Windows Powershell in Action 1st Edition Bruce G. Payette
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- 5. Windows Powershell in Action 1st Edition Bruce G. Payette Digital Instant Download Author(s): Bruce G. Payette ISBN(s): 9781932394900, 1932394907 Edition: 1 File Details: PDF, 6.83 MB Year: 2007 Language: english
- 7. Windows PowerShell in Action
- 9. Windows PowerShell in Action BRUCE PAYETTE M A N N I N G Greenwich (74° w. long.)
- 10. For online information and ordering of this and other Manning books, please go to www.manning.com. The publisher offers discounts on this book when ordered in quantity. For more information, please contact: Special Sales Department Manning Publications Sound View Court 3B Fax: (609) 877-8256 Greenwich, CT 06830 email: orders@manning.com ©2007 by Manning Publications Co. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in the book, and Manning Publications was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial caps or all caps. Recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, it is Manning’s policy to have the books we publish printed on acid-free paper, and we exert our best efforts to that end. Manning Publications Co. Copyeditor: Benjamin Berg Sound View Court 3B Typesetter: Gordan Salinovic Greenwich, CT 06830 Cover designer: Leslie Haimes ISBN 1932394-90-7 Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – MAL – 11 10 09 08 07
- 11. To my wife, Tina, for all her love and support
- 13. vii brief contents Part 1 Learning PowerShell 1 1 Welcome to PowerShell 3 2 The basics 25 3 Working with types 55 4 Operators and expressions 87 5 Advanced operators and variables 115 6 Flow control in scripts 147 7 Functions and scripts 177 8 Scriptblocks and objects 214 9 Errors, exceptions, and script debugging 251 Part 2 Using PowerShell 295 10 Processing text, files, and XML 297 11 Getting fancy—.NET and WinForms 344 12 Windows objects: COM and WMI 392 13 Security, security, security 440
- 15. ix contents foreword xv preface xvii acknowledgments xix about this book xx Part 1 LEARNING POWERSHELL 1 1 Welcome to PowerShell 3 1.1 What is PowerShell? 5 Shells, command-lines, and scripting languages 5 ✦ Why a new shell? Why now? 7 ✦ The last mile problem 7 1.2 Soul of a new language 8 Learning from history 8 ✦ Leveraging .NET 9 1.3 Brushing up on objects 10 Reviewing object-oriented programming 11 Objects in PowerShell 12 1.4 Dude! Where’s my code? 13 Installing and starting PowerShell 13 ✦ Command editing 15 Command completion 16 ✦ Evaluating basic expressions 17 Processing data 18 1.5 Summary 23 2 The basics 25 2.1 Command concepts and terminology 27 Commands and cmdlets 27 ✦ Command categories 30 Aliases and elastic syntax 34 2.2 Parsing and PowerShell 37 How PowerShell parses 37 ✦ Quoting 38 ✦ Expression mode and command mode parsing 41 ✦ Statement termination 43
- 16. x CONTENTS 2.3 Pipelines and commands 45 Pipelines and streaming behavior 46 Parameters and parameter binding 47 2.4 Formatting and output 48 The formatting cmdlets 49 ✦ The outputter cmdlets 51 2.5 Summary 54 3 Working with types 55 3.1 Type management in the wild, wild west 55 PowerShell: a type-promiscuous language 56 The type system and type adaptation 58 3.2 Basic types and literals 60 Strings 60 ✦ Numbers and numeric literals 64 ✦ Collections: dictionaries and hashtables 66 ✦ Collections: arrays and sequences 71 ✦ Type literals 75 3.3 Type conversions 79 How type conversion works 79 ✦ PowerShell’s type-conversion algorithm 82 ✦ Special type conversions in parameter binding 85 3.4 Summary 86 4 Operators and expressions 87 4.1 Arithmetic operators 89 The addition operator 89 ✦ The multiplication operator 92 Subtraction, division, and the modulus operator 94 4.2 The assignment operators 96 Multiple assignments 97 ✦ Multiple assignments with type qualifiers 98 Assignment operations as value expressions 100 4.3 Comparison operators 101 Scalar comparisons 102 ✦ Using comparison operators with collections 105 4.4 The pattern matching operators 107 Wildcard patterns 107 ✦ Regular expressions 108 4.5 Logical and bitwise operators 113 4.6 Summary 113 5 Advanced operators and variables 115 5.1 Operators for working with types 115 5.2 The unary operators 117 5.3 Grouping, subexpressions, and array subexpressions 119 5.4 Array operators 123 The comma operator “,” 123 ✦ The range operator 126 Array indexing 127
- 17. CONTENTS xi 5.5 Property and method operators 132 The “.” operator 133 ✦ Static methods and the “::” operator 136 5.6 The PowerShell format operator -F 137 5.7 Redirection and the redirection operators 138 5.8 Variables 141 5.9 Summary 145 6 Flow control in scripts 147 6.1 Using the if/elseif/else statement 148 6.2 The while loop 151 6.3 The do/while loop 152 6.4 The for loop 153 6.5 The foreach loop 155 6.6 Labels, break, and continue 159 6.7 The PowerShell switch statement 161 Basic use of the PowerShell switch statement 161 ✦ Using wildcard patterns with the switch statement 163 ✦ Using regular expressions with the switch statement 164 ✦ Processing files with the switch statement 167 Using the $switch loop enumerator in the switch statement 168 6.8 Flow control using cmdlets 169 The Foreach-Object cmdlet 170 ✦ The Where-Object cmdlet 173 6.9 The value of statements 175 6.10Summary 176 7 Functions and scripts 177 7.1 Function basics 178 7.2 Formal parameters and the param statement 181 Specifying parameter types 183 ✦ Handling variable numbers of arguments 185 ✦ Initializing function parameters 186 ✦ Using switch parameters to define flags 188 ✦ Variables and scoping rules 190 Using variable scope modifiers 193 7.3 Returning values from functions 193 Debugging function output 196 ✦ The return statement 198 7.4 Using functions in a pipeline 199 Filters and functions 201 ✦ Functions as cmdlets 202 7.5 Managing functions 204
- 18. xii CONTENTS 7.6 Scripts at long last 205 Passing arguments to scripts 207 ✦ The param statement 208 ✦ Scopes and scripts 208 ✦ Exiting scripts and the exit statement 209 Dotting scripts and functions 210 7.7 Summary 212 8 Scriptblocks and objects 214 8.1 Scriptblock basics 215 Invoking commands 216 ✦ Getting CommandInfo objects 217 ✦ The ScriptBlock literal 219 ✦ Defining functions at runtime 220 8.2 Building and manipulating objects 222 Looking at members 222 ✦ Synthetic members 223 ✦ Using Add- Member to extend objects 224 ✦ Using the select-object cmdlet 230 8.3 A closer look at the type-system plumbing 233 Adding a property 235 ✦ Shadowing an existing property 236 8.4 Extending the PowerShell language 237 Little languages 237 ✦ Adding a CustomClass keyword to PowerShell 238 8.5 Type extension 243 8.6 Building code at runtime 245 The Invoke-Expression cmdlet 245 ✦ The ExecutionContext variable 246 Creating functions using the function: drive 248 8.7 Summary 249 9 Errors, exceptions, and script debugging 251 9.1 Error handling 252 ErrorRecords and the error stream 253 ✦ The $error variable and –ErrorVariable parameter 256 ✦ The $? and $LASTEXITCODE variables 259 ✦ $ErrorActionPreference and the -ErrorAction parameter 261 9.2 Dealing with errors that terminate execution 265 The trap statement 265 ✦ The throw statement 268 9.3 Script debugging 270 Debugging with the host APIs 270 ✦ The Set-PSDebug cmdlet 271 Tracing statement execution 271 ✦ Stepping through statement execution 275 ✦ Catching undefined variables with strict mode 276 9.4 Nested prompts and breakpoints 277 Suspending a script while in step-mode 277 ✦ Creating a breakpoint command 279 ✦ The script call stack, or “How did I get here?” 281 9.5 Low-level tracing 283 The Trace-Command cmdlet 283 ✦ Tracing type conversions 285 Tracing parameter binding 287
- 19. CONTENTS xiii 9.6 The PowerShell event log 291 Examining the event log 291 Exchange 2007 and the PowerShell event log 293 9.7 Summary 293 Part 2 USING POWERSHELL 295 10 Processing text, files, and XML 297 10.1 Processing unstructured text 298 Using System.String to work with text 298 Using regular expressions to manipulate text 304 10.2 File processing 305 Working with PSDrives 307 ✦ Working with paths that contain wildcards 309 ✦ Reading and writing files 313 Searching files with the Select-String cmdlet 319 10.3 XML processing 322 Using XML as objects 322 ✦ Loading and saving XML files. 326 Processing XML documents in a pipeline 333 ✦ Using XPath 334 The Import-Clixml and Export-Clixml cmdlets 339 10.4 Summary 342 11 Getting fancy—.NET and WinForms 344 11.1 Using .NET from PowerShell 345 .NET basics 345 ✦ Working with assemblies 346 ✦ Finding types 348 Creating instances of types 350 ✦ PowerShell is not C#—A cautionary tale 353 ✦ Working with generic types 358 11.2 PowerShell and the Internet 361 Example: Retrieving a web page 361 ✦ Example: Processing an RSS feed 362 ✦ Example: Writing a web server in PowerShell 364 11.3 PowerShell and graphical user interfaces 371 WinForms basics 371 ✦ Example: "My first form" 372 ✦ Example: Simple dialog 374 ✦ Example: A WinForms library 376 ✦ Example: A simple calculator 379 ✦ Example: Displaying data 385 Example: Using the GDI+ to do graphics 387 11.4 Summary 391 12 Windows objects: COM and WMI 392 12.1 Working with COM in PowerShell 393 Automating Windows with COM 396 ✦ Networking, applications, and toys 405 ✦ Using the ScriptControl object 415 Issues with COM 417
- 20. xiv CONTENTS 12.2 Working with WMI in PowerShell 421 Exploring WMI—what is it, and why do you care? 421 ✦ The Get- WmiObject cmdlet 422 ✦ The WMI object adapter 423 ✦ WMI shootout—VBScript versus PowerShell 425 ✦ The WMI type shortcuts 429 Working with WMI methods 432 ✦ Working with WMI events 433 Putting modified WMI objects back 434 12.3 So which object model should I choose? 437 12.4 Summary 437 13 Security, security, security 440 13.1 Introduction to security 441 What security is 441 ✦ What security is not 441 Perception and security 442 13.2 Security modeling 443 Introduction to threat modeling 444 ✦ Classifying threats using the STRIDE model 444 ✦ Security basics: Threats, assets, and mitigations 445 13.3 Securing the PowerShell environment 449 Secure by default 449 ✦ Managing the command path 450 Choosing a script execution policy 451 13.4 Signing scripts 453 How public key encryption and one-way hashing work 453 ✦ Signing authorities and certificates 454 ✦ Creating a self-signed certificate 455 Using a certificate to sign a script 458 ✦ Enabling strong private key protection for your certificate 462 13.5 Writing secure scripts 465 Using the SecureString class 465 ✦ Working with credentials 468 Avoiding Invoke-Expression 471 13.6 Summary 474 appendix A Comparing PowerShell to other languages 476 appendix B Admin examples 499 appendix C The PowerShell grammar 520 index 531
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- 22. “No,” he answered, “I didn’t lunch with Lucinda, as it happened. When I took a step up to her, she seemed absolutely lost in her own thoughts, hardly aware of my being there, at least realizing that I was there with a sort of effort; her eyes didn’t look as if they saw me at all. ‘You must let me off to-day, Mr. Frost,’ she said in a hurried murmur. ‘I—I’ve got something to do—something I must think about.’ Her cheeks were still rather red; otherwise she was calm enough, but obviously entirely preoccupied. It would have been silly to press her; I mean, it would have been an intrusion. ‘All right, of course,’ I said. ‘But when are we to meet again, Donna Lucinda?’ “‘I don’t know. In a few days, I hope. Not till I send you word to the hotel.’ “‘Try to make it Sunday.’ I smiled as I added, ‘Then I shall see you in the blue frock; that’s the one I like best.’ “‘The blue frock!’ she repeated after me. Then she suddenly raised her free arm—she’d been holding that infernal bandbox all the time, you know—clenched her fist and gave it a little shake in the air. ‘If he’s really done that, I’ll have no more to do with him in this world again!’ she said. And off she went down the road, without another word to me or a glance back. I believe she’d forgotten my very existence.” “Did she turn up on Sunday—in the blue frock?” “I’ve never set eyes on her since—nor on Arsenio either. They both appear to have vanished into space—together or separately, Heaven only knows! I hunted for Valdez in all the likely places. I tried for her at the hotel at Cimiez, at her shop, at her lodgings. I’ve drawn blank everywhere. I got thoroughly sick and out of heart. So I thought I’d run up here and see what you thought about it.” “I don’t know why I should make any mystery about it,” said I. “Anything that puzzles you will be quite plain in the light of that letter.” I took the letter from Arsenio Valdez, which Nina had given me, out of my pocket, and flung it down on the table. “Read it—and
- 23. you’ll understand why she repeated after you ‘The blue frock!’ That was what gave her the clew to Nina’s meaning!”
- 24. T CHAPTER XVII REBELLION HERE was the situation; for Godfrey was quick enough to see what had happened as soon as he had read Arsenio’s letter; he finished it, which was more than I had done, and so found more lies than I had. We discussed the situation far into the night, Godfrey still doing most of the talking. He had come to Paris to see me about it, to ask my advice or to put some question to me; but he had not really got the problem clear in his mind. On subsidiary points—or, perhaps, one should rather say, on what seemed such to him—his view was characteristic, and to me amusing. He thought that most of Nina’s anger was due to the fact that she had been “done” by Arsenio, that he had got her money for Lucinda and for himself on false pretenses; whereas Nina was really furious with Lucinda herself for not having consciously accepted her charity, and made comparatively little of friend Arsenio’s roguery. He was much more full of admiration of Lucinda for not minding being discovered carrying a bandbox—and for laughing at her encounter with Lady Dundrannan while she was doing it—than of appreciation of her indignation over the blue frock; he thought she made a great deal too much of that. “Since she didn’t know, what does it come to?” he asked. And he wasted no reprobation on Arsenio. He had known Arsenio for a rogue before—a rogue after his money, and willing to use his wife as a bait to catch it; that he now knew that
- 25. Arsenio was more completely a rogue all round—towards Nina as well as towards him—was merely a bit of confirmatory evidence; he saw nothing in the fact that Arsenio had, after all, given Lucinda the blue frock, though he would have been quite safe—as safe, anyhow —if he had given her nothing. His whole analysis, so far as it appeared in disjointed observations, of the other parties to the affair, ran on lines of obvious shrewdness, and was baffled only where they appeared—as in Lucinda’s case—to diverge from the lines thus indicated. Lucinda was a puzzle. Why had she hidden herself from him? She could “have it out” with Valdez, if she wanted to, without doing that! But he was not immensely perturbed at her temporary disappearance; he could find her, if he wanted to. “It’s only a matter of trouble and money, like anything else.” And if she were furious with Valdez, no harm in that! Rather the reverse! Thus he gradually approached his own position, and the questions which he was putting to himself, and had found so difficult that he had been impelled to come and talk them over. These really might be reduced to one, and a very old one, though also often a very big one; it may be variously conceived and described as that between prudence and passion, that between morality and love, that between will and emotion, between the head and the heart. For purposes of the present case it could be personified as being between Nina and Lucinda. As a gentleman, if as nothing more, he had been obliged to own up to his engagement to lunch with Lucinda and to stand by it. But that act settled nothing ultimately. The welcome of a returning Prodigal would await him at Villa San Carlo, though the feast might perhaps be rather too highly peppered with a lofty forgiveness; he was conscious of that feature in the case, but minded it less than I should have; Nina’s pupil was accustomed to her rebukes, and rather hardened against her chastisement. But if arms were open to him elsewhere—soft and seducing arms—what then? Was he to desert Nina? Her and what she stood for? And really, in this situation, she stood for everything that had, up to now, governed his life. She
- 26. stood (she would not have felt at all inadequate to the demand on her qualities) for prosperity, progress, propriety, and—as a climax— for piety itself. Godfrey had been religiously brought up (the figure of the white-haired Wesleyan Minister at Briarmount rose before my eyes) and was not ashamed to own that the principles thus inculcated had influenced his doings and were still a living force in him. I respected him for the avowal; it is not one that men are very ready to make where a woman is in question; it had been implicit in his reason for knowing nothing of women, given to me a long time ago—that he had not been able to afford to marry. Piety was the highest impersonation which Nina was called upon to undertake. Was it the most powerful, the most compelling? There were so many others, whose images somehow blended into one great and imposing Figure—Regularity, with her cornucopia of worldly advantages, not necessarily lost (Godfrey was quite awake to that) by a secret dallying with her opposite, but thereby rendered insincere—that counted with him—uneasy, and perpetually precarious. He was a long-headed young man; he foresaw every chance against his passion—even the chance that, having first burnt up all he had or hoped for, it would itself become extinct. Then it was not true passion? I don’t know. It was strong enough. Lucinda impersonated too; impersonated things that are very powerful. He spoke of her seldom and evasively. In the debate which he carried on with himself—only occasionally asking for an opinion from me—he generally indicated her under the description of “the other thing”—other (it was to be understood) from all that Nina represented. Taken like that, the description, if colorless, was at least comprehensive. And it did get Lucinda—bluntly, yet not altogether wrongly. He saw her as an ideal—the exact opposite of the ideal to which he had hitherto aspired, the ideal of regularity, wealth, eminence, reputation, power, thirty per cent., and so on (including, let us not forget, piety). So seen, she astonished him in herself, and astonished him more by the lure that she had for him. Only he distrusted the lure profoundly. In the end he could not understand it in himself. I do not blame him; I myself was considerably puzzled at
- 27. finding it in him. To say that a man is in love is a summary, not an explanation. Jonathan Frost—old Lord Dundrannan—had been a romantic in his way; Nina too in hers, when she had sobbed in passion on the cliffs—or even now, when she cherished disturbing emotions about things and people whom she might, without loss of comfort or profit, have serenely disregarded. There was a thread of the romantic meandering through the more challenging patterns of the family fabric. Half a dozen times I was on the point of flying into a rage with him—when he talked easily of “buying Valdez,” when he assumed Lucinda’s assent to that not very pretty transaction, when he hinted at the luxury which would reward that assent, and so on. But the genuineness of his conflict, of his scruples on the one hand, of his passion on the other, made anger seem cruel, while the bluntness of his perception seemed to make it ridiculous. Perhaps on this latter point I exaggerated a little—asking from him an insight into the situation to which I was helped by a more intimate knowledge of the past and of the persons; but at all events he was, as I conceived, radically wrong in his estimate of the possibilities. At last I was impelled to tell him so. It was very late; in disregard of his “Don’t go yet, I haven’t finished,” I had actually put on my coat, and taken my hat and stick in my hand. I stood like that, opposite to where he sat, and expounded my views to him. I imagine that to a cool spectator I should have looked rather absurd, for by now I too was somehow wrought up and excited; he had got me back into my pre-Paris state of mind, the one in which I had been when I intimated to Nina that I must hunt the Riviera for Lucinda and find out the truth about her at all costs. The Conference on Tonnage was routed, driven pell-mell out of my thoughts. “You can’t buy Valdez,” I told him, “not in the sense that you mean. He’ll sell himself, body and soul, for money—to you, or me, or Nina, or all of us, or anybody else. But he won’t sell Lucinda. He sells himself for money, but it’s because of her that he must have the money—to dazzle her, to cut a figure in her eyes, to get her back to
- 28. him. He used her to tempt you with, to make you shell out—just as he did, in another way, with Nina. But he knew he was safe; he knew he’d never have to deliver what he was pretending to sell. She’s not only the one woman to him, she’s the one idea in his head, the one stake he always plays for. He’d sell his soul for her, but he wouldn’t sell her in return for all you have. You sit here, balancing her against this and that—now against God, now against Mammon! He doesn’t set either of them for a moment in the scales against her.” If what I said sharpened his perception, it blunted his scruples. The idea of Valdez’s passion was a spur to his own. “Then it’s man against man,” he said in a sullen, dogged voice. “If I find I can’t buy her, I’ll take her.” “You can try. If she lets you, she’s a changed woman. That’s all I can say. I need hardly add that I shall not offer you my assistance. Why, hang it, man, if she’s to be got, why shouldn’t I have a shot at her myself?” He gave a short gruff laugh. “I don’t quite associate the idea with you, but of course you’d be within your rights, as far as I’m concerned.” I laughed too. “There’s fair warning to you, then! And no bad blood, I hope? Also, perhaps, enough debate on what is, after all, rather a delicate subject—a lady’s honor—as some scrupulous people might remind us. By way of apology to the proprieties, I’ll just add that in my private opinion we should neither of us have the least chance of success. She may not be Valdez’s any more—as to that I express no opinion, though I have one—but I don’t believe she’ll be any one else’s.” “What makes you say that?” he grumbled out surlily. “She herself makes me say it; she herself and what I know about her. And, considering your condition, it seems common kindness to tell you my view, for what it’s worth. Now, my friend, thanks for your dinner, and—good-night!” “Are you staying here—in Paris—much longer?”
- 29. “I shall be for a week—possibly a fortnight—I expect.” “Then good-by as well as good-night; I shall go back to-morrow.” “To Villa San Carlo?” “No, I don’t know where I shall go. It depends.” “To where you can test the value of my view, perhaps?” He had now risen, and I walked across to him, holding out my hand. He took it, with another gruff laugh. “This sort of thing plays hell with a man; but there’s no need for us to quarrel, Julius?” “Not at present, at all events. And it looks as if you had a big enough quarrel on your hands already.” “Nina? Yes.” It was on that name, and not on the other, that at last we parted. And I suppose that he did “go back” the next day; for I saw him no more during the rest of my stay in Paris. But a week later—our “labors” being “protracted” to that extent and longer—I had an encounter that gave me indirect news of him, as well as direct news of other members of the Rillington-cum- Dundrannan family. To my surprise, I met my cousin Waldo in the Rue de la Paix. Nina and he—and Eunice—were on their way home. In the first place, Sir Paget had written that Aunt Bertha was seedy and moping, and wondering when they would be back. In the second, Nina had got restless and tired of Mentone, while he himself was so much better that there was no longer any reason to stay there on his account. “In fact, we got a bit bored with ourselves,” Waldo confessed as he took my arm and we walked along together, “after we lost you two fellows. Dull for the ladies. Oh, I know you couldn’t help yourself, old fellow; this job here was too big to miss. But we lost Godfrey too.” His voice fell to a confidential pitch, and he smiled slyly as he pressed my arm. “Well, you know, dear Nina is given to making her plans, bless her! And she’s none too pleased when they don’t come off, is she? I rather fancy that she had a little plan on at the Villa—Eunice Unthank, you know—and a nice girl she is—and that Godfrey didn’t feel like coming up to the scratch. So he tactfully
- 30. had business at the works that kept him away from the Villa. Do you see what I mean?” “Well, I suppose he was better away if he didn’t mean to play up. If he’d stayed, it might have put ideas in the girl’s head that——” “Exactly, old chap. Though we were awfully sorry he went, still that was the view Nina took about it. I think she was right.” Facts had supplied a sufficient explanation of my disappearance from Villa San Carlo; here plainly was the official version of Godfrey’s. In order to cover a great defeat, Lady Dundrannan, with her usual admirable tactics, acknowledged a minor one. It was a quite sufficient explanation to offer to unsuspecting Waldo; and it was certainly true, so far as it went; the Eunice-Godfrey project had miscarried. “I liked the girl and I’m sorry,” said Waldo. “But there’s lots of time, and of course, the world being what it is, he can always make a good marriage.” He laughed gently. “But I suppose women always like to manage a man’s future for him, if they can, don’t they?” His ignorance of the great defeat was evidently entire; his wife had looked after that. But it was interesting to observe that—as a concomitant, perhaps, of his returning physical vigor—his mind gave hints of a new independence. He had not ceased to love and admire his wife—there was no reason why he ever should—but his smile at her foible was something new—since his marriage, I mean. The limit thus indicated to his Dundrannanization was welcome to me, a Rillington. What the smile pointed to was, the next moment, confirmed by the sigh with which he added, pursuing what was to him apparently the same train of thought, “Nina’s against our living at Cragsfoot when I succeed.” “Well, if you will marry thumping heiresses, with half a dozen palaces of their own——” “Yes, I know, old man. Still—well, I can’t expect her to share my feeling about it, can I?” He smiled again, this time rather ruefully. “In fact, she’s pressing me to settle the matter now.”
- 31. “What do you mean? Sir Paget’s still alive! Is she asking for a promise, or what?” “She wants me to sell my remainder—subject to my father’s life- interest. Nina likes things definitely settled, you see. She doesn’t like Cragsfoot.” To my considerable surprise, he accompanied these last words with a very definite wink. A smile, a sigh, a wink—yes, Waldo was recovering some independence of thought, if not of action. But in this affair it was his action that mattered, not his thoughts. Still, the fact remained that his wink was an unmistakable reference to the past—to Lucinda. “Sir Paget wouldn’t like it, would he?” I suggested. “No, I’m afraid not—not the idea of it, at first. But a man is told to cleave to his wife. After all, if I have a son to inherit it, he wouldn’t be Rillington of Cragsfoot, he’d be Dundrannan.” “Of course he would. I’d forgotten. But does it make much difference?” “And amongst all the rest of it, Cragsfoot wouldn’t be much more than an appendage. I love Nina, Julius, but I wish sometimes that she wasn’t quite so damned rich! Don’t think for an instant that she ever rams it down my throat. She never would.” “My dear chap, I know her. I’m sure she’d be incapable of——” “But there the fact is. And it creates—well, a certain situation. I say, I’m not keeping you? My ladies are shopping, and I’ve an hour off, but if you——” “I’ve time to hear anything you want to say. And you’re not tired?” “Strong as a horse now. I enjoy walking. Look here, old chap. Of course, there are lots of these ‘new rich,’ as the papers call them, who’d pay a long price for Cragsfoot, but——” “Thinking of anybody in particular?” I put in. “Never mind!” He laughed—almost one of his old hearty laughs. “Well, yes. Have you ever had any reason——? I mean, it’s funny you should ask that.” “Something a certain friend of ours once let fall set me thinking.”
- 32. “Well, if that idea took shape, if Nina wanted it——” Perhaps in the end she wouldn’t! I was thinking that possibly the course of events might cause Lady Dundrannan not to wish to see her cousin—and his establishment—at Cragsfoot. “If she did—and he did,” Waldo went on, “well, I should be in a tight corner. Because, of course, he could outbid practically everybody, if he chose—and what reason for objecting could I give?” “You seem to have something in your mind. You’re looking—for you—quite crafty! Out with it!” “Well, supposing I’d promised that, if I sold, I’d give you first offer?” Waldo had delivered himself of his idea—and it seemed nothing less than a proposal to put a spoke in the wheel of his wife’s plans as he conceived them! Decidedly rebellion was abroad—open and covert! It worked mightily in Godfrey; it was working even in Waldo. “I don’t like your selling,” I said. “You’re the chief—I’m a cadet. But if you’re forced—I beg your pardon, Waldo! If you decide”—he pressed my arm again, smiling at my correction, but saying nothing —“to go, there’s nothing I should like so much as to settle down there myself. But I can’t outbid——” “A man doesn’t ask his own kinsman more than a fair price, when the deal’s part of a family arrangement,” said Waldo. “May I speak to my father, and write you a proposal about it? And we’ll let the matter stand where it does till we know what he thinks and till you’ve had an opportunity of considering.” “All right,” said I, and we walked on a little way in silence. Then I felt again the slight pressure on my arm. “Well, here’s where we’re staying. I promised to meet them at tea. Will you come in?” I shook my head, murmuring something about business. He did not press the point. “We’re off again early to-morrow, and dining with some friends of Eunice’s to-night. See you again soon at Cragsfoot—we’re going to Briarmount. Good-by!” But that was not quite his last word. He gave my arm a final squeeze; and he smiled again and again a little ruefully. “I rather
- 33. think that, in his heart, the old pater would prefer what I’ve suggested even to our—to any other arrangement, Julius.” It was quite as much as it was diplomatic to say about his father’s feelings on that point. Like the one which had been discussed by Godfrey and myself, it might be considered delicate.
- 34. T CHAPTER XVIII THE WINNING TICKET HEN came the astonishing turn of fortune’s wheel—that is almost fact, scarcely metaphor—which seemed to transform the whole situation. It came to my knowledge on the very day on which those protracted labors of ours reached a conclusion at last. We had had a long and tedious final session—for this time there was not only business to wind up, but compliments to be exchanged too—and I came out of it at half-past six in the evening so exhausted that I turned into the nearest café at which I was known, and procured a whisky-and-soda. With it the waiter brought me a copy of Le Soir, and, as I sipped my “refresher” and smoked a cigar, I glanced through it, hoping (to be candid) to find some complimentary notice of the achievements of my Conference. I did not find that—perhaps it was too soon to expect it—but I did find something which interested me a great deal more. Among the miscellaneous items of “intelligence” I read the following: “The first prize in yesterday’s draw of the Reparation Lottery Loan has been won by M. Arsenio Valdez of Nice. The amount of the prize is three million francs. The number of the winning ticket was two hundred and twelve thousand, one hundred and twenty-one. We understand that the fortunate winner purchased it for a trifling sum from a chance acquaintance at Monte Carlo.”
- 35. I re-read the winning number; indeed, I took my pencil out of my pocket and wrote it down—in figures—on the margin of the newspaper. I believe that I said softly, “Well, I’m damned!” The astonishing creature had brought it off at last, and brought it off to some tune. Three million francs! Pretty good—for anybody except the Frosts of this world, of course! Aye, Arsenio would buy that ticket from a chance acquaintance (probably one of the same kidney as himself) if he had the coin, or could beg, borrow, or steal it! Number 212, 121! There it was three times over—21—21—21. He would have seemed to himself absolutely mad if he had let that ticket escape him, when chance threw it in his way. It was, indeed, as though Fortune said, “I have teased you long enough, O faithful votary, but I give myself to you at last!” And she had—she actually had. Arsenio’s long quest was accomplished. What would he do with it, I pondered, as I puffed and sipped. I saw him resplendent again as he had been on that never forgotten Twenty-first, and smiling in monkeyish triumph over all of us who had mocked him for a fool. I even saw him paying back Nina and Godfrey Frost, though possibly this was a detail which might be omitted, as being a distasteful reminder of his days of poverty. I saw him dazzling Lucinda with something picturesquely extravagant, a pearl necklace or a carpet of banknotes—what you will in that line. I heard him saying to her, “Number twenty-one! Always twenty-one. Your number, Lucinda!” And I saw her flushing like a girl just out of the schoolroom, as Godfrey had seen her flush at Nice. Ah, Godfrey Frost! This event was—to put the thing vulgarly—one in the eye for him, wasn’t it? He had lost his pull; his lever failed him. He could no longer pose, either to himself or to anybody else, as the chivalrous reliever of distress, the indignant friend to starving beauty. And Nina’s gracious, though sadly unappreciated, bounty to a fallen rival—that went by the board too. These things were to the good; but at the back of my mind there lurked a discontent, even a revolt. Godfrey had proposed to buy Valdez; to buy Lucinda from Valdez, he had meant. Now Arsenio
- 36. himself would buy her with his winning ticket, coating the transaction with such veneer of romance as might still lie in magic Twenty-one, thrice repeated. One could trust him to make the most of that, skillfully to eke it out to cover the surface as completely as possible. Would it be enough? His hope lay in what that flush represented, the memories it meant, that feeling in her which she herself, long ago, had declared to be hers because she was a primitive woman. I did not, I fear, pay much attention to the speeches—though I made one of them—at the farewell dinner of our Conference that night; and next day, my first free day, was still filled with the thought of Arsenio and his three million francs; my mind, vacant now of pressing preoccupations, fell a prey to recollections, fancies, images. A restlessness took possession of me; I could not stay in Paris. I was entitled to a holiday; where should I pass it? I did not want to go to Cragsfoot; I had had enough of the Riviera. (There was possibly a common element, ungallant towards a certain lady and therefore not explicitly confessed to myself, in my reluctance to turn my steps in either of those directions.) Where should I go? Something within me answered—Venice! Why not? Always a pleasant place for a holiday in times of peace; and one read that “peace conditions” were returning; the pictures, and so on, were returning too, or being dug up, or taken out of their sandbags. And the place was reported to be quite gay. Decidedly my holiday should be passed at Venice. Quite so! And a sporting gamble on my knowledge of Arsenio, of his picturesque instinct, his eye for a situation! As a minor attraction, there were the needy aristocrats, his father’s old set, whom he had been wont to “touch” in days of adversity; it would be fine to flaunt his money in their eyes; they would not sniff, Frost-like, at three million francs. Here I felt even confident that he would speak gracefully of repayment, though with care not to wound Castilian pride by pressing the suggestion unduly. But the great thing would be the association, the memory, the two floors at the top of the palazzo. Surely she would go there with him if she would go anywhere? Surely there, if anywhere, she would come back to him?
- 37. That, beyond all others, was the place to offer the pearl necklace, to spread the carpet of bank notes. If the two were to be found anywhere in the world together, it would be at Venice, at the palazzo. So to Venice I went—on an errand never defined to myself, urged by an impulse, a curiosity, a longing, to which many things in the past united to give force, which the present position sharpened. “I must know; I must see for myself.” That feeling, which had made me unable to rest at Villa San Carlo, now drove me to Venice. Putting money in my pocket and giving my Paris bankers the name of my hotel, I set out, on a road the end of which I could not see, but which I was determined to tread, if I could, and to explore. In spite of my “facilities”—I had them again, and certainly this time Lady Dundrannan, if she knew my errand, would not have offered to secure them—my journey was slow, and interrupted at one point by a railway strike. When I arrived at my hotel on the Grand Canal—Arsenio’s palazzo was just round the corner by water, to be reached by land through a short but tortuous network of alleys with a little high stone bridge to finish up the approach to its back door—a telegram had been waiting forty-eight hours for me, forwarded from Cragsfoot by way of Paris. In it Waldo told me of Aunt Bertha’s death; influenza had swooped down on the weakened old body, and after three days’ illness made an end. It was hopeless to think of getting back in time for the funeral; I could have done it from Paris; I could not from Venice. I despatched the proper reply, and went out to the Piazza. My mind was for the moment switched off from what I had come about; but I thought more about Sir Paget than about poor old Aunt Bertha herself. He would be very lonely. Would Briarmount allay his loneliness? It was about eleven o’clock on a bright sunny morning. They were clearing away the protective structures that had been erected round the buildings—St. Mark’s, the Ducal Palace, the new Campanile. I sat in a chair outside Florian’s and watched. There on that fine morning the war seemed somehow just a bad dream—or, rather, a play that had been played and was finished; a tragedy on
- 38. which the curtain had fallen. See, they were clearing away the properties, and turning to real ordinary life again. So, for a space, it seemed to a man seduced by beauty into forgetfulness. They came and went, men, women and children, all on their business and their recreations; there were soldiers too in abundance, some draggled, dirty, almost in rags, some tidy, trim and new, but all with a subtle air of something finished, a job done, comparative liberty at least secured; even the prisoners—several gangs of them were marched by—had that same air of release about them. Hawkers plied their wares—women mostly, a few old men and young boys; baskets were thrust under my nose; I motioned them away impatiently. I had traveled all night, and uncomfortably, with little sleep. Here was peace; I wanted peace; I was drowsy. Thus, half as though in a dream, half as if it were an answer to what my mood demanded,—beauty back into the world, that was it —she came across the Piazza towards the place where I sat. Others sat there too—a row of them on my left hand; I had taken a chair rather apart, at the end of the row. She wore the little black frock— the one she had worn at Ste. Maxime, the one Godfrey had seen her in at Cimiez, or the fellow of it. On her left arm hung an open basket; it was full of fine needlework. I saw her take out the pieces, unfold them, wave them in the air. She found customers; distant echoes of chaff and chaffering reached my ears. From chair to chair she passed, coming nearer to me always. I had upon me at this moment no surprise at seeing her, no wonder why she, wife of the now opulent Don Arsenio Valdez, was hawking fine needlework on the Piazza. The speculation as to the state of affairs, with which my mind had been so insatiably busy, did not now occupy it. I was just boyishly wrapped up in the anticipation of the joke that was going to happen—that must happen unless— horrible thought!—she sold out all her stock before she got to me. But no! She smiled and joked, but she stood out for her price. The basket would hold out—surely it would!—As she came near, I turned my head away—absorbed in the contemplation of St. Mark’s—just of St. Mark’s!
- 39. I felt her by me before she spoke. Then I heard, “Julius!” and a little gurgle of laughter. I turned my head with an answering laugh; her eyes were looking down at my face with their old misty wonder. “You here! I can’t sit down by you here. I’ll walk across the Piazzetta, along to the quay. Follow me in a minute. Don’t lose sight of me!” “I don’t propose to do that,” I whispered back, as she swung away from me. I paid my account, and followed her some fifty yards behind. I did not overtake her till we were at the Danieli Hotel. “Where shall we go to talk?” I asked. “Once or twice I’ve done good business on the Lido. There’s a boat just going to start. Shall we go on board, Julius?” I agreed eagerly and followed her on to the little boat. She set me down in the bows, went off with her basket, and presently came back without it. “I’ve left it with the captain,” she explained; “he knows me already, and will take care of it for me. No more work to- day, since you’ve come! And you must give me lunch, as you used to at Ste. Maxime. Somewhere very humble, because I’m in my working clothes.” She indicated the black frock, and the black shawl which she wore over her fair hair, after the fashion of the Venetian girls; I was myself in an uncommonly shabby suit of pre-war tweeds; we matched well enough so far as gentility was concerned. I studied her face. It had grown older, rather sharper in outline, though not lined or worn. And it still preserved its serenity; she still seemed to look out on this troublesome world, with all its experiences and vicissitudes, from somewhere else, from an inner sanctum in which she dwelt and from which no one could wholly draw her forth. “How long have you been here?” I asked her, as the little steamboat sped on its short passage across to the Lido. “Oh, about a fortnight or three weeks. I like it, and I got work at once. I’d rather sew than sell, but they sew so well here! And they tell me I sell so well. So selling it mainly is!” “Then you came before the—the result of the lottery?”
- 40. “Oh, you’ve heard about the lottery, have you? From Arsenio, or ——?” “No. I just saw it in the papers.” The mention of the lottery seemed to afford her fresh amusement, but she said nothing more about it at the moment. “You see, I wanted to come away from the Riviera—never mind why!” “I believe I know why!” “How can you? If you’ve not heard from Arsenio!” “I’ve been in Paris—and there I saw Godfrey Frost.” “Oh!” The exclamation was long drawn out; it seemed to recognize that my having seen Godfrey Frost might explain a good deal of knowledge on my part. But she went on with her explanation. “Since the air raids have stopped, Arsenio has managed to let one floor of the palazzo—the piano nóbile; and I suggested to him that I might come and live on the top floor. I’d saved enough money for the journey, and I pay Arsenio rent. I’m entirely independent.” “As you were at Ste. Maxime—and at Nice—or Cimiez?” “I believe you do know all about it!” “Shall I mention a certain blue frock?” She flushed—for her, quite brightly—and slowly nodded her head. Then she sat silent till we reached the Lido, and had disembarked. Now she seemed unwilling to talk more of her affairs; she preferred to question me on mine. I told her of Aunt Bertha’s death. “Ah, she liked me once. Poor Sir Paget!” was her only comment. “I think he likes you still,” I suggested. She shook her head doubtfully, and insisted on hearing about what I had been doing in Paris. It was not till after we had lunched and were sitting drinking our coffee—just as in old days at Ste. Maxime—that I brought her back to her own affairs—to the present position. “And you’re alone here—on the top floor of the palazzo?” I asked.
- 41. “Yes,” she answered, smiling. “Alone—alone on the top floor. I came here alone; we had had a quarrel over—over what we’ll call the blue frock. Arsenio promised not to follow me here unless I gave him leave—which I told him I never should do. ‘Oh, yes, you will some day,’ he said; but he gave me the promise. Oh, well, a promise from him! What is it? Of course he’s broken it. He arrived here the day before yesterday. He’s now at the palazzo—on the floor below mine. It’s just like Arsenio, isn’t it?” She spoke of him with a sharper bitterness than she had ever shown at Ste. Maxime, though the old amusement at him was not entirely obscured by it. Her tone made me—in spite of everything— feel rather sorry for him. The dream of his life—was it to come only half true? Was the half that had come true to have no power to bring the other half with it? However little one might wish him success, or he deserve it, one pang of pity for him was inevitable. “Well, perhaps he had some excuse,” I suggested. “He was naturally—well, elated. That wonderful piece of luck, you know!” “Oh, that!” she murmured contemptuously—really as if winning three million francs, on a million to one chance or something like it, was nothing at all to make a fuss about! And that to a man who had spent years of his life, and certainly sacrificed any decency and self- respect that he possessed, in an apparently insane effort to do it. Her profile was turned to me now; she was looking over the sands towards the Adriatic. I watched her face as I went. “And he won on his favorite number! On twenty-one, three times repeated! That must have seemed to him——” There was no sign of emotion on her face. “Well, he called it your number, didn’t he?” She knew what I meant, and she turned to me. But now she did not flush like a girl just out of the schoolroom. There was no change of color, no softening of her face such as the flush must have brought with it. “You’re speaking of a dead thing,” she told me in a low calm voice. “Of a thing that is at last quite dead.” “It died hard, Lucinda.”
- 42. “Yes, it lived through a great deal; it lived long enough— obstinately enough—to do sore wrong to—to other people,—better people than either Arsenio or me; long enough to make me do bad things—and suffer them. But now it’s dead. He’s killed it at last.” At the moment I found nothing to say. Of course I was glad—no use in denying that. Yet it was grievous in its way. The thing was dead—the thing that so long, through so much, had bound her to Arsenio Valdez. The thing which had begun with the kiss in the garden at Cragsfoot, years ago, was finished. “He put me to utter shame; he made me eat dirt,” she whispered with a sudden note of passion in her voice. She laid her arm on mine, and rose from her chair. “It spoils my meeting with you to think of it. Come back; I can do some work before it’s dark, and you can go and see him—he’ll be at the palazzo. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be friends with him still.” “I don’t quite know about that,” I observed cautiously. “I’m willing enough to be friendly with him, for that matter. But that’s—that’s not enough. Come along, we shall just about catch a boat, I think.” We began to walk along to the quay where we were to embark. “So he says he’s going to kill himself!” Lucinda added with a scornful laugh.
- 43. S CHAPTER XIX VIEWS AND WHIMS UCH, then, was Lucinda’s state of mind with regard to the matter. Her encounter with Nina at Cimiez had opened her eyes; after that, no evasions or lies from Arsenio could avail to blind her. The keys of the fort had been sold behind her back. The one thing that she had preserved and cherished out of the wreck of her fortunes, out of the sordid tragedy of her relations with her husband, had been filched from her; her proud and fastidious independence had been bartered; Arsenio had sold it; Nina Dundrannan had bought it. It was in effect that wearing of Nina’s cast-off frocks which, long ago at Ste. Maxime, she had pictured, with a smile, as an inconceivable emblem of humiliation. Arsenio had brought her to it, tricked her into it by his “presents” out of his “winnings.” A point of sentiment? Precisely—and entirely; of a sentiment rooted deep in the nature of the two women, and deep in the history of their lives, in the rivalry and clash that there had been between them and between their destinies. The affair of the blue frock (to sum up the offense under that nickname—there had probably been other “presents”) might be regarded as merely the climax of the indignities which Arsenio had brought upon her—the proverbial last straw. To her it was different in kind from all the rest. In her midinette’s frock, in her Venetian shawl, she could make or sell her needlework contentedly; if on that score Nina felt exultation and dealt out scorn, Nina was wrong; nay, Nina was vulgar, and therefore a proper object
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