The Luminaries

But the widow laughed. ‘Aubert,’ she said, ‘you will not draw me out!’

‘I rather thought you expected me to try.’

‘Yes—but only to try,’ the widow said. ‘Not to succeed!’

‘I fancy that is a feminine motif,’ Gascoigne said dryly.

‘Perhaps,’ the widow returned, with a little laugh. ‘But we are a discriminating sex—and I fancy that you would not have it any other way.’

What followed was a rather saccharine exchange of compliments, a game in which both the widow and the widower found themselves extremely well matched. Rather than transcribe this sentimental interchange, we will choose to talk above it, and instead describe in better detail what otherwise might be mistaken for a profound weakness in character on the Frenchman’s part.

Gascoigne was enraptured by Lydia Wells, and much admiring of the refined flamboyance of that woman’s speech and manner—but he had not put his faith in her. He had not betrayed Anna Wetherell’s confidence, and in his narration of the latter’s story to Lydia, he had made no mention of the gold that had been discovered in Anna’s orange dress the previous week, which was now wrapped in a flour sack and stowed beneath his bed. Gascoigne had also described the events of the 14th of January as if he believed that Anna had, indeed, attempted to take her life—sensing that, until a better explanation could be reached, it was prudent not to call attention to the evening’s many mysteries. He knew very well that Anna had no notion of where on earth those midnight hours had gone— or, to phrase the matter a different way, of who on earth had stolen them—and he did not wish to place her in any kind of danger. Gascoigne therefore adhered to the ‘official’ story, which was that Anna was a would-be suicide, found insensate and wretched on the side of the road. He had adopted this perspective when discussing the event with other men, and it required no great effort to maintain it here.

That Gascoigne was enraptured by Lydia Wells, and not instantly suspicious of her many caprices, is a point we cannot so easily defend. We do observe that the attraction had been formed before he even knew Lydia’s reason for inquiring at the Courthouse; it had been formed, in fact, before the widow even spoke her name. But now Gascoigne knew that Lydia bore a very mysterious relation to her late husband; now he knew that the mysterious fortune that had been discovered in the dead man’s cottage was currently in dispute. He knew that he ought not to trust her—and he knew that when he was with her, a pure and liquid adoration filled the chambers of his heart. Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own. Lydia’s was a rare and old-world glamour—and Gascoigne knew it, just as if the fact had been logically proved. He knew that her sleekly feline features had been lifted, intact, from an older, better age. He knew that the shape of her wrist and ankle were without compare, and that her voice—

But our point has already been made; we ought to return to the scene at hand.

Gascoigne had set down his glass. ‘I think,’ he was saying, ‘that it is well you are to be married. You are far too charming to be a widow.’

‘But perhaps,’ said Lydia Wells, ‘perhaps I am far too charming to be another man’s wife?’

‘Not at all,’ Gascoigne returned. ‘You are exactly as charming as another man’s wife ought to be: it is only thanks to the likes of you that men get married at all. You make the idea of marriage seem very tolerable.’

‘Aubert,’ she said. ‘You flatterer.’

‘I should like to flatter you further, by inviting you to speak upon the subject of your expertise, that I so inadvertently depreciated just now,’ the Frenchman said. ‘Come, Lydia: tell me about spirits, and about the forces of the ether, and I shall try my very best to be naive and hopeful, and not sceptical in the slightest.’

How very lovely she was, with the muted light of the afternoon falling over her shoulder like a veil! How gorgeously the shadow filled that notch beneath her lip!

‘Firstly,’ said Lydia Wells, drawing herself up, ‘you are mistaken to think that common folk will not pay to have their fortunes told. Men get very superstitious when the stakes are high, and a goldfield is a place of great risk and great reward. Diggers will always pay good money for a tip—why, the word “fortune” is on their lips almost every day! They’ll try their luck at anything, if they think it might give them an edge upon the field. What is a speculator, anyway, but a gypsy wearing different clothes?’

Gascoigne laughed. ‘I doubt many speculators would appreciate that comparison,’ he said, ‘but, yes, I take your point, Miss Lydia: men are always happy to pay for advice. But will they trust in the efficacy of your advice— the practical efficacy, I mean? I fear it will be an extraordinary pressure—for you will have to bear up beneath the burden of proof! How will you ensure you won’t lead any one of them astray?’

‘What a terrifically dreary question,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘You doubt my affinity to my subject, I suppose.’

Gascoigne did; but he chose to dissemble for the sake of politeness. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said, ‘but I am ignorant of it. I am intrigued.’

‘I have owned a gambling house for a decade,’ the widow said. ‘My gambling wheel has stopped upon the jackpot only once in all that time, and that was because the pin jammed in the pivot, on account of grit. I had the wheel weighted in such a way that the prize nearest the jackpot always fell against the arrow. As a secondary precaution, the pegs on either side of the number were greased. The arrow always slid past, at the final moment—but so barely, and so tantalisingly, that the men could not help but clamber up and throw down their shillings for another spin.’

‘Why, Miss Lydia,’ said Gascoigne, ‘that is devilishly unfair!’

‘Not at all,’ said Lydia.

‘Of course it is!’ said Gascoigne. ‘It’s cheating!’

‘Answer me this,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘Do you call a grocer a cheat, for placing the choicest apples at the back of the cart, so the blemished fruits will get chosen first?’

‘It hardly compares,’ said Gascoigne.

‘Tosh: it compares perfectly,’ said the widow. ‘The grocer is making sure of his income: for if he placed the choicest apples in front, the blemished fruits would not be bought until they had gone over to mould, and they would have to be discarded. He ensures a steady income for himself by encouraging each one of his customers to settle for a piece of fruit that is slightly—ever so slightly—defective. I must also make sure of my income, if I am to remain in business, and I do it in exactly this same way. When a gambler goes home with only a small reward— say five pounds—and a sense that he came within a hair’s breadth of a perfectly enormous fortune, it is as if he has gone home with a blemished apple. He has a modest reward, a pleasant memory of a very fine evening, and the sense of having just fallen short of something absolutely extraordinary. He’s happy—more or less. And so am I.’

Gascoigne laughed again. ‘But gambling is a vice,’ he said. ‘A blemished apple is not a vice. Forgive me: I do not mean to be dreary, but it seems that your example—like your gambling wheel—is heavily weighted to favour your own position.’

‘Of course gambling is a vice,’ said the widow scornfully. ‘Of course it’s a terrible sin and a scourge and it ruins men and all the rest of it. What do I care about that? Try telling a grocer that you do not care for apples! No matter, he’ll tell you—there are plenty of others who like them just fine!’

Gascoigne saluted her in the military style. ‘I am persuaded of your ability to persuade,’ he said. ‘You are a force to be reckoned with, Miss Lydia! I pity that poor fellow who won that jackpot—who had to come to you afterwards, and demand his winnings.’

‘Oh, yes … But I never paid out,’ said Lydia Wells.

Gascoigne was incredulous. ‘You defaulted—on your own jackpot?’

She tossed her head. ‘Who’s defaulting?’ she said. ‘I only gave him a second option. I told him that he could have the one hundred pounds in pure, or he could have me. Not as a whore,’ she said, seeing the look on Gascoigne’s face. ‘As a wife, silly. That was Crosbie. He made his choice. And you know which way he chose!’

Gascoigne’s mouth had fallen open. ‘Crosbie Wells.’

‘Yes,’ said the widow. ‘We were married before the night was over. What, Aubert? I certainly didn’t have one hundred pounds to give away. I never dreamed the wheel would ever come to rest upon the bonanza—I had weighted it so that would never happen! I could hardly have made good. I would have ruined myself altogether. I would have been bankrupted. You cannot be shocked!’

‘I confess I am, a little,’ Gascoigne said—though his shock was of a most admiring kind. ‘Why—were you at all acquainted with the man?’