Checkmate
by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu · English · Gutenberg #38460 · 909,065 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Checkmate
Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Release date: January 1, 2012 [eBook #38460]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
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as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation.
Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They
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CHECKMATE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
GUY DEVERELL
ALL IN THE DARK
THE WYVERN MYSTERY
THE COCK AND ANCHOR
WYLDER'S HAND
THE WATCHER
CHECKMATE
ROSE AND THE KEY
TENANTS OF MALLORY
WILLING TO DIE
GOLDEN FRIARS
THE EVIL GUEST
Checkmate
BY
J. S. LE FANU
Downey & Co.
12 York St.
Covent Garden.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MORTLAKE HALL, 1
II. MARTHA TANSEY, 7
III. MR. LONGCLUSE OPENS HIS HEART, 13
IV. MONSIEUR LEBAS, 17
V. A CATASTROPHE, 22
VI. TO BED, 26
VII. FAST FRIENDS, 31
VIII. CONCERNING A BOOT, 38
IX. THE MAN WITHOUT A NAME, 43
X. THE ROYAL OAK, 48
XI. THE TELEGRAM ARRIVES, 55
XII. SIR REGINALD ARDEN, 62
XIII. ON THE ROAD, 68
XIV. MR. LONGCLUSE'S BOOT FINDS A TEMPORARY ASYLUM, 72
XV. FATHER AND SON, 79
XVI. A MIDNIGHT MEETING, 84
XVII. MR. LONGCLUSE AT MORTLAKE HALL, 91
XVIII. THE PARTY IN THE DINING-ROOM, 96
XIX. IN MRS. TANSEY'S ROOM, 103
XX. MRS. TANSEY'S STORY, 108
XXI. A WALK BY MOONLIGHT, 115
XXII. MR. LONGCLUSE MAKES AN ODD CONFIDENCE, 120
XXIII. THE MEETING, 125
XXIV. MR. LONGCLUSE FOLLOWS A SHADOW, 129
XXV. A TETE-A-TETE, 133
XXVI. THE GARDEN AT MORTLAKE, 137
XXVII. WINGED WORDS, 141
XXVIII. STORIES ABOUT MR. LONGCLUSE, 147
XXIX. THE GARDEN PARTY, 153
XXX. HE SEES HER, 158
XXXI. ABOUT THE GROUNDS, 161
XXXII. UNDER THE LIME-TREES, 167
XXXIII. THE DERBY, 171
XXXIV. A SHARP COLLOQUY, 174
XXXV. DINNER AT MORTLAKE, 179
XXXVI. MR. LONGCLUSE SEES A LADY'S NOTE, 183
XXXVII. WHAT ALICE COULD SAY, 188
XXXVIII. GENTLEMEN IN TROUBLE, 192
XXXIX. BETWEEN FRIENDS, 196
XL. AN INTERVIEW IN THE STUDY, 199
XLI. VAN APPOINTS HIMSELF TO A DIPLOMATIC POST, 203
XLII. DIPLOMACY, 206
XLIII. A LETTER AND A SUMMONS, 209
XLIV. THE REASON OF ALICE'S NOTE, 213
XLV. COLLISION, 219
XLVI. AN UNKNOWN FRIEND, 224
XLVII. BY THE RIVER, 229
XLVIII. SUDDEN NEWS, 232
XLIX. VOWS FOR THE FUTURE, 236
L. UNCLE DAVID'S SUSPICIONS, 239
LI. THE SILHOUETTE, 244
LII. MR. LONGCLUSE EMPLOYED, 248
LIII. THE NIGHT OF THE FUNERAL, 252
LIV. AMONG THE TREES, 258
LV. MR. LONGCLUSE SEES A FRIEND, 262
LVI. A HOPE EXPIRES, 266
LVII. LEVI'S APOLOGUE, 272
LVIII. THE BARON COMES TO TOWN, 276
LIX. TWO OLD FRIENDS MEET AND PART, 281
LX. "SAUL," 286
LXI. A WAKING DREAM, 290
LXII. LOVE AND PLAY, 295
LXIII. PLANS, 300
LXIV. FROM FLOWER TO FLOWER, 304
LXV. BEHIND THE ARRAS, 311
LXVI. A BUBBLE BROKEN, 313
LXVII. BOND AND DEED, 317
LXVIII. SIR RICHARD'S RESOLUTION, 322
LXIX. THE MEETING, 326
LXX. MR. LONGCLUSE PROPOSES, 329
LXXI. NIGHT, 332
LXXII. MEASURES, 336
LXXIII. AT THE BAR OF THE "GUY OF WARWICK," 341
LXXIV. A LETTER, 346
LXXV. BLIGHT AND CHANGE, 351
LXXVI. PHOEBE CHIFFINCH, 356
LXXVII. MORE NEWS OF PAUL DAVIES, 360
LXXVIII. THE CATACOMBS, 364
LXXIX. RESURRECTIONS, 371
LXXX. ANOTHER, 376
LXXXI. BROKEN, 379
LXXXII. DOPPELGANGER, 384
LXXXIII. A SHORT PARTING, 388
LXXXIV. AT MORTLAKE, 393
LXXXV. THE CRISIS, 399
LXXXVI. PURSUIT, 406
LXXXVII. CONCLUSION, 412
CHECKMATE.
CHAPTER I.
MORTLAKE HALL.
There stands about a mile and a half beyond Islington, unless it has
come down within the last two years, a singular and grand old house. It
belonged to the family of Arden, once distinguished in the Northumbrian
counties. About fifty acres of ground, rich with noble clumps and masses
of old timber, surround it; old-world fish-ponds, with swans sailing
upon them, tall yew hedges, quincunxes, leaden fauns and goddesses, and
other obsolete splendours surround it. It rises, tall, florid, built of
Caen stone, with a palatial flight of steps, and something of the grace
and dignity of the genius of Inigo Jones, to whom it is ascribed, with
the shadows of ancestral trees and the stains of two centuries upon it,
and a vague character of gloom and melancholy, not improved by some
indications not actually of decay, but of something too like neglect.
It is now evening, and a dusky glow envelopes the scene. The setting sun
throws its level beams, through tall drawing-room windows, ruddily upon
the Dutch tapestry on the opposite walls, and not unbecomingly lights up
the little party assembled there.
Good-natured, fat Lady May Penrose, in her bonnet, sips her tea and
chats agreeably. Her carriage waits outside. You will ask who is that
extremely beautiful girl who sits opposite, her large soft grey eyes
gazing towards the western sky with a look of abstraction, too forgetful
for a time of her company, leaning upon the slender hand she has placed
under her cheek. How silken and golden-tinted the dark brown hair that
grows so near her brows, making her forehead low, and marking with its
broad line the beautiful oval of her face! Is there carmine anywhere to
match her brilliant lips? And when, recollecting something to tell Lady
May, she turns on a sudden, smiling, how soft and pretty the dimples,
and how even the little row of pearls she discloses!
This is Alice Arden, whose singularly handsome brother Richard, with
some of her tints and outlines translated into masculine beauty, stands
leaning on the back of a prie-dieu chair, and chatting gaily.
But who is the thin, tall man--the only sinister figure in the
group--with one hand in his breast, the other on a cabinet, as he leans
against the wall? Who is that pale, thin-lipped man, "with cadaverous
aspect and broken beak," whose eyes never seem to light up, but maintain
their dismal darkness while his pale lips smile? Those eyes are fixed on
the pretty face of Alice Arden, as she talks to Lady May, with a
strangely intense gaze. His eyebrows rise a little, like those of
Mephistopheles, towards his temples, with an expression that is
inflexibly sarcastic, and sometimes menacing. His jaw is slightly
underhung, a formation which heightens the satirical effect of his
smile, and, by contrast, marks the depression of his nose.
There was at this time in London a Mr. Longcluse, an agreeable man, a
convenient man, who had got a sort of footing in many houses, nobody
exactly knew how. He had a knack of obliging people when they really
wanted a trifling kindness, and another of holding fast his advantage,
and, without seeming to push, or ever appearing to flatter, of
maintaining the acquaintance he had once founded. He looked about
eight-and-thirty: he was really older. He was gentlemanlike, clever, and
rich; but not a soul of all the men who knew him had ever heard of him
at school or college. About his birth, parentage, and education, about
his "life and adventures," he was dark.
How were his smart acquaintance made? Oddly, as we shall learn when we
know him a little better. It was a great pity that there were some odd
things said about this very agreeable, obliging, and gentlemanlike
person. It was a pity that more was not known about him. The man had
enemies, no doubt, and from the sort of reserve that enveloped him their
opportunity arose. But were there not about town hundreds of men, well
enough accepted, about whose early days no one cared a pin, and
everything was just as dark?
Now Mr. Longcluse, with his pallid face, his flat nose, his sarcastic
eyebrows, and thin-lipped smile, was overlooking this little company,
his shoulder leaning against the frame that separated two pieces of the
pretty Dutch tapestry which covered the walls.
"By-the-bye, Mr. Longcluse--you can tell me, for you always know
everything," said Lady May--"is there still any hope of that poor
child's recovering--I mean the one in that dreadful murder in Thames
Street, where the six poor little children were stabbed?"
Mr. Longcluse smiled.
"I'm so glad, Lady May, I can answer you upon good authority! I stopped
to-day to ask Sir Edwin Dudley that very question through his carriage
window, and he said that he had just been to the hospital to see the
poor little thing, and that it was likely to do well."
"I'm so glad! And what do they say can have been the motive of the
murder?"
"Jealousy, they say; or else the man is mad."
"I should not wonder. I'm sure I hope he is. But they should take care
to put him under lock and key."
"So they will, rely on it; that's a matter of course."
"I don't know how it is," continued Lady May, who was garrulous, "that
murders interest people so much, who ought to be simply shocked at
them."
"We have a murder in our family, you know," said Richard Arden.
"That was poor Henry Arden--I know," she answered, lowering her voice
and dropping her eyes, with a side glance at Alice, for she did not know
how she might like to hear it talked of.
"Oh, that happened when Alice was only five months old, I think," said
Richard; and slipping into the chair beside Lady May, he laid his hand
upon hers with a smile, and whispered, leaning towards her--
"You are always so thoughtful; it is _so_ nice of you!"
And this short speech ended, his eyes remained fixed for some seconds,
with a glow of tender admiration, on those of fat Lady May, who simpered
with effusion, and did not draw her hand away until she thought she saw
Mr. Longcluse glance their way.
It was quite true, all he said of Lady May. It would not be easy to find
a simpler or more good-natured person. She was very rich also, and, it
was said by people who love news and satire, had long been willing to
share her gold and other chattels with handsome Richard Arden, who being
but five-and-twenty, might very nearly have been her son.
"I remember that horrible affair," said Mr. Longcluse, with a little
shrug and a shake of his head. "Where was I then--Paris or Vienna? Paris
it was. I recollect it all now, for my purse was stolen by the very man
who made his escape--Mace was his name; he was a sort of low man on the
turf, I believe. I was very young then--somewhere about seventeen, I
think."
"You can't have been more, of course," said good-natured Lady May.
"I should like very much some time to hear all about it," continued Mr.
Longcluse.
"So you shall," said Richard, "whenever you like."
"Every old family has a murder, and a ghost, and a beauty also, though
she does not always live and breathe, except in the canvas of Lely, or
Kneller, or Reynolds: and they, you know, had roses and lilies to give
away at discretion, in their paint-boxes, and were courtiers," remarked
Mr. Longcluse, "who dealt sometimes in the old-fashioned business of
making compliments. _I_ say happy the man who lives in those summers
when the loveliness of some beautiful family culminates, and who may, at
ever such a distance, gaze and worship."
This ugly man spoke in a low tone, and his voice was rather sweet. He
looked as he spoke at Miss Arden, from whom, indeed, his eyes did not
often wander.
"Very prettily said!" applauded Lady May affably.
"I forgot to ask you, Lady May," inquired Alice, cruelly, at this
moment, "how the pretty little Italian greyhound is that was so
ill--better, I hope."
"Ever so much--quite well almost. I'd have taken him out for a drive
to-day, poor dear little Pepsie! but that I thought the sun just a
little overpowering. Didn't you?"
"Perhaps a little."
Mr. Longcluse lowered his eyes as he leaned against the wall and sighed,
with a pained smile, that even upon his plain, pallid face, was
pathetic.
Did proud Richard Arden perceive the devotion of the dubious
Longcluse--undefined in position, in history, in origin, in character,
in all things but in wealth? Of course he did, perfectly. But that
wealth was said to be enormous. There were Jews, who ought to know, who
said he was worth one million eight hundred thousand pounds, and that
his annual income was considerably more than a hundred thousand pounds a
year.
Was a man like that to be dismissed without inquiry? Had he not found
him good-natured and gentlemanlike? What about those stories circulated
among Jews and croupiers? Enemies might affect to believe them, and
quote the old saw, "There is never smoke without fire;" but dare one of
them utter a word of the kind aloud? Did they stand the test of five
minutes' inquiry, such even as he had given them? Had he found a
particle of proof, of evidence, of suspicion? Not a spark. What man had
ever escaped stories who was worth forging a lie about?
Here was a man worth more than a million. Why, if _he_ let him slip
through his fingers, some duchess would pounce on him for her daughter.
It was well that Longcluse was really in love--well, perhaps, that he
did not appreciate the social omnipotence of money.
"Where is Sir Reginald at present?" asked Lady May.
"Not here, you may be sure," answered Richard. "My father does not admit
my visits, you know."
"Really! And is that miserable quarrel kept up still?"
"Only too true. He is in France at present; at Vichy--ain't it Vichy?"
he said to Alice.
But she, not choosing to talk, said simply, "Yes--Vichy."
"I'm going to take Alice into town again; she has promised to stay with
me a little longer. And I think you neglect her a little, don't you? You
ought to come and see her a little oftener," pleaded Lady May, in an
undertone.
"I only feared I was boring you all. Nothing, _you_ know, would give me
half so much pleasure," he answered.
"Well, then, she'll expect your visits, mind."
A little silence followed. Richard was vexed with his sister; she was,
he thought, snubbing his friend Longcluse.
Well, when once he had spoken his mind and disclosed his treasures,
Richard flattered himself he had some influence; and did not Lady May
swear by Mr. Longcluse? And was his father, the most despotic and
violent of baronets, and very much dipt, likely to listen to sentimental
twaddle pleading against a hundred thousand a year? So, Miss Alice, if
you were disposed to talk nonsense, it was not very likely to be
listened to, and sharp and short logic might ensue.
How utterly unconscious of all this she sits there, thinking, I daresay,
of quite another person!
Mr. Longcluse was also for a moment in profound reverie; so was Richard
Arden. The secrecy of thought is a pleasant privilege to the
thinker--perhaps hardly less a boon to the person pondered upon.
If each man's forehead could project its shadows and the light of his
spirit shine through, and the confluence of figures and phantoms that
cross and march behind it become visible, how that magic-lantern might
appal good easy people!
And now the ladies fell to talking and comparing notes about their
guipure lacework.
"How charming yours looks, my dear, round that little table!" exclaimed
Lady May in a rapture. "I'm sure I hope mine may turn out half as
pretty. I wanted to compare; I'm not quite sure whether it is exactly
the same pattern."
And so on, until it was time for them to order their wings for town.
The gentlemen have business of their own to transact, or pleasures to
pursue. Mr. Longcluse has his trap there, to carry them into town when
their hour comes. They can only put the ladies into their places, and
bid them good-bye, and exchange parting reminders and good-natured
speeches.
Pale Mr. Longcluse, as he stands on the steps, looks with his dark eyes
after the disappearing carriage, and sighs deeply. He has forgotten all
for the moment but one dream. Richard Arden wakens him, by laying his
hand on his shoulder.
"Come, Longcluse, let us have a cigar in the billiard-room, and a talk.
I have a box of Manillas that I think you will say are delicious--that
is, if you like them full-flavoured."
CHAPTER II.
MARTHA TANSEY.
"By-the-bye, Longcluse," said Richard, as they entered together the long
tiled passage that leads to the billiard-room, "you like pictures. There
is one here, banished to the housekeeper's room, that they say is a
Vandyck; we must have it cleaned and backed, and restored to its old
place--but would you care to look at it?"
"Certainly, I should like extremely," said Mr. Longcluse.
They were now at the door of the housekeeper's room, and Richard Arden
knocked.
"Come in," said the quavering voice of the old woman from within.
Richard Arden opened the door wide. The misty rose-coloured light of the
setting sun filled the room. From the wall right opposite, the pale
portrait of Sir Thomas Arden, who fought for the king during the great
Civil War, looked forth from his deep dingy frame full upon them, stern
and melancholy; the misty beams touching the softer lights of his long
hair and the gleam of his armour so happily, that the figure came out
from its dark background, and seemed ready to step forth to meet them.
As it happened, there was no one in the room but old Mrs. Tansey, the
housekeeper, who received Richard Arden standing.
From the threshold, Mr. Longcluse, lost in wonder at the noble picture,
gazed on it, with the exclamation, almost a cry, "Good heaven! what a
noble work! I had no idea there could be such a thing in existence and
so little known." And he stood for awhile in a rapture, gazing from the
threshold on the portrait.
At sound of that voice, with a vague and terrible recognition, the
housekeeper turned with a start towards the door, expecting, you'd have
fancied from her face, the entrance of a ghost. There was a tremble in
the voice with which she cried, "Lord! what's that?" a tremble in the
hand extended towards the door, and a shake also in the pale frowning
face, from which shone her glassy eyes.
Mr. Longcluse stepped in, and the old woman's gaze became, as he did so,
more shrinking and intense. When he saw her he recoiled, as a man might
who had all but trod upon a snake; and these two people gazed at one
another with a strange, uncertain scowl.
In Mr. Longcluse's case, this dismal caprice of countenance did not last
beyond a second or two. Richard Arden, as he turned his eyes from the
picture to say a word to his companion, saw it for a moment, and it
faded from his features--saw it, and the darkened countenance of the old
housekeeper, with a momentary shock. He glanced from one to the other
quickly, with a look of unconscious surprise. That look instantly
recalled Mr. Longcluse, who, laying his hand on Richard Arden's arm,
said, with a laugh--"I do believe I'm the most nervous man in the
world."
"You don't find the room too hot?" said Richard, inwardly ruminating
upon the strange looks he had just seen exchanged. "Mrs. Tansey keeps a
fire all the year round--don't you, Martha?"
Martha did not answer, nor seem to hear; she pressed her lean hand,
instead, to her heart, and drew back to a sofa and sat down, muttering,
"My God, lighten our darkness, we beseech thee!" and she looked as if
she were on the point of fainting.
"That is a true Vandyck," said Mr. Longcluse, who was now again looking
stedfastly at the picture. "It deserves to rank among his finest
portraits. I have never seen anything of his more forcible. You really
ought not to leave it here, and in this state." He walked over and
raised the lower end of the frame gently from the wall. "Yes, just as
you said, it wants to be backed. That portrait would not stand a shake,
I can tell you. The canvas is perfectly rotten, and the paint--if you
stand here you'll see--is ready to flake off. It is an awful pity. You
shouldn't leave it in such danger."
"No," said Richard, who was looking at the old woman. "I don't think
Martha's well--will you excuse me for a moment?" And he was at the
housekeeper's side. "What's the matter, Martha?" he said kindly. "Are
you ill?"
"Very bad, Sir. I beg your pardon for sitting, but I could not help; and
the gentleman will excuse me."
"Of course--but what's the matter?" said Richard.
"A sudden fright like, Sir. I'm all over on a tremble," she quavered.
"See how exquisitely that hand is painted," continued Mr. Longcluse,
pursuing his criticism, "and the art with which the lights are managed.
It is a wonderful picture. It makes one positively angry to see it in
that state, and anywhere but in the most conspicuous and honourable
place. If I owned that picture, I should never be tired showing it. I
should have it where everyone who came into my house should see it; and
I should watch every crack and blur on its surface, as I should the
symptoms of a dying child, or the looks of the mistress of my heart. Now
just look at this. Where is he? Oh!"
"I beg your pardon, a thousand times, but I find my old friend Martha
feels a little faint and ill," said Richard.
"Dear me! I hope she's better," said Mr. Longcluse, approaching with
solicitude. "Can I be of any use? Shall I touch the bell?"
"I'm better, Sir, I thank you; I'm much better," said the old woman. "It
won't signify nothing, only--" She was looking hard again at Mr.
Longcluse, who now seemed perfectly at his ease, and showed in his
countenance nothing but the commiseration befitting the occasion. "A
sort of a weakness--a fright like--and I can't think, quite, what came
over me."
"Don't you think a glass of wine might do her good?" asked Mr.
Longcluse.
"Thanks, Sir, I don't drink it. Oh, lighten our darkness, we beseech
thee! Good Lord, a' mercy on us! I take them drops, hartshorn and
valerian, on a little water, when I feel nervous like. I don't know when
I was took wi' t' creepins before."
"You look better," said Richard.
"I'm quite right again, Sir," she said, with a sigh. She had taken her
"drops," and seemed restored.
"Hadn't you better have one of the maids with you? I'm going now; I'll
send some one," he said. "You must get all right, Martha. It pains me to
see you ill. You're a very old friend, remember. You must be all right
again; and, if you like, we'll have the doctor out, from town."
He said this, holding her thin old hand very kindly, for he was by no
means without good-nature. So sending the promised attendant, he and
Longcluse proceeded to the billiard-room, where, having got the lamps
lighted, they began to enjoy their smoke. Each, I fancy, was thinking of
the little incident in the housekeeper's room. There was a long silence.
"Poor old Tansey! She looked awfully ill," said Richard Arden at last.
"By Jove! she did. Is that her name? She rather frightened me," said Mr.
Longcluse. "I thought we had stumbled on a mad woman--she stared so. Has
she ever had any kind of fit, poor thing?"
"No. She grumbles a good deal, but I really think she's a healthy old
woman enough. She says she was frightened."
"We came in too suddenly, perhaps?"
"No, that wasn't it, for I knocked first," said Arden.
"Ah, yes, so you did. I only know she frightened me. I really thought
she was out of her mind, and that she was going to stick me with a
knife, perhaps," said Mr. Longcluse, with a little laugh and a shrug.
Arden laughed, and puffed away at his cigar till he had it in a glow
again. Was this explanation of what he had seen in Longcluse's
countenance--a picture presented but for a fraction of a second, but
thenceforward ineffaceable--quite satisfactory?
In a short time Mr. Longcluse asked whether he could have a little
brandy and water, which accordingly was furnished. In his first glass
there was a great deal of brandy, and very little water indeed; and his
second, sipped more at his leisure, was but little more diluted. A very
faint flush tinged his pallid cheeks.
Richard Arden was, by this time, thinking of his own debts and ill-luck,
and at last he said, "I wonder what the art of getting on in the world
is. Is it communicable? or is it no art at all, but a simple run of
luck?"
Mr. Longcluse smiled scornfully. "There are men who have immense faith
in themselves," said he, "who have indomitable will, and who are
provided with craft and pliancy for any situation. Those men are giants
from the first to the last hour of action, unless, as happened to
Napoleon, success enervates them. In the cradle, they strangle serpents;
blind, they pull down palaces; old as Dandolo, they burn fleets and
capture cities. It is only when they have taken to bragging that the
_lues Napoleonica_ has set in. Now I have been, in a sense, a successful
man--I am worth some money. If I were the sort of man I describe, I
should be worth, if I cared for it, ten times what I have in as many
years. But I don't care to confess I made my money by flukes. If, having
no tenderness, you have two attributes--profound cunning and perfect
audacity--nothing can keep you back. I'm a common-place man, I say; but
I know what constitutes power. Life is a battle, and the general's
qualities win."
"I have not got the general's qualities, I think; and I know I haven't
luck," said Arden; "so for my part I may as well drift, with as little
trouble as may be, wherever the current drives. Happiness is not for all
men."
"Happiness is for _no_ man," said Mr. Longcluse. And a little silence
followed. "Now suppose a fellow has got more money than ever he dreamed
of," he resumed, "and finds money, after all, not quite what he fancied,
and that he has come to long for a prize quite distinct and infinitely
more precious; so that he finds, at last, that he never can be happy for
an hour without it, and yet, for all his longing and his pains, sees it
is unattainable as that star." (He pointed to a planet that shone down
through the skylight.) "Is that man happy? He carries with him, go where
he may, an aching heart, the pangs of jealousy and despair, and the
longing of the damned for Paradise. That is _my_ miserable case."
Richard Arden laughed, as he lighted his second cigar.
"Well, if that's your case, you can't be one of those giants you
described just now. Women are not the obdurate and cruel creatures you
fancy. They are proud, and vain, and unforgiving; but the misery and the
perseverance of a lover constitute a worship that first flatters and
then wins them. Remember this, a woman finds it very hard to give up a
worshipper, except for another. Now why should you despair? You are a
gentleman, you are a clever fellow, an agreeable fellow; you are what is
accounted a young man still, and you can make your wife rich. They all
like that. It is not avarice, but pride. I don't know the young lady,
but I see no good reason why you should fail."
"I wish, Arden, I dare tell you all; but some day I'll tell you more."
"The only thing is---- You'll not mind my telling you, as you have been
so frank with me?"
"Pray say whatever you think. I shall be ever so much obliged. I forget
so many things about English manners and ways of thinking--I have lived
so very much abroad. Should I be put up for a club?"
"Well, I should not mind a club just yet, till you know more
people--quite time enough. But you must manage better. Why should those
Jew fellows, and other people, who don't hold, and never can, a position
the least like yours, be among your acquaintance? You must make it a
rule to drop all objectionable persons, and know none but good people.
Of course, when you are strong enough it doesn't so much matter,
provided you keep them at arm's length. But you passed your younger days
abroad, as you say, and not being yet so well known here, you will have
to be particular--don't you see? A man is so much judged by his
acquaintance; and, in fact, it is essential."
"A thousand thanks for any hints that strike you," said Longcluse
good-humouredly.
"They sound frivolous; but these trifles have immense weight with
women," said Arden. "By Jove!" he added, glancing at his watch, "we
shall be late. Your trap is at the door--suppose we go?"
CHAPTER III.
MR. LONGCLUSE OPENS HIS HEART.
The old housekeeper had drawn near her window, and stood close to the
pane, through which she looked out upon the star-lit night. The stars
shine down over the foliage of huge old trees. Dim as shadows stand the
horse and tax-cart that await Mr. Longcluse and Richard Arden, who now
at length appear. The groom fixes the lamps, one of which shines full on
Mr. Longcluse's peculiar face.
"Ay--the voice; I could a' sworn to that," she muttered. "It went
through me like a scythe. But that's a strange face; and yet there's
summat in it, just a hint like, to call my thoughts out a-seeking up and
down, and to and fro; and 'twill not let me rest until I come to find
the truth. Mace? No, no. Langly? Not he. Yet 'twas summat _that night_,
I think--summat awful. And who _was_ there? No one. Lighten our
darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord! for my heart is sore troubled."
Up jumped the groom. Mr. Longcluse had the reins in his hand, and he and
his companion passed swiftly by the window, and the flash of the lamps
crossed the panelled walls of the housekeeper's room. The light danced
wildly from corner to corner of the wainscot, accompanied by the shadows
of two geraniums in bow-pots on the window-stool. The lamps flew by, and
she still stood there, with the palsied shake of her head and hand,
looking out into the darkness, in rumination.
Arden and Longcluse glided through the night air in silence, under the
mighty old trees that had witnessed generations of Ardens, down the
darker, narrow road, and by the faded old inn, once famous in those
regions as the "Guy of Warwick," representing still on its board, in
tarnished gold and colours, that redoubted champion, with a boar's head
on the point of his sword, and a grotesque lion winding itself fawningly
about his horse's legs.
As they passed swiftly along this smooth and deserted road, Longcluse
spoke. _Aperit præcordia vinum._ In his brandy and water he had not
spared alcohol, and the quantity was considerable.
"I have lots of money, Arden, and I can talk to people, as you say," he
suddenly said, as if Richard Arden had spoken but a moment before; "but,
on the whole, is there on earth a more miserable dog than I? There are
things that trouble me that would make you laugh; there are others that
would, if I dare tell them, make you sigh. Soon I shall be able; soon
you shall know all. I'm not a bad fellow. I know how to give away money,
and, what is harder to bestow on others, my time and labour. But who to
look at me would believe it? I'm not a worse fellow than Penruddock. I
can cry for pity and do a kind act like him; but I look in my glass, and
I also feel like him, 'the mark of Cain' is on me--cruelty in my face.
Why should Nature write on some men's faces such libels on their
characters? Then here's another thing to make you laugh--you, a handsome
fellow, to whom beauty belongs, I say, by right of birth--it would make
me laugh also if I were not, as I am, forced every hour I live to count
up, in agonies of hope and terror, my chances in that enterprise in
which all my happiness for life is staked so wildly. Common ugliness
does not matter, it is got over. But such a face as mine! Come, come!
you are too good-natured to say. I'm not asking for consolation; I am
only summing up my curses."
"You make too much of these. Lady May thinks your face, she says, very
interesting--upon my honour, she does."
"Oh, heaven!" exclaimed Mr. Longcluse, with a shrug and a laugh.
"And what is more to the purpose (will you forgive my reporting all
this--you won't mind?), some young lady friends of hers who were by
said, I assure you, that you had so much expression, and that your
features were extremely refined."
"It won't do, Arden; you are too good-natured," said he, laughing more
bitterly.
"I should much rather be as I am, if I were you, than be gifted with
vulgar beauty--plump, pink and white, with black beady eyes, and all
that," said Arden.
"But the heaviest curse upon me is that which, perhaps, you do not
suspect--the curse of--secrecy."
"Oh, really!" said Arden, laughing, as if he had thought up to then that
Mr. Longcluse's history was as well known as that of the ex-Emperor
Napoleon.
"I don't say that I shall come out like the enchanted hero in a fairy
tale, and change in a moment from a beast into a prince; but I am
something better than I seem. In a short time, if you cared to be bored
with it, I shall have a great deal to tell you."
There followed here a silence of two or three minutes, and then, on a
sudden, pathetically, Mr. Longcluse broke forth--
"What has a fellow like me to do with love? and less than beloved, can I
ever be happy? I know something of the world--not of this London world,
where I live less than I seem to do, and into which I came too late ever
to understand it thoroughly--I know something of a greater world, and
human nature is the same everywhere. You talk of a girl's pride inducing
her to marry a man for the sake of his riches. Could I possess my
beloved on those terms? I would rather place a pistol in my mouth, and
blow my skull off. Arden, I'm unhappy; I'm the most miserable dog
alive."
"Come, Longcluse, that's all nonsense. Beauty is no advantage to a man.
The being agreeable is an immense one. But success is what women
worship, and if, in addition to that, you possess wealth--not, as I
said, that they are sordid, but only vain-glorious--you become very
nearly irresistible. Now _you_ are agreeable, successful and
wealthy--you must see what follows."
"I'm out of spirits," said Longcluse, and relapsed into silence, with a
great sigh.
By this time they had got within the lamps, and were threading streets,
and rapidly approaching their destination. Five minutes more, and these
gentlemen had entered a vast room, in the centre of which stood a
billiard-table, with benches rising tier above tier to the walls, and a
gallery running round the building above them, brilliantly lighted, as
such places are, and already crowded with all kinds of people. There is
going to be a great match of a "thousand up" played between Bill Hood
and Bob Markham. The betting has been unusually high; it is still going
on. The play won't begin for nearly half an hour. The "admirers of the
game" have mustered in great force and variety. There are young peers,
with sixty thousand a year, and there are gentlemen who live by their
billiards. There are, for once in a way, grave persons, bankers, and
counsel learned in the law; there are Jews and a sprinkling of
foreigners; and there are members of Parliament and members of the swell
mob.
Mr. Longcluse has a good deal to think about this night. He _is_ out of
spirits. Richard Arden is no longer with him, having picked up a friend
or two in the room. Longcluse, with folded arms, and his shoulders
against the wall, is in a profound reverie, his dark eyes for the time
lowered to the floor, beside the point of his French boot. _There_
unfold themselves beneath him picture after picture, the scenes of many
a year ago. Looking down, there creeps over him an old horror, a
supernatural disgust, and he sees in the dark a pair of wide, white
eyes, staring up at him in an agony of terror, and a shrill yell,
piercing a distance of many years, makes him shake his ears with a
sudden chill. Is this the witches' Sabbath of our pale Mephistopheles--his
night of goblins? He raised his eyes, and they met those of a person
whom he had not seen for a very long time--a third part of his whole
life. The two pairs of eyes, at nearly half across the room, have met,
and for a moment fixed. The stranger smiles and nods. Mr. Longcluse does
neither. He affects now to be looking over the stranger's shoulder at
some more distant object. There is a strange chill and commotion at his
heart.
CHAPTER IV.
MONSIEUR LEBAS.
Mr. Longcluse leaned still with folded arms, and his shoulder to the
wall. The stranger, smiling and fussy, was making his way to him. There
is nothing in this man's appearance to associate him with tragic
incident or emotion of any kind. He is plainly a foreigner. He is short,
fat, middle-aged, with a round fat face, radiant with good humour and
good-natured enjoyment. His dress is cut in the somewhat grotesque style
of a low French tailor. It is not very new, and has some spots of grease
upon it. Mr. Longcluse perceives that he is now making his way towards
him. Longcluse for a moment thought of making his escape by the door,
which was close to him; but he reflected, "He is about the most innocent
and good-natured soul on earth, and why should I seem to avoid him?
Better, if he's looking for me, to let him find me, and say his say." So
Longcluse looked another way, his arms still folded, and his shoulders
against the wall as before.
"Ah, ha! Monsieur is thinking profoundly," said a gay voice in French.
"Ah, ha, ha, ha! you are surprised, Sir, to see me here. So am I, my
faith! I saw you. I never forget a face."
"Nor a friend, Lebas. Who could have imagined anything to bring you to
London?" answered Longcluse, in the same language, shaking him warmly by
the hand, and smiling down on the little man. "I shall never forget your
kindness. I think I should have died in that _illness_ but for you. How
can I ever thank you half enough?"
"And the grand secret--the political difficulty--Monsieur found it well
evaded," he said, mysteriously touching his upper lip with two fingers.
"Not all quiet yet. I suppose you thought I was in Vienna?"
"Eh? well, yes--so I did," answered Lebas, with a shrug. "But perhaps
you think this place safer."
"Hush! You'll come to me to-morrow. I'll tell you where to find me
before we part, and you'll bring your portmanteau and stay with me while
you remain in London, and the longer the better."
"Monsieur is too kind, a great deal; but I am staying for my visit to
London with my brother-in-law, Gabriel Laroque, the watchmaker. He lives
on the Hill of Ludgate, and he would be offended if I were to reside
anywhere but in his house while I stay. But if Monsieur would be so good
as to permit me to call----"
"You must come and dine with me to-morrow; I have a box for the opera.
You love music, or you are not the Pierre Lebas whom I remember sitting
with his violin at an open window. So come early, come before six; I
have ever so much to ask you. And what has brought you to London?"
"A very little business and a great deal of pleasure; but all in a
week," said the little man, with a shrug and a hearty laugh. "I have
come over here about some little things like that." He smiled archly as
he produced from his waistcoat pocket a little flat box with a glass
top, and shook something in it. "Commerce, you see. I have to see two or
three more of the London people, and then my business will have
terminated, and nothing remain for the rest of the week but
pleasure--ha, ha!"
"You left all at home well, I hope--children?" He was going to say
"Madame," but a good many years had passed.
"I have seven children. Monsieur will remember two. Three are by my
first marriage, four by my second, and all enjoy the very best health.
Three are very young--three, two, one year old; and they say a fourth is
not impossible very soon," he added archly.
Longcluse laughed kindly, and laid his hand upon his shoulder.
"You must take charge of a little present for each from me, and one for
Madame. And the old business still flourishes?"
"A thousand thanks! yes, the business is the same--the file, the chisel,
and knife." And he made a corresponding movement of his hand as he
mentioned each instrument.
"_Hush!_" said Longcluse, smiling, so that no one who did not hear him
would have supposed there was so much cautious emphasis in the word. "My
good friend, remember there are details we talk of, you and I together,
that are not to be mentioned so suitably in a place like this," and he
pressed his hand on his wrist, and shook it gently.
"A thousand pardons! I am, I know, too careless, and let my tongue too
often run before my caution. My wife, she says, 'You can't wash your
shirt but you must tell the world.' It is my weakness truly. She is a
woman of extraordinary penetration."
Mr. Longcluse glanced from the corners of his eyes about the room.
Perhaps he wished to ascertain whether his talk with this man, whom you
would have taken to be little above the level of a French mechanic, had
excited anyone's attention. But there was nothing to make him think so.
"Now, Pierre, my friend, you must win some money upon this match--do you
see? And you won't deny me the pleasure of putting down your stake for
you; and, if you win, you shall buy something pretty for Madame--and,
win or lose, I shall think it friendly of you after so many years, and
like you the better."
"Monsieur is too good," he said with effusion.
"Now look. Do you see that fat Jew over there on the front bench--you
can't mistake him--with the velvet waistcoat all in wrinkles, and the
enormous lips, who talks to every second person who passes?"
"I see perfectly, Monsieur."
"He is betting three to one upon Markham. You must take his offer, and
back Hood. I'm told _he'll_ win. Here are ten pounds, you may as well
make them thirty. Don't say a word. Our English custom is to _tip_, as
we say, our friend's sons at school, and to make presents to everybody,
as often as we like. Now there--not a word." He quietly slipped into his
hand a little rouleau of ten pounds in gold. "If you say one word you
wound me," he continued. "But, good Heaven! my dear friend, haven't you
a breast-pocket?"
"No, Monsieur; but this is quite safe. I was paid, only five minutes
before I came here, fifteen pounds in gold, a cheque of forty-four
pounds, and----"
"Be silent. You may be overheard. Speak here in a very low tone, as I
do. And do you mean to tell me that you carry all that money in your
coat pocket?"
"But in a pocket-book, Monsieur."
"All the more convenient for the _chevalier d'industrie_," said
Longcluse. "Stop. Pray don't produce it; your fate is, perhaps, sealed
if you do. There are gentlemen in this room who would hustle and rob you
in the crowd as you get out; or, failing that, who, seeing that you are
a stranger, would follow and murder you in the streets, for the sake of
a twentieth part of that sum."
"Gabriel thought there would be none here but men distinguished," said
Lebas, in some consternation.
"Distinguished by the special attention of the police, some of them,"
said Longcluse.
"Hé! that is very true," said Monsieur Lebas--"very true, I am sure of
it. See you that man there, Monsieur? Regard him for a moment. The tall
man, who leans with his shoulder to the metal pillar of the gallery. My
faith! he has observed my steps and followed me. I thought he was a spy.
But my friend he says 'No, that is a man of bad character, dismissed for
bad practices from the police.' Aha! he has watched me sideways, with
the corner of his eye. I will watch him with the corner of mine--ha,
ha!"
"It proves, at all events, Lebas, that there are people here other than
gentlemen and men of honest lives," said Longcluse.
"But," said Lebas, brightening a little, "I have this weapon," producing
a dagger from the same pocket.
"Put it back this instant. Worse and worse, my good friend. Don't you
know that just now there is a police activity respecting foreigners, and
that two have been arrested only yesterday on no charge but that of
having weapons about their persons? I don't know what the devil you had
best do."
"I can return to the Hill of Ludgate--eh?"
"Pity to lose the game; they won't let you back again," said Longcluse.
"What shall I do?" said Lebas, keeping his hand now in his pocket on his
treasure.
Longcluse rubbed the tip of his finger a little over his eyebrow,
thinking.
"Listen to me," said Longcluse, suddenly. "Is your brother-in-law here?"
"No, Monsieur."
"Well, you have some London friend in the room, haven't you?"
"One--yes."
"Only be sure he is one whom you can trust, and who has a safe pocket."
"Oh, yes, Monsieur, entirely! and I saw him place his purse so," he
said, touching his coat, over his heart, with his fingers.
"Well, now, you can't manage it here, under the gaze of the people;
but--_where_ is best? Yes--you see those two doors at opposite sides in
the wall, at the far end of the room? They open into two parallel
corridors leading to the hall, and a little way down there is a cross
passage, in the middle of which is a door opening into a smoking-room.
That room will be deserted now, and there, unseen, you can place your
money and dagger in his charge."
"Ah, thank you a hundred thousand times, Monsieur!" answered Lebas. "I
shall be writing to the Baron van Boeren to-morrow, and I will tell him
I have met Monsieur."
"Don't mind; how is the baron?" asked Longcluse.
"Very well. Beginning to be not so young, you know, and thinking of
retiring. I will tell him his work has succeeded. If he demolishes, he
also secures. If he sometimes sheds blood----"
"_Hush!_" whispered Longcluse, sternly.
"There is no one," murmured little Lebas, looking round, but dropping
his voice to a whisper. "He also saves a neck sometimes from the blade
of the guillotine."
Longcluse frowned, a little embarrassed. Lebas smiled archly. In a
moment Longcluse's impatient frown broke into a mysterious smile that
responded.
"May I say one word more, and make one request of Monsieur, which I hope
he will not think very impertinent?" asked Monsieur Lebas, who had just
been on the point of taking his leave.
"It mayn't be in my power to grant it; but you can't be what you say--I
am too much obliged to you--so speak quite freely," said Longcluse.
So they talked a little more and parted, and Monsieur Lebas went on his
way.
CHAPTER V.
A CATASTROPHE.
The play has commenced. Longcluse, who likes and understands the game,
sitting beside Richard Arden, is all eye. He is intensely eager and
delighted. He joins modestly in the clapping that now and then follows a
stroke of extraordinary brilliancy. Now and then he whispers a criticism
in Arden's ear. There are many vicissitudes in the game. The players
have entered on the third hundred, and still "doubtful it stood." The
excitement is extraordinary. The assembly is as hushed as if it were
listening to a sermon, and, I am afraid, more attentive. Now, on a
sudden, Hood scores a hundred and sixty-eight points in a single break.
A burst of prolonged applause follows, and, during the clapping, in
which he had at first joined, Longcluse says to Arden,--
"I can't tell you how that run of Hood's delights me. I saw a poor
little friend of mine here before the play began--I had not seen him
since I was little more than a boy--a Frenchman, a good-natured little
soul, and I advised him to back Hood, and I have been trembling up to
this moment. But I think he's safe now to win. Markham can't score this
time. If he's in 'Queer Street,' as they whisper round the room, you'll
find he'll either give a simple miss, or put himself into the pocket."
"Well, I'm sure I hope your friend will win, because it will put three
hundred and eighty pounds into my pocket," said Richard Arden.
And now silence was called, and the building became, in a moment, hushed
as a cathedral before the anthem; and Markham knocked his own ball into
the pocket as Longcluse had predicted.
On sped the game, and at last Hood scored a thousand, and won the match,
greeted by an uproar of applause that, now being no longer restrained,
lasted for nearly five minutes. The assemblage had, by this time,
descended from the benches, and crowded the floor in clusters,
discussing the play or settling bets. The people in the gallery were
pouring down by the four staircases, and adding to the crowd and buzz.
Suddenly there is a sort of excitement perceptible of a new kind--a
gathering and pressure of men about one of the doors at the far corner
of the room. Men are looking back and beckoning to their companions;
others are shouldering forward as strenuously as they can. What is
it--any dispute about the score?--a pair of men boxing in the passage?
"No suspicion of fire?" the men at this near end exclaim, and sniff over
their shoulders, and look about them, and move toward the point where
the crowd is thickening, not knowing what to make of the matter. But
soon there runs a rumour about the room--"a man has just been found
murdered in a room outside," and the crowd now press forward more
energetically to the point of attraction.
In the cross-passage which connects the two corridors, as Mr. Longcluse
described, there is an awful crush, and next to no light. A single jet
of gas burns in the smoking room, where the pressure of the crowd is not
quite so much felt. There are two policemen in that chamber, in the
ordinary uniform of the force, and three detectives in plain clothes,
one supporting a corpse already stiffening, in a sitting posture, as it
was found, in a far angle of the room, on the bench to your left as you
look in. All the people are looking up the room. You can see nothing but
hats, and backs of heads, and shoulders. There is a ceaseless buzz and
clack of talk and conjecture. Even the policemen are looking, as the
rest do, at the body. The man who has mounted on the chair near the
door, with the other beside him, who has one foot on the rung and
another on the seat, and an arm round the first gentleman's neck,
although he has not the honour of his acquaintance, to support himself,
can see, over the others' heads, the one silent face which looks back
towards the door, upon so many gaping, and staring, and gabbling ones.
The light is faint. It has occurred to no one to light the gas lamps in
the centre. But that forlorn face is distinct enough. Fixed and leaden
it is, with the chin a little raised. The eyes are wide open, with a
deep and awful gaze; the mouth slightly distorted with what the doctors
call "a convulsive smile," which shows the teeth a little, and has an
odd, wincing look.
As I live, it is the little Frenchman, Pierre Lebas, who was talking so
gaily to-night with Mr. Longcluse!
The ebony haft of a dagger, sticking straight out, shows where the hand
of the assassin planted the last stab of four, through his black satin
waistcoat, embroidered with green leaves, red strawberries, and yellow
flowers, which, I suppose, was one of the finest articles in the little
wardrobe that Madame Lebas packed up for his holiday. It is not worth
much now. It has four distinct cuts, as I have said, on the left side,
right through it, and is soaked in blood.
His pockets have been rifled. The police have found nothing in them but
a red pocket-handkerchief and a papier-maché snuff-box. If that dumb
mouth could speak but fifty words, what a world of conjecture it would
end, and poor Lebas's story would be listened to as never was story of
his before!
A policeman now takes his place at the door to prevent further pressure.
No new-comers will be admitted, except as others go out. Those outside
are asking questions of those within, and transmitting, over their
shoulders, particulars, eagerly repeated. On a sudden there is a
subsidence of the buzz and gabble within, and one voice, speaking almost
at the pitch of a shriek, is heard declaiming. White as a sheet, Mr.
Longcluse, in high excitement, is haranguing in the smoking-room,
mounted on a table.
"I say," he cried, "gentlemen, excuse me. There are so many together
here, so many known to be wealthy, it is an opportunity for a word.
Things are coming to a pretty pass--garotters in our streets and
assassins in our houses of entertainment! Here is a poor little
fellow--look at him--here to-night to see the game, perfectly well and
happy, murdered by some miscreant for the sake of the money he had about
him. It might have been the fate of anyone of us. I spoke to him
to-night. I had not seen him since I was a boy almost. Seven children
and a wife, he told me, dependent on him. I say there are two things
wanted--first, a reward of such magnitude as will induce exertion. I
promise, for my own share, to put down double the amount promised by the
highest subscriber. Secondly, something should be done for the family he
has left, in proportion to the loss they have sustained. Upon this point
I shall make inquiry myself. But this is plain, the danger and scandal
have attained a pitch at which none of us who cares to walk the streets
at night, or at any time to look in upon amusements like that we
attended this evening, can permit them longer to stand. There is a fatal
defect somewhere. Are our police awake and active? Very possibly; but if
so the force is not adequate. I say this frightful scandal must be
abated if, as citizens of London, we desire to maintain our reputation
for common sense and energy."
There was a tall thin fellow, shabbily dressed, standing nearly behind
the door, with a long neck, and a flat mean face, slightly pitted with
small-pox, rather pallid, who was smiling lazily, with half-closed eyes,
as Mr. Longcluse declaimed; and when he alluded pointedly to the
inadequacy of the police, this man's amusement improved, and he winked
pleasantly at the clock which he was consulting at the moment with the
corner of his eye.
And now a doctor arrived, and Gabriel Laroque the watchmaker, and more
police, with an inspector. Laroque faints when he sees his murdered
friend. Recovered after a time, he identifies the body, identifies the
dagger also as the property of poor Lebas.
The police take the matter now quite into their hands, and clear the
room.
CHAPTER VI.
TO BED.
Mr. Longcluse jumped into a cab, and told the man to drive to his house
in Bolton Street, Piccadilly. He rolled his coat about him with a kind
of violence, and threw himself into a corner. Then, as it were, _in
furore_, and with a stamp on the floor, he pitched himself into the
other corner.
"I've seen to-night what I never thought I should see. What devil
possessed me to tell him to go into that black little smoking-room?" he
muttered. "What a room it is! It has seized my brain somehow. Am I in a
fever, or going mad, or what? That cursed smoking-room! I can't get out
of it. It is in the centre of the earth. I'm built round and round in
it. The moment I begin to think, I'm in it. The moment I close my eyes,
its four stifling walls are round me. There is no way out. It is like
hell."
The wind had come round to the south, and a soft rain was pattering on
the windows. He stopped the cab somewhere near St. James's Street, and
got out. It was late--it was just past two o'clock, and the streets were
quiet. Wonderfully still was the great city at this hour, and the
descent of the rain went on with a sound like a prolonged "hush" all
round. He paid the man, and stood for a while on the kerbstone, looking
up and down the street, under the downpour of the rain. You might have
taken this millionaire for a man who knew not where to lay his head that
night. He took off his hat, and let the refreshing rain saturate his
hair, and stream down his forehead and temples.
"Your cab's stuffy and hot, ain't it? Standing half the day with the
glass in the sun, I daresay," said he to the man, who was fumbling in
his pockets, and pretending a difficulty about finding change.
"See, never mind, if you haven't got change; I'll go on. Heavier rain
than I fancied; very pleasant though. When did the rain begin?" asked
Mr. Longcluse, who seemed in no hurry to get back again.
"A trifle past ten, Sir."
"I say, your horse's knees are a bit broken, ain't they? Never mind, I
don't care. He can pull you and me to Bolton Street, I daresay."
"Will you please to get in, Sir?" inquired the cabman.
Mr. Longcluse nodded, frowning and thinking of something else; the rain
still descending on his bare head, his hat in his hand.
The cabman thought this "cove" had been drinking and must be a trifle
"tight." He would not mind if he stood so for a couple of hours; it
would run his fare up to something pretty. So cabby had thoughts of
clapping a nosebag to his horse's jaws, and was making up his mind to a
bivouac. But Mr. Longcluse on a sudden got in, repeating his direction
to the driver in a gay and brisk tone, that did not represent his real
sensations.
"Why should I be so disturbed at that little French fellow? Have I been
ill, that my nerve is gone and I such a fool? One would think I had
never seen a dead fellow till now. Better for him to be quiet than at
his wit's ends, devising ways and means to keep his seven cubs in bread
and butter. I should have gone away when the game was over. What earthly
reason led me into that d----d room, when I heard the fuss there? I've a
mind to go and play hazard, or see a doctor. Arden said he'd look in, in
the morning. I should like that; I'll talk to Arden. I sha'n't sleep, I
know; I can't, all night; I've got imprisoned in that suffocating room.
Shall I ever close my eyes again?"
They had now reached the door of the small, unpretending house of this
wealthy man. The servant who opened the door, though he knew his
business, stared a little, for he had never seen his master return in
such a plight before, and looking so haggard.
"Where's Franklin?"
"Arranging things in your room, Sir."
"Give me a candle. The cab is paid. Mr. Arden, mind, may call in the
morning; if I should not be down, show him to my room. You are not to
let him go without seeing me."
Up-stairs went the pale master of the house. "Franklin!" he called, as
he mounted the last flight of stairs, next his bed-room.
"Yes, Sir."
"I sha'n't want you to-night, I think--that is, I shall manage what I
want for myself; but I mean to ring for you by-and-by." He was in his
dressing-room by this time, and looked round to see that his comforts
were provided for as usual--his foot-bath and hot water.
"Shall I fetch your tea, Sir?"
"I'll drink no tea to-night; I've been disgusted. I've seen a dead man,
quite unexpectedly; and I sha'n't get over it for some hours, I daresay.
I feel ill. And what you must do is this: when I ring my bell, you come
back, and you must sit up here till eight in the morning. I shall leave
the door between this and the next room open; and should you hear me
sleeping uneasily, moaning, or anything like nightmare, you must come in
and waken me. And you are not to go to sleep, mind; the moment I call, I
expect you in my room. Keep yourself awake how you can; you may sleep
all to-morrow, if you like."
With this charge Franklin departed.
But Mr. Longcluse's preparations for bed occupied a longer time than he
had anticipated. When nearly an hour had passed, Mr. Franklin ventured
up-stairs, and quietly approached the dressing-room door; but there he
heard his master still busy with his preparations, and withdrew. It was
not until nearly half-an-hour more had passed that his bell gave the
promised signal, and Mr. Franklin established himself for the night, in
the easy-chair in the dressing-room, with the connecting door between
the two rooms open.
Mr. Longcluse was right. The shock which his nerves had received did not
permit him to sleep very soon. Two hours later he called for the
Eau-de-Cologne that stood on his dressing-table; and although he made
belief to wet his temples with it, and kept it at his bedside with that
professed design, it was Mr. Franklin's belief that he drank the greater
part of what remained in the capacious cut-glass bottle. It was not
until people were beginning to "turn out" for their daily labour that
sleep at length visited the wearied eye-balls of the Croesus.
Three hours of death-like sleep, and Mr. Longcluse, with a little start,
was wide awake.
"Franklin!"
"Yes, Sir." And Mr. Franklin stood at his bedside.
"What o'clock is it?"
"Just struck ten, Sir."
"Hand me the _Times_." This was done.
"Tell them to get breakfast as usual. I'm coming down. Open the
shutters, and draw the curtains, quite."
When Franklin had done this and gone down, Mr. Longcluse read the
_Times_ with a stern eagerness, still in bed. The great billiard match
between Hood and Markham was given in spirited detail; but he was
looking for something else. Just under this piece of news, he found
it--"Murder and Robbery, in the Saloon Tavern." He read this twice over,
and then searched the paper in vain for any further news respecting it.
After this search, he again read the short account he had seen before,
very carefully, and more than once. Then he jumped out of bed, and
looked at himself in the glass in his dressing-room.
"How awfully seedy I am looking!" he muttered, after a careful
inspection. "Better by-and-by."
His hand was shaking like that of a man who had made a debauch, or was
worn out with ague. He looked ten years older.
"I should hardly know myself," muttered he. "What a confounded, sinful
old fogey I look, and I so young and innocent!"
The sneer was for himself and at himself. The delivery of such is an odd
luxury which, at one time or other, most men indulge in. Perhaps it
should teach us to take them more kindly when other people crack such
cynical jokes on our heads, or, at least, to perceive that they don't
always argue personal antipathy.
The sour smile which had, for a moment, flickered with a wintry light on
his face, gave place suddenly to a dark fatigue; his features sank, and
he heaved a long, deep, and almost shuddering sigh.
There are moments, happily very rare, when the idea of suicide is
distinct enough to be dangerous, and having passed which, a man feels
that Death has looked him very nearly in the face. Nothing more trite
and true than the omnipresence of suffering. The possession of wealth
exempts the unfortunate owner from, say, two-thirds of the curse that
lies heavy on the human race. Two thirds is a great deal; but so is the
other third, and it may have in it, at times, something as terrible as
human nature can support.
Mr. Longcluse, the millionaire, had, of course, many poor enviers. Had
any one of all these uttered such a sigh that morning? Or did any one
among them feel wearier of life?
"When I have had my tub, I shall be quite another man," said he.
But it did not give him the usual fillip; on the contrary, he felt
rather chilled.
"What can the matter be? I'm a changed man," said he, wondering, as
people do at the days growing shorter in autumn, that time had produced
some changes. "I remember when a scene or an excitement produced no more
effect upon me, after the moment, than a glass of champagne; and now I
feel as if I had swallowed poison, or drunk the cup of madness.
Shaking!--hand, heart, every joint. I have grown such a muff!"
Mr. Longcluse had at length completed his very careless toilet, and
looking ill, went down-stairs in his dressing-gown and slippers.
CHAPTER VII.
FAST FRIENDS.
In little more than half-an-hour, as Mr. Longcluse was sitting at his
breakfast in his dining-room, Richard Arden was shown in.
"Dressing-gown and slippers--what a lazy dog I am compared with you!"
said Longcluse gaily as he entered.
"Don't say another word on that subject, I beg. I should have been later
myself, had I dared; but my Uncle David had appointed to meet me at
ten."
"Won't you take something?"
"Well, as I have had no breakfast, I don't mind if I do," said Arden,
laughing.
Longcluse rang the bell.
"When did you leave that place last night?" asked Longcluse.
"I fancy about the same time that you went--about five or ten minutes
after the match ended. You heard there was a man murdered in a passage
there? I tried to get down and see it but the crowd was awful."
"I was more lucky--I came earlier," said Longcluse. "It was perfectly
sickening, and I have been seedy ever since. You may guess what a shock
it was to me. The murdered man was that poor little Frenchman I told you
of, who had been talking to me, in high spirits, just before the play
began--and there he was, poor fellow! You'll see it all there; it makes
me sick."
He handed him the _Times_.
"Yes, I see. I daresay the police will make him out," said Arden, as he
glanced hastily over it. "Did you remark some awfully ill-looking
fellows there?"
"I never saw so many together in a place of the kind before," said
Longcluse.
"That's a capital account of the match," said Arden, whom it interested
more than the tragedy of poor little Lebas did. He read snatches of it
aloud as he ate his breakfast: and then, laying the paper down, he said,
"By-the-bye, I need not bother you by asking your advice, as I intended.
My uncle David has been blowing me up, and I think he'll make everything
straight. When he sends for me and gives me an awful lecture, he always
makes it up to me afterwards."
"I wish, Arden, I stood as little in need of your advice as you do, it
seems, of mine," said Longcluse suddenly, after a short silence. His
dark eyes were fixed on Richard Arden's. "I have been fifty times on the
point of making a confession to you, and my heart has failed me. The
hour is coming. These things won't wait. I must speak, Arden, soon or
never--_very_ soon, or never. _Never_, perhaps, would be wisest."
"Speak _now_, on the contrary," said Arden, laying down his knife and
fork, and leaning back. "Now is the best time always. If it's a bad
thing, why, it's over; and if it's a good one, the sooner we have it the
better."
Longcluse rose, looking down in meditation, and in silence walked slowly
to the window, where, for a time, without speaking he stood in a
reverie. Then, looking up, he said, "No man likes a crisis. 'No good
general ever fights a pitched battle if he can help it.' Wasn't that
Napoleon's saying? No man who has not lost his head likes to get
together all he has on earth, and make one stake of it. I have been on
the point of speaking to you often. I have always recoiled."
"Here I am, my dear Longcluse," said Richard Arden, rising and following
him to the window, "ready to hear you. I ought to say, only too happy if
I can be of the least use."
"Immense! everything?" said Longcluse vehemently. "And yet I don't know
how to ask you--how to begin--so much depends. Don't you conjecture the
subject?"
"Well, perhaps I do--perhaps I don't. Give me some clue."
"Have you formed no conjecture?" asked Longcluse.
"Perhaps."
"Is it anything in any way connected with your sister, Miss Arden?"
"It may be, possibly."
"Say what you think, Arden, I beseech you."
"Well, I think, perhaps, you admire her."
"Do I? Do I? Is that all? Would to God I could say that is all!
Admiration, what is it?--Nothing. Love?--Nothing. Mine is adoration and
utter madness. I have told my secret. What do you say? Do you hate me
for it?"
"Hate you, my dear fellow! Why on earth should I hate you? On the
contrary, I ought, I think, to like you better. I'm only a little
surprised that your feelings should so much exceed anything I could have
supposed."
"Yesterday, Arden, you spoke as if you liked me. As we drove into that
place, I fancied you half understood me; and cheered by what you then
said, I have spoken that which might have died with me, but for that."
"Well, what's the matter? My dear Longcluse, you talk as if I had shown
signs of wavering friendship. Have I? Quite the contrary."
"Quite the contrary, that is true," said Longcluse eagerly. "Yes, you
_should_ like me better for it--that is true also. Yours is no wavering
friendship, I'm sure of it. Let us shake hands upon it. A treaty, Arden,
a treaty!"
With a fierce smile upon his pale face, and a sudden fire in his eyes,
he extended his hand energetically, and took that of Arden, who answered
the invitation with a look in which gleamed faintly something of
amusement.
"Now, Richard Arden," he continued excitedly, "you have more influence
with Miss Arden than falls commonly to the lot of a brother. I have
observed it. It results from her having had during her earlier years
little society but yours, and from your being some years her senior. It
results from her strong affection for you, from her admiration of your
talents, and from her having neither brother nor sister to divide those
feelings. I never yet saw brother possessed of so evident and powerful
an influence with a sister. You must use it all for me."
He continued to hold Arden's hand in his as he spoke.
"You can withdraw your hand if you decline," said he. "I sha'n't
complain. But your hand remains--you don't. It is a treaty, then.
Henceforward we live _fædere icto_. I'm an exacting friend, but a good
one."
"My dear fellow, you do me but justice. I am your friend, altogether.
But you must not mistake me for a guardian or a father in the matter. I
wish I could make my sister think exactly as I do upon every subject,
and _that_ above all others. All I can say is, in me you have a fast
friend."
Longcluse pressed his hand, which he had not relinquished, at these
words, with a firm grasp and a quick shake.
"Now listen. I must speak on this point, the one that is in my mind, my
chief difficulty. Personally, there is not, I think, a living being in
England who knows my history. I am glad of it, for reasons which you
will approve by-and-by. But this is an enormous disadvantage, though
only temporary, and the friends of the young lady must weigh my wealth
against it for the present. But when the time comes, which can't now be
distant, upon my honour! upon my soul!--by Heaven, I'll show you I'm of
as good and old a family as any in England! We have been gentlemen up to
the time of the Conqueror, here in England, and as far before him as
record can be traced in Normandy. If I fail to show you this when the
hour comes, stigmatise me as you will."
"I have not a doubt, dear Longcluse. But you are urging a point that
really has no weight with us people in England. We have taken off our
hats to the gentlemen in casques and tabards, and feudal glories are at
a discount everywhere but in Debrett, where they are taken with
allowance. Your ideas upon these matters are more Austrian than ours. We
expect, perhaps, a little more from the man, but certainly less from his
ancestors than our forefathers did. So till a title turns up, and the
heralds want them, make your mind easy on matters of pedigree, and then
you can furnish them with effect. All I can tell you is this--there are
hardly fifty men in England who dare tell all the truth about their
families."
"We are friends, then; and in that relation, Arden, if there are
privileges, there are also liabilities, remember, and both extend into a
possibly distant future."
Longcluse spoke with a gloomy excitement that his companion did not
quite understand.
"That is quite true, of course," said Arden.
Each was looking in the other's face for a moment, and each face grew
suddenly dark, darker--and the whole room darkened as the air was
overshadowed by a mass of cloud that eclipsed the sun, threatening
thunder.
"By Jove! How awfully dark in a moment!" said Arden, looking from the
face thus suddenly overcast through the window towards the sky.
"Dark as the future we were speaking of," said Longcluse, with a sad
smile.
"Dark in one sense, I mean unseen, but not darkened in the ill-omened
sense," said Richard Arden. "I have great confidence in the future. I
suppose I am sanguine."
"I ought to be sanguine, if having been lucky hitherto should make one
so, and yet I'm not. _My_ happiness depends on that which I cannot, in
the least, control. Thought, action, energy, contribute nothing, and so
I but drift, and--my heart fails me. Tell me, Arden, for Heaven's sake,
truth--spare me nothing, conceal nothing. Let me but know it, however
bitter. First tell me, does Miss Arden dislike me--has she an antipathy
to me?"
"Dislike you! Nonsense. How could that be? She evidently enjoys your
society, when you are in spirits and choose to be amusing. Dislike you?
Oh, my dear Longcluse, you can't have fancied such a thing!" said Arden.
"A man placed as I am may fancy anything--things infinitely more
unlikely. I sometimes hope she has never perceived my admiration. It
seems strange and cruel, but I believe where a man cannot be beloved,
nothing is so likely to make him _hated_ as his presuming to love.
_There_ is the secret of half the tragedies we read of. The man cannot
cease to love, and the idol of his passion not only disregards but
insults it. It is their cruel nature; and thus the pangs of jealousy and
the agitations of despair are heightened by a peculiar torture, the
hardest of all hell's torture to endure."
"Well, I have seen you pretty often together, and you must see there is
nothing of that kind," said Arden.
"You speak quite frankly, do you? For Heaven's sake don't spare me!"
urged Longcluse.
"I say exactly what I think. There can't be any such feeling," said
Arden.
Longcluse sighed, looked down thoughtfully, and then, raising his eyes
again, he said--
"You must answer me another question, dear Arden, and I shall, for the
present, task your kindness no more. If you think it a fair question,
will you promise to answer me with unsparing frankness? Let me hear the
worst."
"Certainly," answered his companion.
"Does your sister like anyone in particular--is she attached to
anyone--are her affections quite disengaged?"
"So far as I am aware, certainly. She never cared for any one among all
the people who admired her, and I am quite certain such a thing could
not be without my observing it," answered Richard Arden.
"I don't know; perhaps not," said Longcluse. "But there is a young
friend of yours, who I thought was an admirer of Miss Arden's, and
possibly a favoured one. You guess, I daresay, who it is I mean?"
"I give you my honour I have not the least idea."
"I mean an early friend of yours--a man about your own age--who has
often been staying in Yorkshire and at Mortlake with you, and who was
almost like a brother in your house--very intimate."
"Surely you can't mean Vivian Darnley?" exclaimed Richard Arden.
"I do. I mean no other."
"Vivian Darnley? Why, he has hardly enough to live on, much less to
marry on. He has not an idea of any such thing. If my father fancied
such an absurdity possible, he would take measures to prevent his ever
seeing her more. You could not have hit upon a more impossible man," he
resumed, after a moment's examination of a theory which,
notwithstanding, made him a little more uneasy than he would have cared
to confess. "Darnley is no fool either, and I think he is a honourable
fellow; and altogether, knowing him as I do, the thing is utterly
incredible. And as for Alice, the idea of his imagining any such folly,
I can undertake to say, positively never entered her mind."
Here was another pause. Longcluse was again thoughtful.
"May I ask one other question, which I think you will have no difficulty
in answering?" said he.
"What you please, dear Longcluse; you may command me."
"Only this, how do you think Sir Reginald would receive me?"
"A great deal better than he will ever receive me; with his best
bow--no, not that, but with open arms and his brightest smile. I tell
you, and you'll find it true, my father is a man of the world. Money
won't, of course, do everything; but it can do a great deal. It can't
make a vulgar man a gentleman, but it may make a gentleman anything. I
really think you would find him a very fast friend. And now I must leave
you, dear Longcluse. I have just time, and no more, to keep my
appointment with old Mr. Blount, to whom my uncle commands me to go at
twelve."
"Heaven keep us both, dear Arden, in this cheating world! Heaven keep us
true in this false London world! And God punish the first who breaks
faith with the other!"
So spoke Longcluse, taking his hand again, and holding it hard for a
moment, with his unfathomable dark eyes on Arden. Was there a faint and
unconscious menace in his pale face, as he uttered these words, which a
little stirred Arden's pride?
"That's a comfortable litany to part with--a form of blessing elevated
so neatly, at the close, into a malediction. However, I don't object.
Amen, by all means," laughed Arden.
Longcluse smiled.
"A malediction? I really believe it was. Something very like it, and one
that includes myself, doesn't it? But we are not likely to earn it. An
arrow shot into the sea, it can hurt no one. But oh, dear Arden, what
does such language mean but suffering? What is all bitterness but pain?
Is any mind that deserves the name ever cruel, except from misery? We
are good friends, Arden: and if ever I seem to you for a moment other
than friendly, just say, 'It is his heart-ache and not he that speaks.'
Good-bye! God bless you!"
At the door there was another parting.
"There's a long dull day before me--say, rather, _night_; weary eyes,
sleepless brain," murmured Longcluse, in a rather dismal soliloquy,
standing in his slippers and dressing-gown again at the window.
"Suspense! What a hell is in that word! Chain a man across a rail, in a
tunnel--pleasant situation! let him listen for the faint fifing and
drumming of the engine, miles away, not knowing whether deliverance or
death may come first. Bad enough, that suspense. What is it to mine! I
shall see her to-night. I shall see her, and how will it all be? Richard
Arden wishes it--yes, he does. 'Away, slight man!' It is Brutus who says
that, I think. Good Heaven! Think of my life--the giddy steps I go by.
That dizzy walk by moonlight, when I lost my way in Switzerland--beautiful
nightmare!--the two mile ledge of rock before me, narrow
as a plank; up from my left, the sheer wall of rock; at my right
so close that my glove might have dropped over it, the precipice; and
curling vapour on the cliffs above, that seem about to break, and
envelope all below in blinding mist. There is my life translated into
landscape. It has been one long adventure--danger--fatigue. Nature is
full of beauty--many a quiet nook in life, where peace resides; many a
man whose path is broad and smooth. Woe to the man who loses his way on
Alpine tracks, and is benighted!"
Now Mr. Longcluse recollected himself. He had letters to read and note.
He did this rapidly. He had business in town. He had fifty things on his
hands; and, the day over, he would see Alice Arden again.
CHAPTER VIII.
CONCERNING A BOOT.
Several pairs of boots were placed in Mr. Longcluse's dressing-room.
"Where are the boots that I wore yesterday?" asked he.
"If you please, Sir," said Mr. Franklin, "the man called this morning
for the right boot of that pair."
"What man?" asked Mr. Longcluse, rather grimly.
"Mr. Armagnac's man, Sir."
"Did you desire him to call for it?" asked Mr. Longcluse.
"No, Sir. I thought you must have told some one else to order him to
send for it," said Franklin.
"_I?_ You ought to know I leave those things to _you_," said Mr.
Longcluse, staring at him more aghast and fierce than the possible
mislaying of a boot would seem to warrant. "Did you see Armagnac's man?"
"No, Sir. It was Charles who came up, at eight o'clock, when you were
still asleep, and said the shoemaker had called for the right boot of
the pair you wore yesterday. I had placed them outside the door, and I
gave it him, Sir, supposing it all right."
"Perhaps it _was_ all right; but you know Charles has not been a week
here. Call him up. I'll come to the bottom of this."
Franklin disappeared, and Mr. Longcluse, with a stern frown, was staring
vaguely at the varnished boot, as if it could tell something about its
missing companion. His brain was already at work. What the plague was
the meaning of this manoeuvre about his boot? And why on earth, think I,
should he make such a fuss and a tragedy about it? Charles followed Mr.
Franklin up the stairs.
"What's all this about my boot?" demanded Mr. Longcluse, peremptorily.
"_Who_ has got it?"
"A man called for it this morning, Sir."
"What man?"
"I think he said he came from Mr. Armagnac's, Sir."
"You _think_. Say what you _know_, Sir. What _did_ he say?" said Mr.
Longcluse, looking dangerous.
"Well, Sir," said the man, mending his case, "he did say, Sir, he came
from Mr. Armagnac's, and wanted the right boot."
"What right boot?--_any_ right boot?"
"No, Sir, please; the right boot of the pair you wore last night,"
answered the servant.
"And _you_ gave it to him?"
"Yes, Sir, 'twas me," answered Charles.
"Well, you mayn't be quite such a fool as you look. I'll sift all this
to the bottom. You go, if you please, this moment, to Monsieur Armagnac,
and say I should be obliged to him for a line to say whether he this
morning sent for my boot, and got it--and I must have it back, mind;
_you_ shall bring it back, you understand? And you had better make
haste."
"I made bold, Sir," said Mr. Franklin, "to send for it myself, when you
sent me down for Charles; and the boy will be back, Sir, in two or three
minutes."
"Well, come you and Charles here again when the boy comes back, and
bring him here also. I'll make out who has been playing tricks."
Mr. Longcluse shut his dressing-room door sharply; he walked to the
window, and looked out with a vicious scowl; he turned about, and lifted
up his clenched hand, and stamped on the floor. A sudden thought now
struck him.
"The right foot? By Jove! it may not be the one."
The boot that was left was already in his hand. He was examining it
curiously.
"Ay, by heaven! The right _was_ the boot! What's the meaning of this?
Conspiracy? I should not wonder."
He examined it carefully again, and flung it into its corner with
violence.
"If it's an accident, it is a very odd one. It is a suspicious accident.
It may be, of course, all right. I daresay it _is_ all right. The odds
are ten, twenty, a thousand to one that Armagnac has got it. I should
have had a warm bath last night, and taken a ten miles' ride into the
country this morning. It must be all right, and I am plaguing myself
without a cause."
Yet he took up the boot, and examined it once more; then, dropping it,
went to the window and looked into the street--came back, opened his
door, and listened for the messenger's return.
It was not long deferred. As he heard them approach, Mr. Longcluse flung
open his door and confronted them, in white waistcoat and shirt-sleeves,
and with a very white and stern face--face and figure all white.
"Well, what about it? Where's the boot?" he demanded, sharply.
"The boy inquired, Sir," said Mr. Franklin, indicating the messenger
with his open hand, and undertaking the office of spokesman; "and Mr.
Armagnac did not send for the boot, Sir, and has not got it."
"Oh, oh! very good. And now, Sir," he said, in rising fury, turning upon
Charles, "what have _you_ got to say for yourself?"
"The man said he came from Mr. Armagnac, please, Sir," said Charles,
"and wanted the boot, which Mr. Franklin should have back as early as he
could return it."
"Then you gave it to a common thief with that cock-and-a-bull story, and
you wish me to believe that you took it all for gospel. There are men
who would pitch you over the bannisters for a less thing. If I could be
certain of it, I'd put you beside him in the dock. But, by heavens! I'll
come to the bottom of the whole thing yet."
He shut the door with a crash, in the faces of the three men, who stood
on the lobby.
Mr. Franklin was a little puzzled at these transports, all about a boot.
The servants looked at one another without a word. But just as they were
going down, the dressing-room door opened, and the following dialogue
ensued:--
"See, Charles, it was you who saw and spoke with that man?" said
Longcluse.
"Yes, Sir."
"Should you know him again?"
"Yes, Sir, I think I should."
"What kind of man was he?"
"A very common person, Sir."
"Was he tall or short? What sort of figure?"
"Tall, Sir."
"Go on; what more? Describe him."
"Tall, Sir, with a long neck, and held himself straight; very flat feet,
I noticed; a thin man, broad in the shoulders--pretty well that."
"Describe his face," said Longcluse.
"Nothing very particular, Sir; a shabby sort of face--a bad colour."
"How?"
"A bad white, Sir, and pock-marked something; a broad face and flat, and
a very little bit of a nose; his eyes almost shut, and a sort of smile
about his mouth, and stingy bits of red whiskers, in a curl, down each
cheek."
"How old?"
"He might be nigh fifty, Sir."
"Ha, ha! very good. How was he dressed?"
"Black frock coat, Sir, a good deal worn; an old flowered satin
waistcoat, worn and dirty, Sir; and a pair of raither dirty tweed
trousers. Nothing fitted him, and his hat was brown and greasy, begging
your parding, Sir; and he had a stick in his hand, and cotton
gloves--a-trying to look genteel."
"And he asked for the right boot?" asked Mr. Longcluse.
"Yes, Sir."
"You are quite sure of that? Did he take the boot without looking at it,
or did he examine it before he took it away?"
"He looked at it sharp enough, Sir, and turned up the sole, and he said
'It's all right,' and he went away, taking it along with him."
"He asked for the boot I wore yesterday, or last night--which did he
say?" asked Mr. Longcluse.
"I think it was last night he said, Sir," answered Charles.
"Try to recollect yourself. Can't you be certain? Which was it?"
"I think it was _last night_, Sir, he said."
"It doesn't signify," said Mr. Longcluse; "I wanted to see that your
memory was pretty clear on the subject. You seem to remember all that
passed pretty accurately."
"I recollect it perfectly well, Sir."
"H'm! That will do. Franklin, you'll remember that description--let
every one of you remember it. It is the description of a thief; and when
you see that fellow again, hold him fast till you put him in the hands
of a policeman. And, Charles, you must be prepared, d'ye see, to swear
to that description; for I am going to the detective office, and I shall
give it to the police."
"Yes, Sir," answered Charles.
"I sha'n't want you, Franklin; let some one call a cab."
So he returned to his dressing-room, and shut the door, and
thought--"That's the fellow whom that miserable little fool, Lebas,
pointed out to me at the saloon last night. He watched him, he said,
wherever he went. _I_ saw him. There may be other circumstances. That is
the fellow--that is the very man. Here's matter to think over! By
heaven! that fellow must be denounced, and discovered, and brought to
justice. It is a strong case--a pretty hanging case against him. We
shall see."
Full of surmises about his lost boot, _Atra Cura_ walking unheard behind
him, with her cold hand on his shoulder, and with the image of the
ex-detective always gliding before or beside him, and peering with an
odious familiarity over his shoulder into his face, Mr. Longcluse
marched eastward with a firm tread and a cheerful countenance. Friends
who nodded to him, as he walked along Piccadilly, down Saint James's
Street, and by Pall Mall, citywards, thought he had just been listening
to an amusing story. Others, who, more deferentially, saluted the great
man as he walked lightly by Temple Bar, towards Ludgate Hill, for a
moment perplexed themselves with the thought, "What stock is up, and
what down, on a sudden, to-day, that Longcluse looks so radiant?"
CHAPTER IX.
THE MAN WITHOUT A NAME.
Mr. Longcluse had made up his mind to a certain course--a sharp and bold
one. At the police office he made inquiry. "He understood a man had been
lately dismissed from the force, answering to a certain description,
which he gave them; and he wished to know whether he was rightly
informed, because a theft had been that morning committed at his house
by a man whose appearance corresponded, and against whom he hoped to
have sufficient evidence."
"Yes, a man like that had been dismissed from the detective department
within the last fortnight."
"What was his name?" Mr. Longcluse asked.
"Paul Davies, Sir."
"If it should turn out to be the same, I may have a more serious charge
to bring against him," said Mr. Longcluse.
"Do you wish to go before his worship, and give an information, Sir?"
urged the officer, invitingly.
"Not quite ripe for that yet," said Mr. Longcluse, "but it is likely
very soon."
"And what might be the nature of the more serious charge, Sir?" inquired
the officer, insinuatingly.
"I mean to give my evidence at the coroner's inquest that will be held
to-day, on the Frenchman who was murdered last night at the Saloon
Tavern. It is not conclusive--it does not fix anything upon him; it is
merely inferential."
"Connecting him with the murder?" whispered the man, something like
reverence mingling with his curiosity, as he discovered the interesting
character of his interrogator.
"I can only say possibly connecting him in some way with it. Where does
the man live?"
"He did live in Rosemary Court, but he left that, I think. I'll ask, if
you please, Sir. Tompkins--hi! You know where Paul Davies puts up. Left
Rosemary Court?"
"Yes, five weeks. He went to Gold Ring Alley, but he's left that a week
ago, and I don't know where he is now, but will easy find him. Will it
answer at eight this evening, Sir?"
"Quite. I want a servant of mine to have a sight of him," said
Longcluse.
"If you like, Sir, to leave your address and a stamp, we'll send you the
information by post, and save you calling here."
"Thanks, yes, I'll do that."
So Mr. Longcluse took his leave, and proceeded to the place where the
coroner was sitting. Mr. Longcluse was received in that place with
distinction. The moneyed man was honoured--eyes were gravely fixed on
him, and respectful whispers went about. A seat was procured for him;
and his evidence, when he came to give it, was heard with marked
attention, and a general hush of expectation.
* * * * *
The reader, with his permission, must now pass away, seaward, from this
smoky London, for a few minutes, into a clear air, among the rustling
foliage of ancient trees, and the fragrance of hay-fields, and the song
of small birds.
On the London and Dover road stands, as you know, the "Royal Oak," still
displaying its ancient signboard, where you behold King Charles II
sitting with laudable composure, and a crown of Dutch gold on his head,
and displaying his finery through an embrasure in the foliage, with an
ostentation somewhat inconsiderate, considering the proximity of the
halberts of the military emissaries in search of him to the royal
features. As you drive towards London, it shows at the left side of the
road, a good old substantial inn and posting-house. Its business has
dwindled to something very small indeed, for the traffic prefers the
rail, and the once bustling line of road is now quiet. The sun had set,
but a reflected glow from the sky was still over everything; and by this
somewhat lurid light Mr. Truelock, the innkeeper, was observing from the
steps the progress of a chaise, with four horses and two postilions,
which was driving at a furious pace down the gentle declivity about a
quarter of a mile away, from the Dover direction towards the "Royal Oak"
and London.
"It's a runaway. Them horses has took head. What do you think, Thomas?"
he asked of the old waiter who stood beside him.
"No. See, the post-boys is whipping the hosses. No, Sir, it's a gallop,
but no runaway."
"There's luggage a' top?" said the innkeeper.
"Yes, Sir, there's something," answered Tom.
"I don't see nothing a-followin' them," said Mr. Truelock, shading his
eyes with his hand as he gazed.
"No--there _is_ nothing," said Tom.
"They're in fear o' summat, or they'd never go at that lick," observed
Mr. Truelock, who was inwardly conjecturing the likelihood of their
pulling up at his door.
"Lawk! _there_ was a jerk. They _was_ nigh over at the finger-post
turn," said Tom, with a grin.
And now the vehicle and the reeking horses were near. The post-boys held
up their whips by way of signal to the "Royal Oak" people on the steps,
and pulled up the horses with all their force before the door.
Trembling, snorting, rolling up wreaths of steam, the exhausted horses
stood.
"See to the gentleman, will ye?" cried one of the postilions.
Mr. Truelock, with the old-fashioned politeness of the English
innkeeper, had run down in person to the carriage door, which Tom had
opened. Master and man were a little shocked to behold inside an old
gentleman, with a very brown, or rather a very bilious visage, thin, and
with a high nose, who looked, as he lay stiffly back in the corner of
the carriage, enveloped in shawls, with a velvet cap on, as if he were
either dead or in a fit. His eyes were half open, and nothing but the
white balls partly visible. There was a little froth at his lips. His
mouth and delicately-formed hands were clenched, and all the furrows and
lines of a selfish face fixed, as it seemed, in the lock of death. John
Truelock said not a word, but peered at this visitor with a horrible
curiosity.
"If he's dead," whispered Tom in his ear, "we don't take in no dead men
here. Ye'll have the coroner and his jury in the house, and the place
knocked up-side down; and if ye make five pounds one way ye'll lose ten
the tother."
"Ye'll have to take him on, I'm thinkin'," said Mr. Truelock, rousing
himself, stepping back a little, and addressing the post-boys sturdily.
"You've no business bringin' a deceased party to my house. You must go
somewhere else, if so be he _is_ deceased."
"He's not gone dead so quick as that," said the postilion, dismounting
from the near leader, and throwing the bridle to a boy who stood by, as
he strutted round bandily to have a peep into the chaise. The postilion
on the "wheeler" had turned himself about in the saddle in order to have
a peep through the front window of the carriage. The innkeeper returned
to the door.
If the old London and Dover road had been what it once was, there would
have been a crowd about the carriage by this time. Except, however, two
or three servants of the "Royal Oak," who had come out to see, no one
had yet joined the little group but the boy who was detained, bridle in
hand, at the horse's head.
"He'll not be dead yet," repeated the postilion dogmatically.
"What happened him?" asked Mr. Truelock.
"I don't know," answered the post-boy.
"Then how can you say whether he be dead or no?" demanded the innkeeper.
"Fetch me a pint of half-and-half," said the dismounted post-boy, aside,
to one of the "Royal Oak" people at his elbow.
"We was just at this side of High Hixton," said his brother in the
saddle, "when he knocked at the window with his stick, and I got a cove
to hold the bridle, and I came round to the window to him. He had scarce
any voice in him, and looked awful bad, and he said he thought he was
a-dying. 'And how far on is the next inn?' he asked; and I told him the
'Royal Oak' was two miles; and he said, 'Drive like lightning, and I'll
give you half a guinea a-piece'--I hope he's not gone dead--'if you get
there in time.'"
By this time their heads were in the carriage again.
"Do you notice a sort of a little jerk in his foot, just the least thing
in the world?" inquired the landlord, who had sent for the doctor. "It
will be a fit, after all. If he's living, we'll fetch him into the
'ouse."
The doctor's house was just round the corner of the road, where the
clump of elms stands, little more than a hundred yards from the sign of
the "Royal Oak."
"Who is he?" inquired Mr. Truelock.
"I don't know," answered the postilion.
"What's his name?"
"Don't know that, neither."
"Why, it'll be on that box, won't it?" urged the innkeeper, pointing to
the roof, where a portmanteau with a glazed cover was secured.
"Nothing on that but 'R. A.,'" answered the man, who had examined it
half an hour before, with the same object.
"Royal Artillery, eh?"
While they were thus conjecturing, the doctor arrived. He stepped into
the chaise, felt the old man's hand, tried his pulse, and finally
applied the stethoscope.
"It is a nervous seizure. He is in a very exhausted state," said the
doctor, stepping out again, and addressing Truelock. "You must get him
into bed, and don't let his head down; take off his handkerchief, and
open his shirt-collar--do you mind? I had best arrange him myself."
So the forlorn old man, without a servant, without a name, is carried
from the chaise, possibly to die in an inn.
The Rev. Peter Sprott, the rector, passing that way a few minutes later,
and hearing what had befallen, went up to the bed-room, where the old
gentleman lay in a four-poster, still unconscious.
"Here's a case," said the doctor to his clerical friend. "A nervous
attack. He'd be all right in no time, but he's so low. I daresay he
crossed the herring-pond to-day, and was ill; he's in such an exhausted
state. I should not wonder if he sank; and here we are, without a clue
to his name or people. No servant, no name on his trunk; and, certainly,
it would be awkward if he died unrecognised, and without a word to
apprise his relations."
"Is there no letter in his pockets?"
"Not one," Truelock says.
The rector happened to take up the great-coat of the old gentleman, in
which he found a small breast pocket, that had been undiscovered till
now, and in this a letter. The envelope was gone, but the letter, in a
lady's hand began: "My dearest papa."
"We are all right, by Jove, we're in luck!"
"How does she sign herself?" said the doctor.
"'Alice Arden,' and she dates from 8, Chester Terrace," answered the
clergyman.
"We'll telegraph forthwith," said the doctor. "It had best be in your
name--the clergyman, you know--to a young lady."
So together they composed the telegram.
"Shall it be _ill_ simply, or _dangerously_ ill?" inquired the
clergyman.
"Dangerously," said the doctor.
"But _dangerously_ may terrify her."
"And if we say only _ill_, she mayn't come at all," said the doctor.
So the telegram was placed in Truelock's hands, who went himself with it
to the office; and we shall follow it to its destination.
CHAPTER X.
THE ROYAL OAK.
Three people were sitting in Lady May Penrose's drawing-room, in Chester
Terrace, the windows of which, as all her ladyship's friends are aware,
command one of the parks. They were looking westward, where the sky was
all a-glow with the fantastic gold and crimson of sunset. It is quite a
mistake to fancy that sunset, even in the heart of London--which this
hardly could be termed--has no rural melancholy and poetic fascination
in it. Should that hour by any accident overtake you, in the very centre
of the city, looking, say, from an upper window, or any other elevation
toward the western sky beyond stacks of chimneys, roofs, and steeples,
even through the smoke of London, you will feel the melancholy and
poetry of sunset, in spite of your surroundings.
A little silence had stolen over the party; and young Vivian Darnley,
who stole a glance now and then at beautiful Alice Arden, whose large,
dark, grey eyes were gazing listlessly towards the splendid mists, that
were piled in the west, broke the silence by a remark that, without
being very wise, or very new, was yet, he hoped, quite in accord with
the looks of the girl, who seemed for a moment saddened.
"I wonder why it is that sunset, which is so beautiful, makes us all
sad!"
"It never made me sad," said good Lady May Penrose, comfortably. "There
is, I think, something very pleasant in a good sunset; there _must_ be,
for all the little birds begin to sing in it--it must be cheerful. Don't
you think so, Alice?"
Alice was, perhaps, thinking of something quite different, for rather
listlessly, and without a change of features, she said, "Oh, yes, very."
"So, Mr. Darnley, you may sing, 'Oh, leave me to my sorrow!' for we
won't mope with you about the sky. It is a very odd taste, that for
being dolorous and miserable. I don't understand it--I never could."
Thus rebuked by Lady Penrose, and deserted by Alice, Darnley laughed and
said--
"Well, I do seem rather to have put my foot in it--but I did not mean
miserable, you know; I meant only that kind of thing that one feels when
reading a bit of really good poetry--and most people do not think it a
rather pleasant feeling."
"Don't mind that moping creature, Alice; let us talk about something we
can all understand. I heard a bit of news to-day--perhaps, Mr. Darnley,
you can throw a light upon it. You are a distant relation, I think, of
Mr. David Arden."
"Some very remote cousinship, of which I am very proud," answered the
young man gaily, with a glance at Alice.
"And what is that--what about uncle David?" inquired the young lady,
with animation.
"I heard it from my banker to-day. Your uncle, you know, dear, despises
us and our doings, and lives, I understand, very quietly; I mean, he has
chosen to live quite out of the world, so we have no chance of hearing
anything except by accident, from people we are likely to know. Do you
see much of your uncle, my dear?"
"Not a great deal; but I am very fond of him--he is such a good man, or
at least, what is better," she laughed, "he has always been so very kind
to me."
"You know him, Mr. Darnley?" inquired Lady May.
"By Jove, I do!"
"And like him?"
"No one on earth has better reason to like him," answered the young man
warmly--"he has been my best friend on earth."
"It is pleasant to know two people who are not ashamed to be grateful,"
said fat Lady May, with a smile.
The young lady returned her smile very kindly. I don't think you ever
beheld a prettier creature than Alice Arden. Vivian Darnley had wasted
many a secret hour in sketching that oval face. Those large, soft, grey
eyes, and long dark lashes, how difficult they are to express! And the
brilliant lips! Could art itself paint anything quite like her? Who
could paint those beautiful dimples that made her smiles so soft, or
express the little circlet of pearly teeth whose tips were just
disclosed? Stealthily he was now, for the thousandth time, studying that
bewitching smile again.
"And what is the story about Uncle David?" asked Alice again.
"Well, what will you say--and you, Mr. Darnley, if it should be a story
about a young lady?"
"Do you mean that Uncle David is going to marry? I think it would be an
awful pity!" exclaimed Alice.
"Well, dear, to put you out of pain, I'll tell you at once; I only know
this--that he is going to provide for her somehow, but whether by
adopting her as a child, or taking her for a wife, I can't tell. Only I
never saw any one looking archer than Mr. Brounker did to-day when he
told me; and I fancied from that it could not be so dull a business as
merely making her his daughter."
"And who is the young lady?" asked Alice.
"Did you ever happen to meet anywhere a Miss Grace Maubray?"
"Oh, yes," answered Alice quickly. "She was staying, and her father,
Colonel Maubray, at the Wymerings' last autumn. She's quite lovely, I
think, and very clever--but I don't know--I think she's a little
ill-natured, but very amusing. She seems to have a talent for cutting
people up--and a little of that kind of thing, you know, is very well,
but one does not care for it _always_. And is she really the young
lady?"
"Yes, and---- Dear me! Mr. Darnley, I'm afraid my story has alarmed
you."
"Why should it?" laughed Vivian Darnley, partly to cover, perhaps, a
little confusion.
"I can't tell, I'm sure, but you blushed as much as a man can; and you
know you did. I wonder, Alice, what this under-plot can be, where all is
so romantic. Perhaps, after all, Mr. David Arden is to adopt the young
lady, and some one else, to whom he is also kind, is to marry her. Don't
you think that would be a very natural arrangement?"
Alice laughed, and Darnley laughed; but he was embarrassed.
"And Colonel Maubray, is he still living?" asked Alice.
"Oh, no, dear; he died ten or eleven months ago. A very foolish man, you
know; he wasted a very good property. He was some distant relation,
also; Mr. Brounker said your uncle, Mr. David Arden, was very much
attached to him--they were schoolfellows, and great friends all their
lives."
"I should not wonder," said Alice smiling--and then became silent.
"Do you know the young lady, this fortunate Miss Maubray?" said Lady
May, turning to Vivian Darnley again.
"I? Yes--that is, I can't say more than a mere acquaintance--and not an
old one. I made her acquaintance at Mr. Arden's house. He is her
guardian. I don't know about any other arrangements. I daresay there may
be."
"Well, I know her a little, also," said Lady May. "I thought her
pretty--and she sings a little, and she's clever."
"She's all that," said Alice. "Oh, here comes Dick! What do you say,
Richard--is not Miss Maubray very pretty? We are making a plot to marry
her to Vivian Darnley, and get Uncle David to contribute her _dot_."
"What benevolent people! _You_ don't object, I dare say, Vivian."
"I have not been consulted," said he; "and, of course, Uncle David need
not be consulted, as he has simply to transfer the proper quantity of
stock."
Richard Arden had drawn near Lady May, and said a few words in a low
tone, which seemed not unwelcome to her.
"I saw Longcluse this morning. He has not been here, has he?" he added,
as a little silence threatened the conversation.
"No, he has not turned up. And what a charming person he is!" exclaimed
Lady May.
"I quite agree with you, Lady May," said Arden. "He is, take him on
every subject, I think, about the cleverest fellow I ever met--art,
literature, games, _chess_, which I take to be a subject by itself. He
is very great at chess--for an amateur, I mean--and when I was
chess-mad, nearly a year ago and beginning to grow conceited, he opened
my eyes, I can tell you; and Airly says he is the best musical critic in
England, and can tell you at any hour who is who in the opera, all over
Europe; and he really understands, what so few of us here know anything
about, foreign politics, and all the people and their stories and
scandals he has at his fingers' ends. And he is such good company, when
he chooses, and such a gentleman always!"
"He is very agreeable and amusing when he takes the trouble; I always
like to listen when Mr. Longcluse talks," said Alice Arden, to the
secret satisfaction of her brother, whose enthusiasm was, I think,
directed a good deal to her--and to, perhaps, the vexation of other
people, whom she did not care at that moment to please.
"An Admirable Crichton!" murmured Vivian Darnley, with a rather
hackneyed sneer. "Do you like his style of--_beauty_, I suppose I should
call it? It has the merit of being very uncommon, at least, don't you
think?"
"Beauty, I think, matters very little. He has no beauty, but his face
has what, in a man, I think a great deal better--I mean refinement, and
cleverness, and a kind of satire that rather interests one," said Miss
Arden, with animation.
Sir Walter Scott, in his "Rob Roy"--thinking, no doubt, of the Diana
Vernon of his early days, the then beautiful lady, long afterwards
celebrated by Basil Hall as the old Countess Purgstorf (if I rightly
remember the title), and recurring to some cherished incident, and the
thrill of a pride that had ceased to agitate, but was at once pleasant
and melancholy to remember--wrote these words: "She proceeded to read
the first stanza, which was nearly to the following purpose. [Then
follow the verses.] 'There is a great deal of it,' said she, glancing
along the paper, and interrupting the sweetest sounds that mortal ears
can drink in--those of a youthful poet's verses, namely, read by the
lips which are dearest to them." So writes Walter Scott. On the other
hand, in certain states, is there a pain intenser than that of listening
to the praises of another man from the lips we love?
"Well," said Darnley, "as you say so, I suppose there is all that,
though I can't see it. Of course, if he tries to make himself agreeable
(which he never does to me), it makes a difference, it affects
everything--it affects even his looks. But I should not have thought him
good-looking. On the contrary, he appears to me about as ugly a fellow
as one could see in a day."
"He's not that," said Alice. "No one could be ugly with so much
animation and so much expression."
"You take up the cudgels very prettily, my dear, for Mr. Longcluse,"
said Lady May. "I'm sure he ought to be extremely obliged to you."
"So he would be," said Richard Arden. "It would upset him for a week, I
have no doubt."
There are few things harder to interpret than a blush. At these words
the beautiful face of Alice Arden flushed, first with a faint, and then,
as will happen, with a brighter crimson. If Lady May had seen it, she
would have laughed, probably, and told her how much it became her. But
she was, at that moment, going to her chair in the window, and Richard
Arden would, of course, accompany her. He did see it, as distinctly as
he saw the glow in the sky over the park trees. But, knowing what a
slight matter will sometimes make a recoil, and even found an antipathy,
he wisely chose to see it not--and chatting gaily, followed Lady May to
the window.
But Vivian Darnley, though he said nothing, saw that blush, of which
Alice, with a sort of haughty defiance, was conscious. It did not make
him like or admire Mr. Longcluse more.
"Well, I suppose he is very charming--I don't know him well enough
myself to give an opinion. But he makes his acquaintances rather oddly,
doesn't he? I don't think any one will dispute that."
"I don't know really. Lady May introduced him to me, and she seems to
like him very much. So far as I can see, people are very well pleased at
knowing him, and don't trouble their heads as to how it came about,"
said Miss Arden.
"No, of course; but people not fortunate enough to come within the
influence of his fascination, can't help observing. How did he come to
know your brother, for instance? Did any one introduce him? Nothing of
the kind. Richard's horse was hurt or lame at one of the hunts in
Warwickshire, and he lent him a horse, and introduced himself, and they
dined together that evening on the way back, and so the thing was done."
"Can there be a better introduction than a kindness?" asked Alice.
"Yes, where it _is_ a kindness, I agree; but no one has a right to push
his services upon a stranger who does not ask for them."
"I really can't see. Richard need not have taken his horse if he had not
liked," she answered.
"And Lady May, who thinks him such a paragon, knows no more about him
than any one else. She had her footman behind her--didn't she tell you
all about it?"
"I really don't recollect; but does it very much matter?"
"I think it does--that is, it has been a sort of system. He just gave
her his arm over a crossing, where she had taken fright, and then
pretended to think her a great deal more frightened than she really can
have been, and made her sit down to recover in a confectioner's shop,
and so saw her home, and _that_ affair was concluded. I don't say, of
course, that he is never introduced in the regular way; but a year or
two ago, when he was beginning, he always made his approaches by means
of that kind of stratagem; and the fact is, no one knows anything on
earth about him; he has emerged, like a figure in a phantasmagoria, from
total darkness, and may lose himself in darkness again at any moment."
"I am interested in that man, whoever he is; his entrance, and his
probable exit, so nearly resemble mine," said a clear, deep-toned voice
close to them; and looking up, Miss Arden saw the pale face and peculiar
smile of Mr. Longcluse in the fading twilight.
Mr. Longcluse was greeted by Lady May and by Richard Arden, and then
again he drew near Alice, and said, "Do you recollect, Miss Arden, about
ten days ago I told you a story that seemed to interest you--the story
of a young and eloquent friar, who died of love in his cell in an abbey
in the Tyrol, and whose ghost used to be seen pensively leaning on the
pulpit from which he used to preach, too much thinking of the one
beautiful face among his audience, which had enthralled him. I had left
the enamel portrait I told you of at an artist's in Paris, and I wrote
for it, thinking you might wish to see it--hoping you might care to see
it," he added, in a lower tone, observing that Vivian Darnley, who was
not in a happy temper, had, with a sudden impulse of disdain, removed
himself to another window, there to contemplate the muster of the stars
in the darkening sky, at his leisure.
"That was so kind of you, Mr. Longcluse! You have had a great deal of
trouble. It _is_ such an interesting story!" said Alice.
In his reception, Mr. Longcluse found something that pleased, almost
elated him. Had Richard Arden been speaking to her on the subject of
their morning's conversation? He thought not, Lady May had mentioned
that he had not been with them till just twenty minutes ago, and Arden
had told him that he had dined with his uncle David and Mr. Blount, upon
the same business on which he had been occupied with both nearly all
day. No, he could not have spoken to her. The slight change which made
him so tumultuously proud and happy, was entirely spontaneous.
"So it seemed to me--an eccentric and interesting story--but pray do not
wound me by speaking of trouble. I only wish you knew half the pleasure
it has been to me to get it to show you. May I hold the lamp near for a
moment while you look at it?" he said, indicating a tiny lamp which
stood on a pier-table, showing a solitary gleam, like a lighthouse,
through the gloom; "you could not possibly see it in this faint
twilight."
The lady assented. Had Mr. Longcluse ever felt happier?
CHAPTER XI.
THE TELEGRAM ARRIVES.
Mr. Longcluse placed the little oval enamel, set in gold, in Miss
Arden's fingers, and held the lamp beside her while she looked.
"How beautiful!--how very interesting!" she exclaimed. "What suffering
in those thin, handsome features! What a strange enthusiasm in those
large hazel eyes! I could fancy that monk the maddest of lovers, the
most chivalric of saints. And did he really suffer that incredible fate?
Did he really die of love?"
"So they say. But why incredible? I can quite imagine that wild
shipwreck, seeing what a raging sea love is, and how frail even the
strongest life."
"Well, I can't say, I am sure. But your own novelists laugh at the idea
of any but women--whose business it is, of course, to pay that tribute
to their superiors--dying of love. But if any man could die such a
death, he must be such as this picture represents. What a wild, agonised
picture of passion and asceticism! What suicidal devotion and melancholy
rapture! I confess I could almost fall in love with that picture
myself."
"And I think, were I he, I could altogether die to earn one such
sentence, so spoken," said Mr. Longcluse.
"Could you lend it to me for a very few days?" asked the young lady.
"As many--as long as you please. I am only too happy."
"I should so like to make a large drawing of this in chalks!" said
Alice, still gazing on the miniature.
"You draw so beautifully in chalks! Your style is not often found
here--your colouring is so fine."
"Do you really think so?"
"You must know it, Miss Arden. You are too good an artist not to suspect
what everyone else must see, the real excellence of your drawings. Your
colouring is better understood in France. Your master, I fancy, was a
Frenchman?" said Mr. Longcluse.
"Yes, he was, and we got on very well together. Some of his young lady
pupils were very much afraid of him."
"Your poetry is fired by that picture, Miss Arden. Your copy will be a
finer thing than the original," said he.
"I shall aim only at making it a faithful copy; and if I can accomplish
anything like that, I shall be only too glad."
"I hope you will allow me to see it?" pleaded Longcluse.
"Oh, certainly," she laughed. "Only I'm a little afraid of you, Mr.
Longcluse."
"What can you mean, Miss Arden?"
"I mean, you are so good a critic in art, every one says, that I really
_am_ afraid of you," answered the young lady, laughing.
"I should be very glad to forfeit any little knowledge I have, if it
were attended with such a misfortune," said Longcluse. "But I don't
flatter; I tell you truly, a critic has only to admire, when he looks at
your drawings; they are quite above the level of an amateur's work."
"Well, whether you mean it or not, I _am_ very much flattered," she
laughed. "And though wise people say that flattery spoils one, I can't
help thinking it very agreeable to be flattered."
At this point of the dialogue Mr. Vivian Darnley--who wished that it
should be plain to all, and to one in particular, that he did not care
the least what was going on in other parts of the room--began to stumble
through the treble of a tune at the piano with his right hand. And
whatever other people may have thought of his performance, to Miss Alice
Arden it seemed very good music indeed, and inspired her with fresh
animation. Such as it was, Mr. Darnley's solo also turned the course of
Miss Arden's thoughts from drawing to another art, and she said--
"You, Mr. Longcluse, who know everything about the opera, can you tell
me--of course you can--anything about the great basso who is coming?"
"Stentoroni?"
"Yes; the newspapers and critics promise wonders."
"It is nearly two years since I heard him. He was very great, and
deserves all they say in 'Robert le Diable.' But there his greatness
began and ended. The voice, of course, you had, but everything else was
defective. It is plain, however, that the man who could make so fine a
study of one opera, could with equal labour make as great a success in
others. He has not sung in any opera for more than a year and a half,
and has been working diligently; and so everyone is in the dark very
much, and I am curious to hear the result--and nobody knows more than I
have told you. You are sure of a good 'Robert le Diable,' but all the
rest is speculation."
"And now, Mr. Longcluse, I shall try your good-nature."
"How?"
"I am going to make Lady May ask you to sing a song."
"Pray don't."
"Why not?"
"I should so much rather you asked me yourself."
"That's very good of you; then I certainly shall. I _do_ ask you."
"And I instantly obey. And what shall the song be?" asked he,
approaching the piano, to which she also walked.
"Oh, that ghostly one that I liked so much when you sang it here about a
week ago," she answered.
"I know it--yes, with pleasure." And he sat down at the piano, and in a
clear, rich baritone, sang the following odd song:--
"The autumn leaf was falling
At midnight from the tree,
When at her casement calling,
'I'm here, my love,' says he.
'Come down and mount behind me,
And rest your little head,
And in your white arms wind me,
Before that I be dead.
"'You've stolen my heart by magic,
I've kissed your lips in dreams:
Our wooing wild and tragic
Has been in ghostly scenes.
The wondrous love I bear you
Has made one life of twain,
And it will bless or scare you,
In deathless peace or pain.
"'Our dreamland shall be glowing,
If you my bride will be;
To darkness both are going,
Unless you come with me.
Come now, and mount behind me,
And rest your little head,
And in your white arms wind me,
Before that I be dead.'"
"Why, dear Alice, will you choose that dismal song, when you know that
Mr. Longcluse has so many others that are not only charming, but cheery
and natural?"
"It is because it is _un_natural that I like that song so much; the air
is so ominous and spectral, and yet so passionate. I think the idea is
Icelandic--those ghostly lovers that came in the dark to win their
beloved maidens, who as yet knew nothing of their having died, to ride
with them over the snowy fields and frozen rivers, to join their friends
at a merry-making which they were never to see; but there is something
more mysterious even in this lover, for his passion has unearthly
beginnings that lose themselves in utter darkness. Thank you very much,
Mr. Longcluse. It is so very kind of you! And now, Lady May, isn't it
your turn to choose? May she choose, Mr. Longcluse?"
"Any one, if you desire it, may choose anything I possess, and have it,"
said he, in a low impassioned murmur.
How the young lady would have taken this, I know not, but all were
suddenly interrupted. For at this moment a servant entered with a note,
which he presented, upon a salver, to Mr. Longcluse.
"Your servant is waiting, Sir, please, for orders in the awl," murmured
the man.
"Oh, yes--thanks," said Mr. Longcluse, who saw a shabby letter, with the
words "Private" and "Immediate" written in a round, vulgar hand over the
address.
"Pray read your note, Mr. Longcluse, and don't mind us," said Lady May.
"Thank you very much. I think I know what this is. I gave some evidence
to-day at an inquest," began Mr. Longcluse.
"That wretched Frenchman," interposed Lady May, "Monsieur Lebrun or----"
"Lebas," said Vivian Darnley.
"Yes, so it was, Lebas; what a frightful thing that was!" continued Lady
May, who was always well up in the day's horrors.
"Very melancholy, and very alarming also. It is a selfish way of looking
at it, but one can't help thinking it might just as well have happened
to any one else who was there. It brings it home to one a little
uncomfortably," said Mr. Longcluse, with an uneasy smile and a shrug.
"And you actually gave evidence, Mr. Longcluse?" said Lady May.
"Yes, a little," he answered. "It may lead to something. I hope so. As
yet it only indicates a line of inquiry. It will be in the papers, I
suppose, in the morning. There will be, I daresay, a pretty full report
of that inquest."
"Then you saw something occur that excited your suspicions?" said Lady
May.
Mr. Longcluse recounted all he had to tell, and mentioned having made
inquiries as to the present abode of the man, Paul Davies, at the police
office.
"And this note, I daresay, is the one they promised to send me, telling
the result of their inquiries," he added.
"Pray open it and see," said Lady May.
He did so. He read it in silence. From his foot to the crown of his head
there crept a cold influence as he read. Stream after stream, this
_aura_ of fear spread upwards to his brain. Pale Mr. Longcluse shrugged
and smiled, and smiled and shrugged, as his dark eye ran down the lines,
and with a careless finger he turned the page over. He smiled, as
prizefighters smile for the spectators, while every nerve quivered with
pain. He looked up, smiling still, and thrust the note into his
breast-pocket.
"Well, Mr. Longcluse, a long note it seems to have been," said Lady May,
curiously.
"Not very long, but what is as bad, very illegible," said Mr. Longcluse
gaily.
"And what about the man--the person the police were to have inquired
after?" she persisted.
"I find it is no police information, nothing of the kind," answered
Longcluse with the same smile. "It comes by no means from one of that
long-headed race of men; on the contrary, poor fellow, I believe he is
literally a little mad. I make him a trifling present every Christmas,
and that is a very good excuse for his plaguing me all the year round. I
was in hopes this letter might turn out an amusing one, but it is not;
it is a failure. It is rather sensible, and disgusting."
"Well, then, I must have my song, Mr. Longcluse," said Lady May, who,
under cover of music, sometimes talked a little, in gentle murmurs, to
that person with whom talk was particularly interesting.
But that song was not to be heard in Lady May's drawing-room that night,
for a kindred interruption, though much more serious in its effects upon
Mr. Longcluse's companions, occurred. A footman entered, and presented
on a salver a large brown envelope to Miss Alice Arden.
"Oh, dear! It is a telegram," exclaimed Miss Arden, who had taken it to
the window. Lady May Penrose was beside her by this time. Alice looked
on the point of fainting.
"I'm afraid papa is very ill," she whispered, handing the paper, which
trembled very much in her hand, to Lady May.
"H'm! Yes--but you may be sure it's exaggerated. Bring some sherry and
water, please. You look a little frightened, my dear. Sit down, darling.
There now! These messages are always written in a panic. What do you
mean to do?"
"I'll go, of course," said Alice.
"Well, yes--I think you must go. What is the place? Twyford, the 'Royal
Oak?' Look out Twyford, please Mr. Darnley--there's a book there. It
must be a post-town. It was thoughtful saying it is on the Dover coach
road."
Vivian Darnley was gazing in deep concern at Alice. Instantly he began
turning over the book, and announced in a few moments more--"It is a
post-town--only thirty-six miles from London," said Mr. Darnley.
"Thanks," said Lady May. "Oh, here's the wine--I'm so glad! You must
have a little, dear; and you'll take Louisa Diaper with you, of course;
and you shall have one of my carriages, and I'll send a servant with
you, and he'll arrange everything; and how soon do you wish to go?"
"Immediately, instantly--thanks, darling. I'm _so_ much obliged!"
"Will your brother go with you?"
"No, dear. Papa, you know, has not forgiven him, and it is, I think, two
years since they met. It would only agitate him."
And with these words she hurried to her room, and in another moment,
with the aid of her maid, was completing her hasty preparations.
In wonderfully little time the carriage was at the door. Mr. Longcluse
had taken his leave. So had Richard Arden, with the one direction to the
servant, "If anything should go _very_ wrong, be sure to telegraph for
me. Here is my address."
"Put this in your purse, dear," said Lady May. "Your father is so
thoughtless, he may not have brought money enough with him; and you will
find it is as I say--he'll be a great deal better by the time you get
there; and God bless you, my dear."
And she kissed her as heartily as she dared, without communicating the
rouge and white powder which aided her complexion.
As Alice ran down, Vivian Darnley awaited her outside the drawing-room
door, and ran down with her, and put her into the carriage. He leaned
for a moment on the window, and said--
"I hope you didn't mind that nonsense Lady May was talking just now
about Miss Grace Maubray. I assure you it is utter folly. I was awfully
vexed; but you didn't believe it?"
"I didn't hear her say anything, at least seriously. Wasn't she
laughing? I'm in such trouble about that message! I am so longing to be
at my journey's end!"
He took her hand and pressed it, and the carriage drove away. And
standing on the steps, and quite forgetting the footman close behind
him, he watched it as it drove rapidly southward, until it was quite out
of sight, and then with a great sigh and "God for ever bless
you!"--uttered not above his breath--he turned about, and saw those
powdered and liveried effigies, and walked up with his head rather high
to the drawing-room, where he found Lady May.
"I sha'n't go to the opera to-night; it is out of the question," said
she. "But _you_ shall. You go to my box, you know; Jephson will put you
in there."
It was plain that the good-natured soul was unhappy about Alice, and,
Richard Arden having departed, wished to be alone. So Vivian took his
leave, and went away--but not to the opera--and sauntered for an hour,
instead, in a melancholy romance up and down the terrace, till the moon
rose and silvered the trees in the park.
CHAPTER XII.
SIR REGINALD ARDEN.
The human mind being, in this respect, of the nature of a kaleidoscope,
that the slightest hitch, or jolt, or tremor is enough to change the
entire picture that occupies it, it is not to be supposed that the
illness of her father, alarming as it was, could occupy Alice Arden's
thoughts to the exclusion of every other subject, during every moment of
her journey. One picture, a very pretty one, frequently presented
itself, and always her heart felt a strange little pain as this pretty
phantom appeared. It was the portrait of a young girl, with fair golden
hair, a brilliant complexion, and large blue eyes, with something
_riant_, triumphant, and arch to the verge of mischief, in her animated
and handsome face.
The careless words of good Lady May, this evening, and the very obvious
confusion of Vivian Darnley at mention of the name of Grace Maubray,
troubled her. What was more likely than that Uncle David, interested in
both, should have seriously projected the union which Lady May had gaily
suggested? If she--Alice Arden--liked Vivian Darnley, it was not very
much, her pride insisted. In her childhood they had been thrown
together. He had seemed to like her; but had he ever spoken? Why was he
silent? Was she fool enough to like him?--that cautious, selfish young
man, who was thinking, she was quite certain now, of a marriage of
prudence or ambition with Grace Maubray? It was a cold, cruel, sordid
world!
But, after all, why should he have spoken? or why should he have hoped
to be heard with favour? She had been to him, thank Heaven, just as any
other pleasant, early friend. There was nothing to regret--nothing
fairly to blame. It was just that a person whom she had come to regard
as a property was about to go, and belong quite, to another. It was the
foolish little jealousy that everyone feels, and that means nothing. So
she told herself; but constantly recurred the same pretty image, and
with it the same sudden little pain at her heart.
But now came the other care. As time and space shorten, and the moment
of decision draws near, the pain of suspense increases. They were within
six miles of Twyford. Her heart was in a wild flutter--now throbbing
madly, now it seemed standing still. The carriage window was down. She
was looking out on the scenery--strange to her--all bright and serene
under a brilliant moon. What message awaited her at the inn to which
they were travelling at this swift pace? How frightful it might be!
"Oh, Louisa!" she every now and then imploringly cried to her maid, "how
do you think it will be? Oh! how will it be? Do you think he'll be
better? Oh! do you think he'll be better? Tell me again about his other
illness, and how he recovered? Don't you think he will this time? Oh,
Louisa, darling! don't you think so? Tell me--_tell_ me you do!"
Thus, in her panic, the poor girl wildly called for help and comfort,
until at last the carriage turned a curve in the road at which stood a
shadowy clump of elms, and in another moment the driver pulled up under
the sign of the "Royal Oak."
"Oh, Louisa! Here it is," cried the young lady, holding her maid's wrist
with a trembling grasp.
The inn-door was shut, but there was light in the hall, and light in an
upper room.
"Don't knock--only ring the bell. He may be asleep, God grant!" said the
young lady.
The door was quickly opened, and a waiter ran down to the carriage
window, where he saw a pair of large wild eyes, and a very pale face,
and heard the question--"An old gentlemen has been ill here, and a
telegram was sent; is he--how is he?"
"He's better, Ma'am," said the man.
With a low, long "O--Oh!" and clasped hands and upturned eyes, she
leaned back in the carriage, and a sudden flood of tears relieved her.
Yes; he was a great deal better. The attack was quite over; but he had
not spoken. He seemed much exhausted; and having swallowed some claret,
which the doctor prescribed, he had sunk into a sound and healthy sleep,
in which he still lay. A message by telegraph had been sent to announce
the good news, but Alice was some way on her journey before it had
reached.
Now the young lady got down, and entered the homely old inn, followed by
her maid. She could have dropped on her knees in gratitude to her Maker;
but true religion, like true affection, is shy of demonstrating its
fervours where sympathy is doubtful.
Gently, hardly breathing, guided by the "chambermaid," she entered her
father's room, and stood at his bedside. There he lay, yellow, lean, the
lines of his face in repose still forbidding, the thin lips and thin
nose looking almost transparent, and breathing deeply and regularly, as
a child in his slumbers. In that face Alice could not discover what any
stranger would have seen. She only saw the face of her father. Selfish
and capricious as he was, and violent too--a wicked old man, if one
could see him justly--he was yet proud of her, and had many schemes and
projects afloat in his jaded old brain, of which her beauty was the
talisman, of which she suspected nothing, and with which his head was
never more busy than at the very moment when he was surprised by the
_aura_ of his coming fit.
The doctor's conjecture was right. He had crossed the Channel that
morning. In his French _coupée_, he had for companion the very man he
had most wished and contrived to travel homeward with. This was Lord
Wynderbroke.
Lord Wynderbroke was fifty years old and upwards. He was very much taken
with Alice, whom he had met pretty often. He was a man who was thought
likely to marry. His estate was in the nattiest order. He had always
been prudent, and cultivated a character. He had, moreover, mortgages
over Sir Reginald Arden's estate, the interest of which the baronet was
beginning to find it next to impossible to pay. They had been making a
little gouty visit to Vichy, and Sir Reginald had taken good care to
make the journey homeward with Lord Wynderbroke, who knew that when he
pleased he could be an amusing companion, and who also felt that kind of
interest in him which everyone experiences in the kindred of the young
lady of whom he is enamoured.
The baronet, who tore up or burnt his letters for the most part, had
kept this particular one by which his daughter had been traced and
summoned to the "Royal Oak." It was, he thought, clever. It was amusing,
and had some London gossip. He had read bits of it to Lord Wynderbroke
in the _coupée_. Lord Wynderbroke was delighted. When they parted, he
had asked leave to pay him a visit at Mortlake.
"Only too happy, if you are not afraid of the old house falling in upon
us. Everything _there_, you know, is very much as my grandfather left
it. I only use it as a caravanserai, and alight there for a little, on a
journey. Everything there is tumbling to pieces. But you won't mind--no
more than I do."
So the little visit was settled. The passage was rough. Peer and baronet
were ill. They did not care to reunite their fortunes after they touched
English ground. As the baronet drew near London, for certain reasons he
grew timid. He got out with a portmanteau and dressing-case, and an
umbrella, at Drowark station, sent his servant on with the rest of the
luggage by rail, and himself took a chaise; and, after one change of
horses, had reached the "Royal Oak" in the state in which we first saw
him.
The doctor had told the people at that inn that he would look in, in the
course of the night, some time after one o'clock, being a little uneasy
about a possible return of the old man's malady. There was that in the
aristocratic looks and belongings of his patient, and in the very
fashionable address to which the message to his daughter was
transmitted, which induced in the mind of the learned man a suspicion
that a "swell" might have accidentally fallen into his hands.
By this time, thanks to the diligence of Louisa Diaper, every one in the
house had been made acquainted with the fact that the sick man was no
other than Sir Reginald Arden, Bart., and with many other circumstances
of splendour, which would not, perhaps, have so well stood the test of
inquiry. The doctor and his crony, the rector--simplest of parsons--who
had agreed to accompany him in this nocturnal call, being a curious man,
as gentlemen inhabiting quiet villages will be--these two gentlemen now
heard all this lore in the hall at a quarter past one, and entered the
patient's chamber (where they found Miss Arden and her maid)
accordingly. In whispers, the doctor made to Miss Arden a most
satisfactory report. He made his cautious inspection of the patient, and
again had nothing but what was cheery to say.
If the rector had not prided himself upon his manners, and had been
content with one bow on withdrawing from the lady's presence, they would
not that night have heard the patient's voice--and perhaps, all things
considered, so much the better.
"I trust, Madam, in the morning Sir Reginald may be quite himself again.
It is pleasant, Madam, to witness slumber so quiet," murmured the
clergyman kindly, and in perfect good faith. "It is the slumber of a
tranquil mind--a spirit at peace with itself."
Smiling kindly in making the last stiff bow which accompanied these
happy words, the good man tilted over a little table behind him, on
which stood a decanter of claret, a water caraffe, and two glasses, all
of which came to the ground with a crash that wakened the baronet. He
sat up straight in his bed and stared round, while the clergyman, in
consternation, exclaimed--"Good gracious!"
"Hollo! what is it?" cried the fierce, thin voice of the baronet. "What
the devil's all this? Where's Crozier? Where's my servant? Will you,
will you, some of you, say where the devil I am?" He was screaming all
this, and groping and clutching at either side of the bed's head for a
bell-rope, intending to rouse the house. "Where's Crozier, I say? Where
the devil's my servant? eh? He's gone by rail, ain't he? No one came
with me. And where's this? What is it? Are you all tongue-tied?--haven't
you a word among you?"
The clergyman had lifted his hands in terror at the harangue of the old
man of the "tranquil mind." Alice had taken his thin hand, standing
beside him, and was speaking softly in his ear. But his prominent brown
eyes were fiercely scanning the strangers, and the hand which clutched
hers was trembling with eager fury. "Will some of you say what you mean,
or what you are doing, or where I am?" and he screeched another sentence
or two, that made the old clergyman very uncomfortable.
"You arrived here, Sir Reginald, about six hours ago--extremely ill,
Sir," said the doctor, who had placed himself close to his patient, and
spoke with official authority; "but we have got you all right again, we
hope; and this is the 'Royal Oak,' the principal hotel of Twyford, on
the Dover and London road; and my name is Proby."
"And what's all this?" cried the baronet, snatching up one of the
medicine-bottles from the little table by his bed, and plucking out the
cork and smelling at the fluid. "By heaven?" he screamed, "this is the
very thing. I could not tell what d----d taste was in my mouth, and here
it is. Why, my doctor tells me--and he knows his business--it is as much
as my life's worth to give me anything like--like that, pah! assafoetida!
If my stomach is upset with this filthy stuff, I give myself up! I'm
gone. I shall sink, Sir. Was there no one here, in the name of Heaven,
with a grain of sense or a particle of pity, to prevent that beast from
literally poisoning me? Egad! I'll make my son punish him! I'll make my
family hang him if I die!" There was a quaver of misery in his shriek of
fury, as if he was on the point of bursting into tears. "Doctor, indeed!
who sent for him? I didn't. Who gave him leave to drug me? Upon my soul,
I've been poisoned. To think of a creature in my state, dependent on
nourishment every hour, having his digestion destroyed! Doctor, indeed!
Pay him? Not I, begad," and he clenched his sentence with an ugly
expletive.
But all this concluding eloquence was lost upon the doctor, who had
mentioned, in a lofty "aside" to Miss Arden, that "unless sent for he
should not call again;" and with a marked politeness to her, and no
recognition whatever of the baronet, he had taken his departure.
"I'm not the doctor, Sir Reginald; I'm the clergyman," said the Reverend
Peter Sprott, gravely and timidly, for the prominent brown eyes were
threatening him.
"Oh, the clergyman! Oh, I see. Will you be so good as to ring the bell,
please, and excuse a sick man giving you that trouble. And is there a
post-office near this?"
"Yes, Sir--close by."
"This is you, Alice? I'm glad you're here. You must write a letter this
moment--a note to your brother. Don't be afraid--I'm better, a good
deal--and tell the people, when they come, to get me some strong soup
this moment, and--good evening, Sir, or good-night, or morning, or
whatever it is," he added, to the clergyman, who was taking his leave.
"What o'clock is it?" he asked Alice. "Well, you'll write to your
brother to meet me at Mortlake. I have not seen him, now, for how many
years? I forget. He's in town, is he? Very good. And tell him it is
perhaps the last time, and I expect him. I suppose he'll come. Say at a
quarter past nine in the evening. The sooner it's over the better. I
expect no good of it; it is only just to try. And I shall leave this
early--immediately after breakfast--as quickly as we can. I hate it!"
CHAPTER XIII.
ON THE ROAD.
Next morning the baronet was in high good-humour. He has written a
little reminder to Lord Wynderbroke. He will expect him at Mortlake the
day he named, to dinner. He remembers he promised to stay the night. He
can offer him, still, as good a game of piquet as he is likely to find
in his club; and he almost feels that he has no excuse but a selfish
one, for exacting the performance of a promise which gave him a great
deal of pleasure. His daughter, who takes care of her old father, will
make their tea and--_voilà tout!_
Sir Reginald was in particularly good spirits as he sent the waiter to
the post-office with this little note. He thinks within himself that he
never saw Alice in such good looks. His selfish elation waxes quite
affectionate, and Alice never remembered him so good-natured. She
doesn't know what to make of it exactly; but it pleases her, and she
looks all the more brilliant.
And now these foreign birds, whom a chance storm has thrown upon the
hospitality of the "Royal Oak," are up and away again. The old baronet
and his pretty daughter, Louisa Diaper sitting behind, in cloaks and
rugs, and the footman in front, to watch the old man's signals, are
whirling dustily along with a team of four horses; for Sir Reginald's
arrangements are never economical, and a pair would have brought them
over these short stages and home very nearly as fast. Lady May's
carriage pleases the old man, and helps his transitory good-humour: it
is so much more luxurious than the jolty hired vehicle in which he had
arrived.
Alice is permitted her thoughts to herself. The baronet has taken his
into companionship, and is leaning back in his corner, with his eyes
closed; and his pursed mouth, with its wonderful involution of wrinkles
round it, is working unconsciously; and his still dark eyebrows, now
elevating, now knitting themselves, indicate the same activity of brain.
With a silent look now and then at his face--for she need not ask
whether Sir Reginald wants anything, or would like anything changed, for
the baronet needs no inquiries of this kind, and makes people speedily
acquainted with his wants and fancies--she occupies her place beside
him, for the most part looking out listlessly from the window, and
thinks of many things. The baronet opens his eyes at last, and says
abruptly,
"Charming prospect! Charming day! You'll be glad to hear, Alice, I'm not
tired; I'm making my journey wonderfully! It is so pretty, and the sun
so cheery. You are looking so well, it is quite a pleasure to look at
you--charming! You'll come to me at Mortlake for a few days, to take
care of me, you know. I shall go on to Buxton in a week or so, and you
can return to Lady May to-night, and come to Mortlake shortly; and your
brother, graceless creature! I suppose, will come to-night. I expect
nothing from his visit, absolutely. He has been nothing to me but a
curse all his life. I suppose, if there's justice anywhere, he'll have
his deserts some day. But for the present I put him aside--I sha'n't
speak of him. He disturbs me."
They drove through London over Westminster Bridge, the servant thinking
that they were to go to Lady May Penrose's in Chester Terrace. It was
the first time that day, since he had talked of his son, that a black
shadow crossed Sir Reginald's face. He shrunk back. He drew up his
Chinese silk muffler over his chin. He was fearful lest some prowling
beak or eagle-eyed Jew should see his face, for Sir Reginald was just
then in danger. Glancing askance under the peak of his travelling cap,
he saw Talkington, with Wynderbroke on his arm, walking to their club.
How free and fearless those happy mortals looked! How the old man
yearned for his chat and his glass of wine at B----'s, and his afternoon
whist at W----'s! How he chafed and blasphemed inwardly at the invisible
obstacle that insurmountably interposed, and with what a fiery sting of
malice he connected the idea of his son with the fetters that bound him!
"You know that man?" said Sir Reginald sharply, as he saw Mr. Longcluse
raise his hat to her as they passed.
"Yes, I've met him pretty often at Lady May's."
"H'm! I had not an idea that anyone knew him. He's a man who might be of
use to one."
Here followed a silence.
"I thought, papa, you wished to go direct to Mortlake, and I don't think
this is the way," suggested Alice.
"Eh? heigho! You're right, child; upon my life, I was not thinking,"
said Sir Reginald, at the same time signalling vehemently to the
servant, who, having brought the carriage to a stand-still, came round
to the window.
"We don't stop anywhere in town, we go straight to Mortlake Hall. It is
beyond Islington. Have you ever been there? Well, you can tell them how
to reach it."
And Sir Reginald placed himself again in his corner. They had not
started early, and he had frequently interrupted their journey on
various whimsical pretexts. He remembered one house, for instance, where
there was a stock of the very best port he had ever tasted, and then he
stopped and went in, and after a personal interview with the proprietor,
had a bottle opened, and took two glasses, and so paid at the rate of
half a guinea each for them. It had been an interrupted journey, late
begun, and the sun was near its setting by the time they had got a mile
beyond the outskirts of Islington, and were drawing near the singular
old house where their journey was to end.
Always with a melancholy presentiment, Alice approached Mortlake Hall.
But never had she felt it more painfully than now. If there be in such
misgivings a prophetic force, was it to be justified by the coming
events of Miss Arden's life, which were awfully connected with that
scene?
They passed a quaint little village of tall stone houses, among great
old trees, with a rural and old-world air, and an ancient inn, with the
sign of "Guy of Warwick"--an inn of which we shall see more
by-and-by--faded, and like the rest of this little town, standing under
the shadow of old trees. They entered the road, dark with double
hedge-rows, and with a moss-grown park-wall on the right, in which, in a
little time, they reached a great iron gate with fluted pillars. They
drove up a broad avenue, flanked with files of gigantic trees, and
showing grand old timber also upon the park-like grounds beyond. The
dusky light of evening fell upon these objects, and the many windows,
the cornices, and the smokeless chimneys of a great old house. You might
have fancied yourself two hundred miles away from London.
"You don't stay here to-night, Alice. I wish you to return to Lady May,
and give her the note I am going to write. You and she come out to dine
here on Friday. If she makes a difficulty, I rely on you to persuade
her. I must have someone to meet Mr. Longcluse. I have reasons. Also, I
shall ask my brother David, and his ward Miss Maubray. I knew her
father: he was a fool, with his head full of romance, and he married a
very pretty woman who was a devil, without a shilling on earth. The girl
is an orphan, and David is her guardian, and he would like any little
attention we can show her. And we shall ask Vivian Darnley also. And
that will make a very suitable party."
Sir Reginald wrote his note, talking at intervals.
"You see, I want Lady May to come here again in a day or two, to stay
only for two or three days. She can go into town and remain there all
day, if she likes it. But Wynderbroke will be coming, and I should not
like him to find us quite deserted; and she said she'd come, and she may
as well do it now as another time. David lives so quietly, we are sure
of him; and I commit May Penrose to you. You must persuade her to come.
It will be cruel to disappoint. Here is her note--I will send the others
myself. And now, God bless you, dear Alice!"
"I am so uncomfortable at the idea of leaving you, papa." Her hand was
on his arm, and she was looking anxiously into his face.
"So of course you should be; only that I am so perfectly recovered, that
I must have a quiet evening with Richard; and I prefer your being in
town to-night, and you and May Penrose can come out to-morrow. Good-bye,
child, God bless you!"
CHAPTER XIV.
MR. LONGCLUSE'S BOOT FINDS A TEMPORARY ASYLUM.
In the papers of that morning had appeared a voluminous report of the
proceedings of the coroner's inquest which sat upon the body of the
deceased Pierre Lebas. I shall notice but one passage referring to the
evidence which, it seems, Mr. Longcluse volunteered. It was given in
these terms:--
"At this point of the proceedings, Mr. R. D. Longcluse, who had arrived
about half an hour before, expressed a wish to be examined. Mr.
Longcluse was accordingly sworn, and deposed that he had known the
deceased, Pierre Lebas, when he (Mr. Longcluse) was little more than a
boy, in Paris. Lebas at that time let lodgings, which were neat and
comfortable, in the Rue Victoire. He was a respectable and obliging man.
He had some other occupation besides that of letting lodgings, but he
(Mr. Longcluse) could not say what it might be." Then followed
particulars with which we are already acquainted; and the report went on
to say: "He seemed surprised when witness told him that there might be
in the room persons of the worst character; and he then, in considerable
alarm, pointed out to him (witness) a man who was and had been following
him from place to place, he fancied with a purpose. Witness observed the
man and saw him watch deceased, turning his eyes repeatedly upon him.
The man had no companions, so far as he could see, and affected to be
looking in a different direction. It was sideways and stealthily that he
was watching deceased, who had incautiously taken out and counted some
of his money in the room. Deceased did not conceal from the witness his
apprehensions from this man, and witness advised him again to place his
money in the hands of some friend who had a secure pocket, and
recommended, in case his friend should object to take so much money into
his care--Lebas having said he had a large sum about him--under the gaze
of the public, that he should make the transfer in the smoking-room, the
situation of which he described to him. Mr. Longcluse then proceeded to
give an exact description of the man who had been dogging the deceased;
the particulars were as follows:--"
Here I arrest my quotation, for I need not recapitulate the details of
the tall man's features, dress, and figure, which are already familiar
to the reader.
* * * * *
In a court off High Holborn there was, and perhaps is, a sort of
coffee-shop, in the small drawing-rooms of which, thrown into one room,
are many small and homely tables, with penny and halfpenny papers, and
literature with startling woodcuts. Here working mechanics and others
snatch a very early breakfast, and take their dinners, and such as can
afford time loiter their half-hour or so over this agreeable literature.
One penny morning paper visited that place of refection, for three hours
daily, and then flitted away to keep an appointment elsewhere. It was
this dull time in that peculiar establishment--namely, about nine
o'clock in the morning--and there was but one listless guest in the
room. It was the identical tall man in question. His flat feet were
planted on the bare floor, and he leaned a shoulder against the
window-case, with a plug of tobacco in his jaw, as, at his leisure, he
was getting through the coroner's inquest on Pierre Lebas. He was
smiling with half-closed eyes and considerable enjoyment, up to the
point where Mr. Longcluse's evidence was suddenly directed upon him.
There was a twitching scowl, as if from a sudden pain; but his smile
continued from habit, although his face grew paler. This man, whose name
was Paul Davies, winked hard with his left eye, as he got on, and read
fiercely with his right. His face was whiter now, and his smile less
easy. It was a queerish situation, he thought, and might lead to
consequences.
There was a little bit of a looking-glass, picked up at some rubbishy
auction, as old as the hills, with some tarnished gilding about it, in
the narrow bit of wall between the windows. Paul Davies could look at
nothing quite straight. He looked now at himself in this glass, but it
was from the corners of his eyes, askance, and with his sly, sleepy
depression of the eye-lids, as if he had not overmuch confidence even in
his own shadow. He folded the morning paper, and laid it, with formal
precision, on the table, as if no one had disturbed it; and taking up
the _Halfpenny Illustrated Broadsheet of Fiction_, and with it
flourishing in his hand by the corner, he called the waiter over the
bannister, and paid his reckoning, and went off swiftly to his garret in
another court, a quarter of a mile nearer to Saint Paul's--taking an
obscure and devious course through back-lanes and sequestered courts.
When he got up to his garret, Mr. Davies locked his door and sat down on
the side of his creaking settle-bed, and, in his playful phrase, "put on
his considering cap."
"That's a dangerous cove, that Mr. Longcluse. He's done a bold stroke.
And now it's him or me, I do suppose--him or me; me or him. Come, Paul,
shake up your knowledge-box; I'll not lose this cast simple. He's gave a
description of me. The force will know it. And them feet o' mine, they
_are_ a bit flat: but any chap can make a pair of insteps with a
penn'orth o' rags. I wouldn't care tuppence if it wasn't for them
pock-marks. There's no managing them. A scar or a wart you may touch
over with paint and sollible gutta-percha, or pink wafers and gelatine,
but pock-marks is too many for any man."
He was looking with some anxiety in the triangular fragment of
looking-glass--balanced on a nail in the window-case--at his features.
"I can take off them whiskers; and the long neck he makes so much of, if
it was as long as an oystrich, with fourpenn'orth of cotton waste and a
cabbage-net, I'd make a bull of it, and run my shoulders up to my ears.
I'll take the whiskers off, anyhow. That's no treason; and he mayn't
identify me. If I'm not had up for a fortnight my hair would be grew a
bit, and that would be a lift. But a fellow must think twice before he
begins disguisin'. Juries smells a rat. Howsomever, a cove may shave,
and no harm done; or his hair may grow a bit, and how can he help it?
Longcluse knows what he's about. He's a sharp lad, but for all that Paul
Davies 'ill sweat him yet."
Mr. Davies turned the button of his old-fashioned window, and let it
down. He shut out his two scarlet geraniums, which accompanied him in
all his changes from one lodging to another.
"Suppose he tries the larceny--that's another thing he may do, seeing
what my lay is. It wouldn't do to lose that thing; no more would it
answer to let them find it."
This last idea seemed to cause Paul Davies a good deal of serious
uneasiness. He began looking about at the walls, low down near the
skirting, and up near the ceiling, tapping now and then with his
knuckles, and sounding the plaster as a doctor would the chest of a
wheezy patient. He was not satisfied. He scratched his head, and fiddled
with his ear, and plucked his short nose dubiously, and winked hard at
his geraniums through the window.
Paul Davies knew that the front garret was not let. He opened his door
and listened. Then he entered that room. I think he had a notion of
changing his lodgings, if only he could find what he wanted. That was
such a hiding-place as professional seekers were not likely to discover.
But he could not satisfy himself.
A thought struck him, however, and he went into the lobby again; he got
on a chair and pushed open the skylight, and out went Mr. Davies on the
roof. He looked and poked about here. He looked to the neighbouring
roofs, lest any eye should be upon him; but there was no one. A maid
hanging clothes upon a line, on a sort of balcony, midway down the next
house, was singing, "The Ratcatcher's Daughter," he thought rather
sweetly--so well, indeed, that he listened for two whole verses--but
that did not signify.
Paul Davies kneeled down, and loosed and removed, one after the other,
several slates near the lead gutter, between the gables; and, having
made a sufficient opening in the roof for his purpose, he returned, let
himself down lightly through the skylight, entered his room, and locked
himself up. He then unlocked his trunk and took from under his clothes,
where it lay, a French boot--the veritable boot of Mr. Longcluse--which,
for greater security, he popped under the coarse coverlet of his bed. He
next took from his trunk a large piece of paper which, being unfolded at
the window, disclosed a rude drawing with a sentence or two underneath,
and three signatures, with a date preceding.
Having read this document over twice or thrice, with a rather menacing
smile, he rolled it up in brown paper and thrust it into the foot of the
boot, which he popped under the coverlet and bolster. He then opened his
door wide. Too long a silence might possibly have seemed mysterious, and
called up prying eyes, so, while he filled his pipe with tobacco, he
whistled, "Villikins and his Dinah" lustily. He was very cautious about
this boot and paper. He got on his great-coat and felt hat, and took his
pipe and some matches--the enjoying a quiet smoke without troubling
others with the perfume was a natural way of accounting for his visit to
the roof. He listened. He slipped his boot and its contents into his
capacious great-coat pocket, with a rag of old carpet tied round it; and
then, whistling still cheerily, he mounted the roof again, and placed
the precious parcel within the roof, which he, having some skill as a
slater, proceeded carefully and quickly to restore.
Down came Mr. Davies now, and shaved off his whiskers. Then he walked
out, with a bundle consisting of the coat, waistcoat, and blue necktie
he had worn on the evening of Lebas's murder. He was going to pay a
visit to his mother, a venerable greengrocer, who lived near the Tower
of London; and on his way he pledged these articles at two distinct and
very remote pawnbrokers', intending on his return to release, with the
proceeds, certain corresponding articles of his wardrobe, now in ward in
another establishment. These measures of obliteration he was taking
quietly. His visit to his mother, a very honest old woman, who believed
him to be the most virtuous, agreeable, and beautiful young man extant,
was made with a very particular purpose.
"Well, Ma'am," he said, in reply to the old lady's hospitable greeting,
"I won't refuse a pot of half-and-half and a couple of eggs, and I'll go
so far as a cut or two of bacon, bein' 'ungry; and I'm a-goin' to write
a paper of some consequence, if you'll obleege me with a sheet of
foolscap and a pen and ink; and I may as well write it while the things
is a-gettin' ready, accordin' to your kind intentions."
And accordingly Mr. Paul Davies sat in silence, looking very
important--as he always did when stationery was before him--at a small
table, in a dark back room, and slowly penned a couple of pages of
foolscap.
"And now," said he, producing the document after his repast, "will you
be so good, Ma'am, as to ask Mr. Sildyke and Mrs. Rumble to come down
and witness my signing of this, which I mean to leave it in your hands
and safe keepin', under lock and key, until I take it away, or otherwise
tells you what you must do with it. It is a police paper, Ma'am, and may
be wanted any time. But you keep it dark till I tells you."
This settled, Mr. Sildyke and Mrs. Rumble arrived obligingly; and Paul
Davies, with an adroit wink at his mother--who was a little shocked and
much embarrassed by the ruse, being a truth-loving woman--told them that
here was his last will and testament, and he wanted only that they
should witness his signature; which, with the date, was duly
accomplished. Paul Davies was, indeed, a man of that genius which
requires to proceed by stratagem, cherishing an abhorrence of straight
lines, and a picturesque love of the curved and angular. So, if Mr.
Longcluse was doing his duty at one end of the town, Mr. Davies, at the
other, was by no means wanting in activity, or, according to the level
of his intellect and experience, in wisdom.
We have recurred to these scenes in which Mr. Paul Davies figures,
because it was indispensable to the reader's right understanding of some
events that follow. Be so good, then, as to find Sir Reginald exactly
where I left him, standing on the steps of Mortlake Hall. His daughter
would have stayed, but he would not hear of it. He stood on the steps,
and smirked a yellow and hollow farewell, waving his hand as the
carriage drove away. Then he turned and entered the lofty hall, in which
the light was already failing.
Sir Reginald did not like the trouble of mounting the stairs. His
bed-room and sitting-room were on a level with the hall. As soon as he
came in, the gloom of his old prison-house began to overshadow him, and
his momentary cheer and good-humour disappeared.
"Where is Tansey? I suppose she's in her bed, or grumbling in
toothache," he snarled to the footman. "And where the devil's Crozier? I
have the fewest and the worst servants, I believe, of any man in
England."
He poked open the door of his sitting-room with the point of his
walking-stick.
"Nothing ready, I dare swear," he quavered, and shot a peevish and fiery
glance round it.
Things were not looking quite so badly as he expected. There was just
the little bit of expiring fire in the grate which he liked, even in
summer. His sealskin slippers were on the hearth-rug, and his easy-chair
was pushed into its proper place.
"Ha! Crozier, at last! Here, get off this coat, and these mufflers,
and---- I was d----d near dying in that vile chaise. I don't remember
how they got me into the inn. There, don't mind condoling. You're
privileged, but don't do that. As near dying as possible--rather an
awkward business for useless old servants here, if I had. I'll dress in
the next room. My son's coming this evening. Admit him, mind. I'll see
him. How long is it since we met last? Two years, egad! And Lord
Wynderbroke has his dinner here--I don't know what day, but some day
very soon--Friday, I think; and don't let the people here go to sleep.
Remember!"
And so on, with his old servant, he talked, and sneered, and snarled,
and established himself in his sitting-room, with his reviews, and his
wine, and his newspapers.
Night fell over dark Mortlake Hall, and over the blazing city of London.
Sir Reginald listened, every now and then, for the approach of his son.
Talk as he might, he did expect something--and a great deal--from the
coming interview. Two years without a home, without an allowance, with
no provision except a hundred and fifty pounds a year, might well have
tamed that wilful beast!
With the tremor of acute suspense, the old man watched and listened. Was
it a good or an ill sign, his being so late?
The city of London, with its still roaring traffic and blaze of
gas-lamps, did not contrast more powerfully with the silent shadows of
the forest-grounds of Mortlake, than did the drawing-room of Lady May
Penrose, brilliant with a profusion of light, and resonant with the gay
conversation of inmates, all disposed to enjoy themselves, with the dim
and vast room in which Sir Reginald sat silently communing with his own
dismal thoughts.
Nothing so contagious as gaiety. Alice Arden, laughingly, was "making
her book" rather prematurely in dozens of pairs of gloves, for the
Derby. Lord Wynderbroke was deep in it. So was Vivian Darnley.
"Your brother and I are to take the reins, turn about, Lady May says.
He's a crack whip. He's better than I, I think," said Vivian to Alice
Arden.
"You mustn't upset us, though. I am so afraid of you crack whips!" said
Alice. "Nor let your horses run away with us; I've been twice run away
with already."
"I don't the least wonder at Miss Arden's being run away with very
often," said Lord Wynderbroke, with all the archness of a polite man of
fifty.
"Very prettily said, Wynderbroke," smiled Lady May. "And where is your
brother? I thought he'd have turned up to-night," asked she of Alice.
"I quite forgot. He was to see papa this evening. They wanted to talk
over something together."
"Oh, I see!" said Lady May, and she became thoughtful.
What was the exact nature of the interest which good Lady May
undoubtedly took in Richard Arden? Was it quite so motherly as years
might warrant? At that time people laughed over it, and were curious to
see the progress of the comedy. Here was light and gaiety--light within,
lamps without; spirited talk in young anticipation of coming days of
pleasure; and outside the roll of carriage-wheels making a humming bass
to this merry treble.
* * * * *
Over the melancholy precincts of Mortlake the voiceless darkness of
night descends with unmitigated gloom. The centre--the brain of this
dark place--is the house: and in a large dim room, near the smouldering
fire, sits the image that haunts rather than inhabits it.
CHAPTER XV.
FATHER AND SON.
Sir Reginald Arden had fallen into a doze, as he sat by the fire with
his _Revue des Deux Mondes_, slipping between his finger and thumb, on
his knees. He was recalled by Crozier's voice, and looking up, he saw,
standing near the door, as if in some slight hesitation, a figure not
seen for two years before.
For a moment Sir Reginald doubted his only half-awakened senses. Was
that handsome oval face, with large, soft eyes, with such brilliant
lips, and the dark-brown moustache, so fine, and silken, that had never
known a razor, an unsubstantial portrait hung in the dim air, or his
living son? There were perplexity and surprise in the old man's stare.
"I should have been here before, Sir, but your letter did not reach me
until an hour ago," said Richard Arden.
"By heaven! Dick? And so you came! I believe I was asleep. Give me your
hand. I hope, Dick, we may yet end this miserable quarrel happily.
Father and son can have no real interests apart."
Sir Reginald Arden extended his thin hand, and smiled invitingly but
rather darkly on his son. Graceful and easy this young man was, and yet
embarrassed, as he placed his hand within his father's.
"You will take something, Dick, won't you?"
"Nothing, Sir, thanks."
Sir Reginald was stealthily reading his face. At last he began
circuitously--
"I've a little bit of news to tell you about Alice. How long shall I
allow you to guess what it is?"
"I'm the worst guesser in the world--pray don't wait for me, Sir."
"Well, I have in my desk there--would you mind putting it on the table
here?--a letter from Wynderbroke. You know him?"
"Yes, a little."
"Well, Wynderbroke writes--the letter arrived only an hour ago--to ask
my leave to marry your sister, if she will consent; and he says all he
will do, which is very handsome--very generous indeed. Wait a moment.
Yes, here it is. Read that."
Richard Arden did read the letter, with open eyes and breathless
interest. The old man's eyes were upon him as he did so.
"Well, Richard, what do you think?"
"There can be but one opinion about it. Nothing can be more handsome.
Everything suitable. I only hope that Alice will not be foolish."
"She sha'n't be that, I'll take care," said the old man, locking down
his desk again upon the letter.
"It might possibly be as well, Sir, to prepare her a little at first. I
may possibly be of some little use, and so may Lady May. I only mean
that it might hardly be expedient to make it from the first a matter of
authority, because she has romantic ideas, and she is spirited."
"I'll sleep upon it. I sha'n't see her again till to-morrow evening. She
does not care about anyone in particular, I suppose?"
"Not that I know of," said Richard.
"You'll find it will all be right--it _will_--all right. It _shall_ be
right," said Sir Reginald. And then there was a silence. He was
meditating the other business he had in hand, and again circuitously he
proceeded.
"What's going on at the opera? Who is your great danseuse at present?"
inquired the baronet, with a glimmer of a leer. "I haven't seen a ballet
for more than six years. And why? I needn't tell you. You know the
miserable life I lead. Egad! there are fellows placed everywhere to
watch me. There would be an execution in this house this night, if the
miserable tables and chairs were not my brother David's property. Upon
my life, Craven, my attorney, had to serve two notices on the sheriff in
one term, to caution him not to sell your uncle's furniture for my
debts. I shouldn't have had a joint-stool to sit down on, if it hadn't
been for that. And I had to get out of the railway-carriage, by heaven!
for fear of arrest, and come home--if home I can call this ruin--by
posting all the way, except a few miles. I did not dare to tell Craven I
was coming back. I wrote from Twyford, where I--I--took a fancy to sleep
last night, to no human being but yourself. My comfort is that they and
all the world believe that I'm still in France. It is a pleasant state
of things!"
"I am grieved, Sir, to think you suffer so much."
"I know it. I knew it. I know you are, Dick," said the old man eagerly.
"And my life is a perfect hell. I can nowhere in England find rest for
the sole of my foot. I am suffering perpetually the most miserable
mortifications, and the tortures of the damned. I know you are sorry. It
can't be pleasant to you to see your father the miserable outcast, and
fugitive, and victim he so often is. And I'll say distinctly--I'll say
at once--for it was with this one purpose I sent for you--that no son
with a particle of human feeling, with a grain of conscience, or an atom
of principle, could endure to see it, when he knew that by a stroke of
his pen he could undo it all, and restore a miserable parent to life and
liberty! Now, Richard, you have my mind. I have concealed nothing, and
I'm sure, Dick, I know, I _know_ you won't see your father perish by
inches, rather than sign the warrant for his liberation. For God's sake,
Dick, my boy speak out! Have you the heart to reject your miserable
father's petition? Do you wish me to kneel to you? I love you, Dick,
although you don't admit it. I'll kneel to you, Dick--I'll kneel to you.
I'll go on my knees to you."
His hands were clasped; he made a movement. His great prominent eyes
were fixed on Richard Arden's face, which he was reading with a great
deal of eagerness, it is true, but also with a dark and narrow
shrewdness.
"Good heaven, Sir, don't stir, I implore! If you do, I must leave the
room," said Richard, embarrassed to a degree that amounted to agitation.
"And I must tell you, Sir--it is very painful, but, I could not help it,
necessity drove me to it--if I were ever so desirous, it is out of my
power now. I have dealt with my reversion. I have executed a deed."
"You have been with the Jews!" cried the old man, jumping to his feet.
"You have been dealing, by way of _post obit_, with my estate!"
Richard Arden looked down. Sir Reginald was as nearly white as his
yellow tint would allow; his large eyes were gleaming fire--he looked as
if he would have snatched the poker, and brained his son.
"But what could I do, Sir? I had no other resource. I was forbidden your
house; I had no money."
"You lie, Sir!" yelled the old man, with a sudden flash, and a hammer of
his thin trembling fist on the table. "You had a hundred and fifty
pounds a year of your mother's."
"But that, Sir, could not possibly support any one. I was compelled to
act as I did. You really, Sir, left me no choice."
"Now, now, now, now, now! you're not to run away with the thing, you're
not to run away with it; you sha'n't run away with it, Sir. You could
have made a submission, you know you could. I was open to be reconciled
at any time--always too ready. You had only to do as you ought to have
done, and I'd have received you with open arms; you know I would--I
_would_--you had only to unite our interests in the estates, and I'd
have done everything to make you happy, and you know it. But you have
taken the step--you have done it, and it is irrevocable. You have done
it, and you've ruined me; and I pray to God you have ruined yourself!"
With every sinew quivering, the old man was pulling the bell-rope
violently with his left hand. Over his shoulder, on his son, he glanced
almost maniacally. "Turn him out!" he screamed to Crozier, stamping;
"put him out by the collar. Shut the door upon him, and lock it; and if
he ever dares to call here again, slam it in his face. I have done with
him for ever!"
Richard Arden had already left the room, and this closing passage was
lost on him. But he heard the old man's voice as he walked along the
corridor, and it was still in his ears as he passed the hall-door; and,
running down the steps, he jumped into his cab. Crozier held the
cab-door open, and wished Mr. Richard a kind good-night. He stood on the
steps to see the last of the cab as it drove down the shadowy avenue and
was lost in gloom. He sighed heavily. What a broken family it was! He
was an old servant, born on their northern estate--loyal, and somewhat
rustic--and, certainly, had the baronet been less in want of money, not
exactly the servant he would have chosen.
"The old gentleman cannot last long," he said, as he followed the sound
of the retreating wheels with his gaze, "and then Master Richard will
take his turn, and what one began the other will finish. It is all up
with the Ardens. Sir Reginald ruined, Master Harry murdered, and Master
David turned tradesman! There's a curse on the old house."
He heard the baronet's tread faintly, pacing the floor in agitation, as
he passed his door; and when he reached the housekeeper's room, that old
lady, Mrs. Tansey, was alone and all of a tremble, standing at the door.
Before her dim staring eyes had risen an oft-remembered scene: the
ivy-covered gatehouse at Mortlake Hall; the cold moon glittering down
through the leafless branches; the grey horse on its side across the
gig-shaft, and the two villains--one rifling and the other murdering
poor Henry Arden, the baronet's gay and reckless brother.
"Lord, Mr. Crozier! what's crossed Sir Reginald?" she said huskily,
grasping the servant's wrist with her lean hand. "Master Dick, I do
suppose. I thought he was to come no more. They quarrel always. I'm like
to faint, Mr. Crozier."
"Sit ye down, Mrs. Tansey, Ma'am; you should take just a thimbleful of
something. What has frightened you?"
"There's a scritch in Sir Reginald's voice--mercy on us!--when he raises
it so; it is the very cry of poor Master Harry--his last cry, when the
knife pierced him. I'll never forget it!"
The old woman clasped her fingers over her eyes, and shook her head
slowly.
"Well, that's over and ended this many a day, and past cure. We need not
fret ourselves no more about it--'tis thirty years since."
"Two-and-twenty the day o' the Longden steeple-chase. I've a right to
remember it." She closed her eyes again. "Why can't they keep apart?"
she resumed. "If father and son can't look one another in the face
without quarrelling, better they should turn their backs on one another
for life. Why need they come under one roof? The world's wide enough."
"So it is--and no good meeting and argufying; for Mr. Dick will never
open the estate," remarked Mr. Crozier.
"And more shame for him!" said Mrs. Tansey. "He's breaking his father's
heart. It troubles him more," she added in a changed tone, "I'm
thinking, than ever poor Master Harry's death did. There's none living
of his kith or kin cares about it now but Master David. He'll never let
it rest while he lives."
"He _may_ let it rest, for he'll never make no hand of it," said
Crozier. "Would you object, Ma'am, to my making a glass of something
hot?--you're gone very pale."
Mrs. Tansey assented, and the conversation grew more comfortable. And so
the night closed over the passions and the melancholy of Mortlake Hall.
CHAPTER XVI.
A MIDNIGHT MEETING.
A couple of days passed; and now I must ask you to suppose yourself
placed, at night, in the centre of a vast heath, undulating here and
there like a sea arrested in a ground-swell, lost in a horizon of
monotonous darkness all round. Here and there rises a scrubby hillock of
furze, black and rough as the head of a monster. The eye aches as it
strains to discover objects or measure distances over the blurred and
black expanse. Here stand two trees pretty close together--one in thick
foliage, a black elm, with a funereal and plume-like stillness, and
blotting out many stars with its gigantic canopy; the other, about fifty
paces off, a withered and half barkless fir, with one white branch left,
stretching forth like the arm of a gibbet. Nearly under this is a flat
rock, with one end slanting downwards, and half buried in the ferns and
the grass that grow about that spot. One other fir stands a little way
off, smaller than these two trees, which in daylight are conspicuous far
away as landmarks on a trackless waste. Overhead the stars are blinking,
but the desolate landscape lies beneath in shapeless obscurity, like
drifts of black mist melting together into one wide vague sea of
darkness that forms the horizon. Over this comes, in fitful moanings, a
melancholy wind. The eye stretches vainly to define the objects that
fancy sometimes suggests, and the ear is strained to discriminate the
sounds, real or unreal, that seem to mingle in the uncertain distance.
If you can conjure up all this, and the superstitious freaks that in
such a situation imagination will play in even the hardest and coarsest
natures, you have a pretty distinct idea of the feelings and
surroundings of a tall man who lay that night his length under the
blighted tree I have mentioned, stretched on its roots, with his chin
supported on his hands, and looking vaguely into the darkness. He had
been smoking, but his pipe was out now, and he had no occupation but
that of forming pictures on the dark back-ground, and listening to the
moan and rush of the distant wind, and imagining sometimes a voice
shouting, sometimes the drumming of a horse's hoofs approaching over the
plain. There was a chill in the air that made this man now and then
shiver a little, and get up and take a turn back and forward, and stamp
sharply as he did so, to keep the blood stirring in his legs and feet.
Then down he would lay again, with his elbows on the ground, and his
hands propping his chin. Perhaps he brought his head near the ground,
thinking that thus he could hear distant sounds more sharply. He was
growing impatient, and well he might.
The moon now began to break through the mist in fierce red over the far
horizon. A streak of crimson, that glowed without illuminating anything,
showed through the distant cloud close along the level of the heath.
Even this was a cheer, like a red ember or two in a pitch-dark room.
Very far away he thought now he heard the tread of a horse. One can hear
miles away over that level expanse of death-like silence. He pricked his
ears, he raised himself on his hands, and listened with open mouth. He
lost the sound, but on leaning his head again to the ground, that vast
sounding-board carried its vibration once more to his ear. It was the
canter of a horse upon the heath. He was doubtful whether it was
approaching, for the sound subsided sometimes; but afterwards it was
renewed, and gradually he became certain that it was coming nearer. And
now, like a huge, red-hot dome of copper, the moon rose above the level
strips of cloud that lay upon the horizon of the heath, and objects
began to reveal themselves. The stunted fir, that had looked to the
fancy of the solitary watcher like a ghostly policeman, with arm and
truncheon raised, just starting in pursuit, now showed some lesser
branches, and was more satisfactorily a tree; distances became
measurable, though not yet accurately, by the eye; and ridges and
hillocks caught faintly the dusky light, and threw blurred but deep
shadows backward.
The tread of the horse approaching had become a gallop as the light
improved, and horse and horseman were soon visible. Paul Davies stood
erect, and took up a position a few steps in advance of the blighted
tree at whose foot he had been stretched. The figure, seen against the
dusky glare of the moon, would have answered well enough for one of
those highwaymen who in old times made the heath famous. His low-crowned
felt hat, his short coat with a cape to it, and the leather casings,
which looked like jack-boots, gave this horseman, seen in dark outline
against the glow, a character not unpicturesque. With a sudden strain of
the bridle, the gaunt rider pulled up before the man who awaited him.
"What are you doing there?" said the horseman roughly.
"Counting the stars," answered he.
Thus the signs and countersigns were exchanged, and the stranger said--
"You're alone, Paul Davies, I take it."
"No company but ourselves, mate," answered Davies.
"You're up to half a dozen dodges, Paul, and knows how to lime a twig;
that's your little game, you know. This here tree is clean enough, but
that 'ere has a hatful o' leaves on it."
"I didn't put them there," said Paul, a little sulkily.
"Well, no. I do suppose a sight o' you wouldn't exactly put a tree in
leaf, or a rose-bush in blossom; nor even make wegitables grow. More
like to blast 'em, like that rum un over your head."
"What's up?" asked the ex-detective.
"Jest this--there's leaves enough for a bird to roost there, so this
won't do. Now, then, move on you with me."
As the gaunt rider thus spoke, his long red beard was blowing this way
and that in the breeze; and he turned his horse, and walked him towards
that lonely tree in which, as he lay gazing on its black outline, Paul
had fancied the shape of a phantom policeman.
"I don't care a cuss," said Davies. "I'm half sorry I came a leg to meet
yer."
"Growlin', eh?" said the horseman.
"I wish you was as cold as me, and you'd growl a bit, maybe, yourself,"
said Paul. "I'm jolly cold."
"Cold, are ye?"
"Cold as a lock-up."
"Why didn't ye fetch a line o' the old author with you?" asked the
rider--meaning brandy.
"I had a pipe or two."
"Who'd a-guessed we was to have a night like this in summer-time?"
"I do believe it freezes all the year round in this queer place."
"Would ye like a drop of the South-Sea mountain (gin)?" said the
stranger, producing a flask from his pocket, which Paul Davies took with
a great deal of good-will, much to the donor's content, for he wished to
find that gentleman in good-humour in the conversation that was to
follow.
"Drink what's there, mate. D'ye like it?"
"It ain't to be by no means sneezed at," said Paul Davies.
The horseman looked back over his shoulder. Paul Davies remarked that
his shoulders were round enough to amount almost to a deformity. He and
his companion were now a long way from the tree whose foliage he feared
might afford cover to some eavesdropper.
"This tree will answer. I suppose you like a post to clap your back to
while we are palaverin'," said the rider. "Make a finish of it, Mr.
Davies," he continued, as that person presented the half-emptied flask
to his hand. "I'm as hot as steam, myself, and I'd rather have a smoke
by-and-by."
He touched the bridle here, and the horse stood still, and the rider
patted his reeking neck, as he stooped with a shake of his ears and a
snort, and began to sniff the scant herbage at his feet.
"I don't mind if I have another pull," said Paul, replenishing the
goblet that fitted over the bottom of the flask.
"Fill it again, and no heel-taps," said his companion.
Mr. Davies sat down, with his mug in his hand, on the ground, and his
back against the tree. Had there been a donkey near, to personate the
immortal Dapple, you might have fancied, in that uncertain gloom, the
Knight and Squire of La Mancha overtaken by darkness, and making one of
their adventurous bivouacs under the boughs of the tree.
"What you saw in the papers three days ago did give you a twist, I take
it?" observed the gentleman on horseback, with a grin that made the red
bristles on his upper lip curl upwards and twist like worms.
"I can't tumble to a right guess what you means," said Mr. Davies.
"Come, Paul, that won't never do. You read every line of that there
inquest on the French cove at the Saloon, and you have by rote every
word Mr. Longcluse said. It must be a queer turning of the tables, for a
clever chap like you to have to look slippy, for fear other dogs should
lag you."
"'Tain't me that 'ill be looking slippy, as you and me well knows; and
it's jest because you knows it well you're here. I suppose it ain't for
love of _me_ quite?" sneered Paul Davies.
"I don't care a rush for Mr. Longcluse, no more nor I care for you; and
I see he's goin' where he pleases. He made a speech in yesterday's
paper, at the meetin' at the Surrey Gardens. He was canvassin' for
Parliament down in Derbyshire a week ago; and he printed a letter to the
electors only yesterday. He don't care two pins for you."
"A good many rows o' pins, I'm thinkin'," sneered Mr. Davies.
"Thinkin' won't make a loaf, Mr. Davies. Many a man has bin too clever,
and _thought_ himself into the block-house. You're making too fine a
game, Mr. Davies; a playin' a bit too much with edged tools, and
fiddlin' a bit too freely with fire. You'll burn your fingers, and cut
'em too, do ye mind? unless you be advised, and close the game where you
stand to win, as I rather think you do now."
"So do I, mate," said Paul Davies, who could play at brag as well as his
neighbour.
"I'm on another lay, a safer one by a long sight. My maxim is the same
as yours, 'Grab all you can;' but _I_ do it safe, d'ye see? You are in a
fair way to end your days on the twister."
"Not if I knows it," said Paul Davies. "I'm afeared o' no man livin'.
Who can say black's the white o' my eye? Do ye take me for a child? What
do ye take me for?"
"I take you for the man that robbed and done for the French cove in the
Saloon. That's the child I take ye for," answered the horseman
cynically.
"You lie! You don't! You know I han't a pig of his money, and never hurt
a hair of his head. You say that to rile me, jest."
"Why should I care a cuss whether you're riled or no? Do you think I
want to get anything out o' yer? I knows everything as well as you do
yourself. You take me for a queer gill, I'm thinking; that's not my lay.
I wouldn't wait here while you'd walk round my hoss to have every secret
you ever know'd."
"A queer gill, mayhap. I think I know you," said Mr. Davies, archly.
"You do, do ye? Well, come, who do you take me for?" said the stranger,
turning towards him, and sitting erect in the saddle, with his hand on
his thigh, to afford him the amplest view of his face and figure.
"Then I take you for Mr. Longcluse," said Paul Davies, with a wag of his
head.
"For Mr. Longcluse!" echoed the horseman, with a boisterous laugh.
"Well, _there's_ a guess to tumble to! The worst guess I ever heer'd
made. Did you ever see him? Why, there's not two bones in our two bodies
the same length, and not two inches of our two faces alike. There's a
guess for a detective! Be my soul, it's well for you it ain't him, for I
think he'd a shot ye!"
The rider lifted his hand from his coat-pocket as he said this, but
there was no weapon in it. Mistaking his intention, however, Paul Davies
skipped behind the tree, and levelled a revolver at him.
"Down with that, you fool!" cried the horseman. "There's nothing here."
And he gave his horse the spur, and made him plunge to a little
distance, as he held up his right hand. "But I'm not such a fool as to
meet a cove like you without the lead towels, too, in case you should
try that dodge." And dipping his hand swiftly into his pocket again, he
also showed in the air the glimmering barrels of a pistol. "If you must
be pullin' out your barkers every minute, and can't talk like a man,
where's the good of coming all this way to palaver with a cove. It ain't
not tuppence to me. Crack away if you likes it, and see who shoots best;
or, if you likes it better, I don't mind if I get down and try who can
hit hardest t'other way, and you'll find my fist tastes very strong of
the hammer."
"I thought you were up for mischief," said Davies, "and I won't be
polished off simple, that's all. It's best to keep as we are, and no
nearer; we can hear one another well enough where we stand."
"It's a bargain," said the stranger, "and I don't care a cuss who you
take me for. I'm not Mr. Longcluse; but you're welcome, if it pleases
you, to give me his name, and I wish I could have the old bloke's tin as
easy. Now here's my little game, and I don't find it a bad one. When two
gentlemen--we'll say, for instance, you and Mr. Longcluse--differs in
opinion (you says he did a certain thing, and he says he didn't, or goes
the whole hog and says _you_ did it, and not him), it's plain, if the
matter is to be settled amigable, it's best to have a man as knows what
he's about, and can find out the cove as threatens the rich fellow, and
deal with him handsome, according to circumstances. My terms is
moderate. I takes five shillins in the pound, and not a pig under; and
that puts you and I in the same boat, d'ye see? Well, I gets all I can
out of him, and no harm can happen me, for I'm but a cove a-carryin' of
messages betwixt you, and the more I gets for you the better for me. I
settled many a business amigable the last five years that would never
have bin settled without me. I'm well knowing to some of the swellest
lawyers in town, and whenever they has a dilikite case, like a gentleman
threatened with informations or the like, they sends for me, and I
arranges it amigable, to the satisfacshing of both parties. It's the
only way to settle sich affairs with good profit and no risk. I have
spoke to Mr. Longcluse. He was all for having your four bones in the
block-house, and yourself on the twister; and he's not a cove to be
bilked out of his tin. But he would not like the bother of your
cross-charge, either, and I think I could make all square between ye.
What do you say?"
"How can I tell that you ever set eyes on Mr. Longcluse?" said Davies,
more satisfied as the conference proceeded that he had misdirected his
first guess at the identity of the horseman. "How can I tell you're not
just a-gettin' all you can out o' me, to make what you can of it on your
own account in that market?"
"That's true, you can't tell, mate."
"And what do I know about you? What's your name?" pursued Paul Davies.
"I forgot my name, I left it at home in the cupboard; and you know
nothing about me, that's true, excepting what I told you, and you'll
hear no more."
"I'm too old a bird for that; you're a born genius, only spoilt in the
baking. I'm thinking, mate, I may as well paddle my own canoe, and sell
my own secret on my own account. What can you do for me that I can't do
as well for myself?"
"You don't think that, Paul. You dare not show to Mr. Longcluse, and you
know he's in a wax; and who can you send to him? You'll make nothing o'
that brag. Where's the good of talking like a blast to a chap like me?
Don't you suppose I take all that at its vally? I tell you what, if it
ain't settled now, you'll see me no more, for I'll not undertake it." He
pulled up his horse's head, preparatory to starting.
"Well, what's up now?--what's the hurry?" demanded Mr. Davies.
"Why, if this here meetin' won't lead to business, the sooner we two
parts and gets home again, the less time wasted," answered the cavalier,
with his hand on the crupper of the saddle, as he turned to speak.
Each seemed to wait for the other to add something.
CHAPTER XVII.
MR. LONGCLUSE AT MORTLAKE HALL.
"If you let me go this time, Mr. Wheeler, you'll not catch me a-walking
out here again," said Mr. Davies sourly. "If there's business to be
done, now's the time."
"Well, I can't make it no plainer--'tis as clear as mud in a
wine-glass," said the mounted man gaily, and again he shook the bridle
and hitched himself in the saddle, and the horse stirred uneasily, as he
added, "Have you any more to say?"
"Well, supposin' I say ay, how soon will it be settled?" said Paul
Davies, beginning to think better of it.
"These things doesn't take long with a rich cove like Mr. Longcluse.
It's where they has to scrape it up, by beggin' here and borrowin'
there, and sellin' this and spoutin' that--there's a wait always. But a
chap with no end o' tin--that has only to wish and have--that's your
sort. He swears a bit, and threatens, and stamps, and loses his temper
summat, ye see; and if I was the prencipal, like you are in this 'ere
case, and the police convenient, or a poker in his fist, he might make a
row. But seein' I'm only a messenger like, it don't come to nothin'. He
claps his hand in his pocket, and outs with the rino, and there's all;
and jest a bit of paper to sign. But I won't stay here no longer. I'm
getting a bit cold myself; so it's on or off _now_. Go yourself to
Longcluse, if you like, and see if you don't catch it. The least you get
will be seven-penn'orth, for extortin' money by threatenin' a
prosecution, if he don't hang you for the murder of the Saloon cove. How
would you like that?"
"It ain't the physic that suits my complaint, guvnor. But I have him
there. I have the statement wrote, in sure hands, and other hevidence,
as he may suppose, and dated, and signed by respectable people; and I
know his dodge. He thinks he came out first with his charge against me,
but he's out there; and if he _will_ have it, and I split, he'd best
look slippy."
"And how much do you want? Mind, I'll funk him all I can, though he's a
wideawake chap; for it's my game to get every pig I can out of him."
"I'll take two thousand pounds, and go to Canada or to New York, my
passage and expenses being paid, and sign anything in reason he wants;
and that's the shortest chalk I'll offer."
"Don't you wish you may get it? _I_ do, I know, but I'm thinking you
might jest as well look for the naytional debt."
"What's your name?" again asked Davies, a little abruptly.
"My name fell out o' window and was broke, last Tuesday mornin'. But
call me Tom Wheeler, if you can't talk without calling me something."
"Well, Tom, that's the figure," said Davies.
"If you want to deal, speak now," said Wheeler. "If I'm to stand between
you, I must have a power to close on the best offer I'm like to get. I
won't do nothing in the matter else-ways."
With this fresh exhortation, the conference on details proceeded; and
when at last it closed, with something like a definite under
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