The Luminaries

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 wasof a most admiring kind. ‘Why—were you at all acquainted with the man?’
    ‘Of course not,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘What modern notions you have.’
    Gascoigne blushed. ‘I did not mean that,’ he said, and then, rushing on, ‘Of course, if you were preventing your own financial ruin, as you say …’
    ‘We were terribly ill suited, of course, and within the month we could not stand the sight of one another. It was to be expected. Yes: it was the best that either of us could have expected, given the circumstances .’
    Gascoigne was wondering why the pair had not arranged a divorce, but he could not ask this question without offending the widow’s propriety, and merely nodded.
    ‘You see I am very modern about
that
,’ Lydia added. ‘You must agree with my circumspection on that score—to insist upon a separation , above a divorce!
You
have been married, Mr. Gascoigne.’
    He noticed the coquettish use of his family name, and smiled at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But let us not talk of the past; let us talk of the present, and the future, and all that lies ahead. Tell me about the conversions you will make to this hotel.’
    Lydia was pleased to be given the stage. She leaped to her feet, and, clasping her hands together in the pose of a chorister, stepped forward around the ottoman. Turning on her heel, she cast her gaze around the parlour—at the mullioned window; the thinly plastered walls; the threadbare Union Jack, no doubt salvaged from a wreck, which was tacked vertically to the wall that faced the window.
    ‘I will change the name, of course,’ she said. ‘It will no longer be the Wayfarer: it will be the Wayfarer’s Fortune.’
    ‘There’s a music in that.’
    This satisfied her. She took a few steps away from the sofa, and spread her arms. ‘I will have drapes—I cannot abide a room without drapes—and fainting-couches, in the modern style. In the drawing room there will be a cubicle with saloon doors, rather like a confessional—
very
like a confessional. The front parlour will be a waiting room of sorts. The
séances
I will conduct here, of course.Oh, I have every kind of idea. I will read fortunes, and draw up cosmic birth-charts, and play out the patterns of the Tarot. Upstairs … but what is this? You are still sceptical, Aubert!’
    ‘I am no longer a sceptic! I have recanted,’ said Gascoigne, reaching out to clasp her hand—a movement that was spurred partly because he was trying to smother a smile. (He
was
a sceptic, through and through, and he could not hear her roll the
r
of Tarot without wanting to burst with laughter.) Squeezing her hand, he added, ‘I should very much like to be rewarded for recanting.’
    ‘In this matter I am the expert, and you are the layman,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘You ought to remember that—no matter your poor opinion of realms.’
    Her arm was extended between them limply, as a lady extends her rings to be kissed, and Gascoigne repressed the urge to snatch it up, and kiss it.
    ‘You are right,’ he said, squeezing her hand again. ‘You are quite right.’
    He released her, and she moved away to the mantel.
    ‘I will reward you