be one of us to bury, at all events.” I suppose that I made some instinctive gesture of protest, for he added: “She was mine—mine.”
Sir Paget looked from him to me, and back again from me to him.
“You must neither of you leave the country,” he said.
CHAPTER III
A HIGH EXPLOSIVE
I HAVE said so much about Waldo’s “rages” that I may have given quite a wrong impression of him. The “rages” were abnormal, rare and (if one may not use the word unnatural about a thing that certainly was in his nature) at least paradoxical. The normal—the all but invariable and the ultimately ruling—Waldo was a placid, good-tempered fellow; not very energetic mentally, yet very far from a fool; a moderate Conservative, a good sportsman, an ardent Territorial officer, and a crack rifle-shot. He had an independent fortune from his mother, and his “Occupation” would, I suppose, have to be entered on the Government forms as “None” or “Gentleman”; all the same, he led a full, active, and not altogether useless existence. Quite a type of his class, in fact, except for those sporadic rages, which came, I think, in the end from an extreme, an exaggerated, sense of justice. He would do no wrong, but neither would he suffer any; it seemed to him an outrage that any one should trench on his rights: among his rights he included fair, honorable and courteous treatment—and a very high standard of it. He asked what he gave. It seems odd that a delicacy of sensitiveness should result, even now and then, in a mad-bull rage, but it is not, when one thinks it over, unintelligible.
Sir Paget had spoken in his most authoritative tone; he had not proffered advice; he issued an order. I had never known Waldo to refuse, in the end, to obey an order from his father. Would he obey this one? It did not look probable. His retort was hot.
“I at least must judge this matter for myself.”
“So you shall then, when you’ve heard my reasons. Sit down, Waldo.”
“I can listen to you very well as I am, thank you.” “As he was” meant standing in the middle of the room, glowering at Sir Paget, who was still smoking in front of the fireplace. I was halfway between them, facing the door of the room. “And I can’t see what reasons there can be that I haven’t already considered.”
“There can be, though,” Sir Paget retorted calmly. “And when I tell you that I have to break my word in giving them to you, I’m sure that you won’t treat them lightly.”
Frowning formidably, Waldo gave an impatient and scornful toss of his head. He was very hostile, most unamenable to reason—or reasons.
At this moment in walked Miss Fleming—Aunt Bertha as we all called her, though I at least had no right to do so. She was actually aunt to Waldo’s mother, the girl much younger than himself whom Sir Paget had married in his fortieth year, and who had lived for only ten years after her marriage. When she fell sick, Aunt Bertha had come to Cragsfoot to nurse her; she had been there ever since, mistress of Sir Paget’s house, his locum tenens while he was serving abroad, guide of Waldo’s youth, now the closest friend in the world to father and son alike—and, looking back, I am not sure that there was then any one nearer to me either. I delighted in Aunt Bertha.
She was looking—as indeed she always did to me—like a preternaturally aged and wise sparrow, with her tiny figure, her short yet aquiline nose, her eyes sparkling and keen under the preposterous light-brown “front” which she had the audacity to wear. I hastened to wheel a chair forward for her, and she