Anthony Hope - Lucinda

I laughed at that. “The nice woman would feel singularly de trop , I think.”

“She could make her tea, and tell her that in the circumstances she could hardly be held responsible for what she did. Those are the two ways of comforting women, Julius.”

“As it is, she’s probably gone to some beastly foreign place where there isn’t any tea fit to drink, and Monkey Valdez is picturesquely, but not tactfully, insisting that her wonderful way has caused all the trouble!”

“Poor Lucinda!” sighed Aunt Bertha again.

And on that note – of commiseration, if not actually of excuse – our conversation ended; rather contrary to what might have been expected, perhaps, from two people so closely allied to the deserted and outraged lover, but because somehow Aunt Bertha enticed me into her mood, and she – who loved men and their company as much as any woman whom I have known – never, I believe, thought of them en masse in any other way than as the enemy-sex. If and where they did not positively desire that lovely women should stoop to folly, they were always consciously or unconsciously, by the law of their masculine being, inciting them to that lamentable course. Who then (as the nice woman would have asked Lucinda as she handed her the cup of tea) were really responsible when such things came about? This attitude of mind was much commoner with Aunt Bertha’s contemporaries than it is to-day. Aunt Bertha herself, however, always praised Injured Innocence with a spice of malice. There was just a spice of it in her pity for Lucinda and in the remedies proposed for her consolation.

My own feeling about the girl at this juncture was much what one may have about a case of suicide. She had ended her life as we had known her life in recent years; that seemed at once the object and the effect of her action. What sort of a new life lay before her now was a matter of conjecture, and we had slender data on which to base it. What did seem permissible – in charity to her and without disloyalty to Waldo – was some sympathy for the struggle which she must have gone through before her shattering resolve was reached.

AS Sir Paget had suggested, we – we three Rillington men and Aunt Bertha – spent the Twelve Days, the ever-famous Twelve Days before the war, at Cragsfoot. On the public side of that period I need say nothing – or only just one thing. If we differed at all from the public at large in our feelings, it was in one point only. For us, under Sir Paget’s lead, it was less a time of hope, fear, and suspense than of mere waiting. We other three took his word for what was going to happen; his certainty became ours – though, as I believe (it is a matter of belief only, for he never told me what he told Waldo on that walk of theirs on the afternoon of the wedding day – which was not the day of a wedding), his certainty was based not so much on actual information as on a sort of instinct which long and intimate familiarity with international affairs had given him. But, whatever was his rock of conviction, it never shook. Even Waldo did not question it. He accepted it – with all its implications, public and private.

Yes, and private. There his acceptance was not only absolute; it was final and – a thing which I found it difficult to understand – it was absolutely silent. He never referred to his project of pursuit – and of rescue, or revenge, or whatever else it had been going to be. He never mentioned Lucinda’s name; we were at pains never to pronounce it in his presence. It was extraordinary self-control on the part of a man whom self-control could, on occasion, utterly forsake. So many people are not proof against gossiping even about their own fallen idols, though it would be generally admitted that silence is more gracious; pedestal-makers should be sure that they build on a sound foundation. However, Waldo’s silence was not due to delicacy or to a recognition of his own mistake; that, at least, was not how I explained it. He recognized the result of his own decision. The event that was to raise for all the civilized world a wall of division between past and future – whom has it not touched as human being and as citizen? – erected a barrier between Lucinda and himself, which no deed could pass, which no word need describe. Only memory could essay to wing over it a blind and baffled flight.

In spite of the overwhelming preoccupation of that national crisis – Sir Paget remained in close touch with well-informed people in town, and his postbag gave rise to talk that lasted most of the morning – my memory, too, was often busy with those bygone days at Cragsfoot, when the runaways had been of the party. Tall, slim, and fair, a girl on the verge of womanhood, ingenuous, open, and gay though she was, the Lucinda of those days had something remote about her, something aloof. The veil of virginity draped her; the shadow of it seemed to fall over her eyes which looked at you, as it were, from out of the depths of feelings and speculations to which you were a stranger and she herself but newly initiated. The world faced her with its wonders, but the greatest, the most alluring and seductive wonder was herself. The texture of her skin, peculiarly rich and smooth – young Valdez once, sitting on a patch of short close moss, had jokingly compared it to Lucinda’s cheeks – somehow aided this impression of her; it looked so fresh, so untouched, as though a breath might ruffle it. Fancy might find something of the same quality in her voice and in her laughter, a caressing softness of intonation, a mellow gentleness.

What were her origins? We were much in the dark as to that; even Aunt Bertha, who knew everything of that sort about everybody, here knew nothing. The boys, Waldo and Valdez, had met mother and daughter at a Commem’ Ball; they came as guests of the wife of one of their dons – a lady who enjoyed poor health and wintered in “the South.” There, “in the South,” she had made friends with the Knyvetts and, when they came to England, invited them to stay. Mrs. Knyvett appeared from her conversation (which was copious) to be one of those widows who have just sufficient means to cling to the outskirts of society at home and abroad; she frequently told us that she could not afford to do the things which she did do; that “a cottage in the country somewhere” was all she wanted for herself, but that Lucinda must “have her chance, mustn’t she?” The late Mr. Knyvett had been an architect; but I believe that Lucinda was by far the greatest artistic achievement in which he could claim any share.

So – quite naturally, since Waldo always invited any friends he chose – the pair found themselves at Cragsfoot in the summer of 1912. And the play began. A pleasant little comedy it promised to be, played before the indulgent eyes of the seniors, among whom I, with only a faint twinge of regret, was compelled to rank myself; to be in the thirties was to be old at Cragsfoot that summer; and certain private circumstances made one less reluctant to accept the status of an elder.

Valdez paid homage in the gay, the embroidered, the Continental fashion; Waldo’s was the English style. Lucinda seemed pleased with both, not much moved by either, more interested in her own power to evoke these strange manifestations than in the meaning of the manifestations themselves. Then suddenly the squall came – and, as suddenly, passed; the quarrel, the “row,” between Waldo and Valdez; over (of all things in the world) the Legitimist principle! The last time I had seen Waldo in a rage – until the day that was to have brought his wedding with Lucinda! It had been a rage too; and Valdez, a fellow not lacking in spirit as I had judged him, took it with a curious meekness; he protested indeed, and with some vigor, but with a propitiatory air, with an obvious desire to appease his assailant. We elders discussed this, and approved it. Waldo was the host, he the guest; for Aunt Bertha’s and Sir Paget’s sake he strove to end the quarrel, to end the unpleasantness of which he was the unfortunate, if innocent, cause. He behaved very well indeed; that was the conclusion we arrived at. And poor dear Waldo – oh, badly, badly! He quite frightened poor Lucinda. Her eyes looked bright – with alarm; her cheeks were unwontedly, brilliantly red – with excited alarm. The girl was all of a quiver! It was inexcusable in Waldo; it was generous of Valdez to accept his apologies – as we were given to understand that he had when the two young men appeared, rather stiff to one another but good friends, at the breakfast table the next morning.