Le Fanu Joseph Sheridan
Checkmate
CHAPTER XXVII
WINGED WORDS
“I was afraid I had vexed your brother somehow,” said Mr. Longcluse – “I thought he seemed to meet me a little formally. I should be so sorry if I had annoyed him by any accident!”
He paused, and Miss Arden said, half laughing – “Oh, don't you know, Mr. Longcluse, that people are out of spirits sometimes, and now and then a little offended with all the world? It is nothing, of course.”
“What a fib!” whispered conscience in the young lady's pretty ear, while she smiled and blushed.
Again she raised her hand a little, expecting Mr. Longcluse's farewell. But she looked a great deal too beautiful for a farewell. Mr. Longcluse could not deny himself a minute more, and he said, “It is a year, Miss Arden, since I first saw you.”
“Is it really? I daresay.”
“Yes, at Lady May Penrose's. Yes, I remember it distinctly – so distinctly that I shall never forget any circumstance connected with it. It is exactly a year and four days. You smile, Miss Arden, because for you the event can have had no interest; for me it is different – how different I will not say.”
Miss Arden coloured and then grew pale. She was very much embarrassed. She was about to say a word to end the interview, and go. Perhaps Mr. Longcluse was, as he said, impulsive – too precipitate and impetuous. He raised his hand entreatingly, —
“Oh, Miss Arden, pray, only a word! – I must speak it. Ever since then – ever since that hour – I have been the slave of a single thought; I have worshipped before one beautiful image, with an impious adoration, for there is nothing – no sacrifice, no crime – I would shrink from for your sake. You can make of me what you will; all I possess, all my future, every thought and feeling and dream – all are yours. No, no; don't interrupt the few half desperate words I have to speak, they may move you to pity. Never before, in a life of terrible vicissitude, of much suffering, of many dangers, have I seen the human being who could move me as you have done. I did not believe my seared heart capable of passion. And I stand now aghast at what I have spoken. I stand at the brink of a worse death, by the word that trembles on your lips, than the cannon's mouth could give me. I see I have spoken rashly – I see it in your face – oh, Heaven! I see what you would say.”
His hands were clasped in desperate supplication, as he continued; and the fitful breeze shook the roses above them, and the fading leaves fell softly in a shower about his feet.
“No, don't speak – your silence is sacred. I sha'n't misinterpret – I conjure you, don't answer! Forget that I have spoken. Oh! let it, in mercy, be all forgotten, and let us meet again as if there never had been this moment of madness, and in pity – as you look for mercy – forget it and forgive it!”
He waited for no answer: he was gone: the door closed as it was before. Another breath of wind ruffled the roses, and a few more sere leaves fell where he had just been standing. She drew a long breath, like one awaking from a vision. She was trembling slightly. Never before had she seen such agony in a human face! All had happened so suddenly. It was an effort to believe it real. It seemed as if she could see nothing while he spoke, but that intense, pale face. She heard nothing but his deep and thrilling words. Now it seemed as if flowers, and trees, and wall, and roses, all emerged suddenly again from mist, and as if all the birds had resumed their singing after a silence.
“Forget it – forgive it! Let it, as you look for mercy, be all forgotten. Let us meet again as if it never was.” This strange petition still rang in the ears of the astonished girl.
She was still too much flurried by the shock of this wild and sudden outbreak of passion, and appeal to mercy, quite to see her true course in the odd combination that had arisen. She was a little angry, and a little flattered. There was a confusion of resentment and compassion. What business had this Mr. Longcluse to treat her to those heroics! What right had he to presume that he would be listened to? How dared he ask her to treat all that had happened as if it had never been? How dared he seek to found on this unwarrantable liberty relations of mystery between them? How dared he fancy that she would consent to play at this game of deception with him?
Mingled with these angry thoughts, however, were the recollections of his homage, his tone of melancholy deference ever since she had known him, and his admiration.
Underlying all his trifling talk, there had always been toward her a respect which flattered her, which could not have been exceeded had she been an empress in her own right. No, if he had said more than he had any right to suppose would be listened to, the extravagance was due to no want of respect for her, but to the vehemence of passion.
He was driving now into town, at a great pace. His cogitations were still more perturbed. Had he, by one frantic precipitation, murdered his best hopes?
One consolation at least he had. Being a man, not without reason, prone to suspicion, he had a deep conviction that, for some reason, Richard Arden was opposed to his suit, and had already begun to work upon Miss Arden's mind to his prejudice. His best chance, then, he still thought, was to anticipate that danger by a declaration. If that declaration could only be forgiven, and the little scene at old Mortlake garden door sponged out, might not his chances stand better far than before? Would not the past, though never spoken of, give meaning, fire, and melancholy to things else insignificant, and keep him always before her, and her alone, be his demeanour and language ever so reserved and cold, as an impassioned lover? Did not his knowledge of human nature assure him that these relations of mystery would, more than any other, favour his fortunes?
“That she should consign what has passed, in a few impetuous moments, to oblivion and silence, is no unreasonable prayer, and one as easy to grant as to will it. She will think it over, and, for my part, I will meet her as if nothing had ever happened to change our trifling but friendly relations. I wish I knew what Richard Arden was about. I soon shall. Yes, I shall – I soon shall.”
An opportunity seemed to offer sooner even than he had hoped; for as he drove towards St. James's Street, passing one of Richard Arden's clubs, he saw that young gentleman ascending the steps with Lord Wynderbroke.
Longcluse stopped his brougham, jumped out, and overtook Richard Arden in the hall, where he stood, taking his letters from the hall-porter.
“How d'ye do, again? I sha'n't detain you a minute. I have had a long talk with your father about business,” said Longcluse, seizing the topic most likely to secure a few minutes, and speaking very low. “You can bring me into a room here, and I'll tell you all that is necessary in two minutes.”
“Certainly,” said Richard, yielding to his curiosity. “I have only two or three minutes. I dine here with a friend, who is at this moment ordering dinner; so, you see, I am rather hurried.”
He opened a door, and looking in said —
“Yes, we shall be quite to ourselves here.”
Longcluse shut the door. There was no one to overhear them.
Richard Arden sat down on a sofa, and Mr. Longcluse threw himself into a chair.
“And what did he say?” asked Richard.
“They want to raise his interest on the Yorkshire estate; and he says you won't help him; but that of course is your affair, and I declined, point-blank, to intervene in it. And before I go further, it strikes me, as it did to-day at Mortlake, that your manner to me has undergone a slight change.”
“Has it? I did not mean it, I assure you,” said Richard Arden, with a little laugh.
“Oh! yes, Arden, it has, and you must know it, and – pardon me – you must intend it also; and now I want to know what I have done, or how I have hurt you, or who has been telling lies of me?”
“Nothing of all these, that I know of,” said Richard, with a cold little laugh.
“Well, of course, if you prefer it, you may decline an explanation. I must however, remind you, because it concerns my happiness, and possibly other interests dearer to me than my life, too nearly to be trifled with, that you heard all I said respecting your sister with the friendliest approbation and encouragement. You knew as much and as little about me then as you do now. I am not conscious of having said or done anything to warrant the slightest change in your feelings or opinion; and in your manner there is a change, and a very decided change, and I tell you frankly I can't understand it.”
Thus directly challenged, Richard Arden looked at him hard for a moment. He was balancing in his mind whether he should evade or accept the crisis. He preferred the latter.
“Well, I can only say I did not intend to convey anything by my manner; but, as you know, when there is anything in one's mind it is not always easy to prevent its affecting, as you say, one's manner. I am not sorry you have asked me, because I spoke without reflection the other day. No one should answer, I really think, for any one else, in ever so small a matter, in this world.”
“But you didn't – you spoke only for yourself. You simply promised me your friendship, your kind offices – you said, in fact, all I could have hoped for.”
“Yes, perhaps – yes, I may, I suppose I did. But don't you see, dear Longcluse, things may come to mind, on thinking over.”
“What things?” demanded Longcluse quickly, with a sudden energy that called a flush to his temples; and fire gleamed for a moment from his deep-set, gloomy eyes.
“What things? Why, young ladies are not always the most intelligible problems on earth. I think you ought to know that; and really I do think, in such matters, it is far better that they should be left to themselves as much as possible; and I think, besides, that there are some difficulties that did not strike us. I mean, that I now see that there really are great difficulties – insuperable difficulties.”
“Can you define them?” said Longcluse coldly.
“I don't want to vex you, Longcluse, and I don't want to quarrel.”
“That's extremely kind of you.”
“I don't know whether you are serious, but it is quite true. I don't wish any unpleasantness between us. I don't think I need say more than that; having thought it over, I don't see how it could ever be.”
“Will you give me your reasons?”
“I really don't see that I can add anything in particular to what I have said.”
“I think, Mr. Arden, considering all that has passed between us on this subject, that you are bound to let me know your reasons for so marked a change of opinion.”
“I can't agree with you, Mr. Longcluse. I don't see in the least why I need tell you my particular reasons for the opinion I have expressed. My sister can act for herself, and I certainly shall not account to you for my reasons or opinions in the matter.”
Mr. Longcluse's pale face grew whiter, and his brows knit, as he fixed a momentary stare on the young man; but he mastered his anger, and said in a cold tone —
“We disagree totally upon that point, and I rather think the time will come when you must explain.”
“I have no more to say upon the subject, Sir, except this,” said Arden, very tartly, “that it is certain your hopes can never lead to anything, and that I object to your continuing your visits at Mortlake.”
“Why, the house does not belong to you – it belongs to Sir Reginald Arden, who objects to your visits and receives mine. Your ideas seem a little confused,” and he laughed gently and coldly.
“Very much the reverse, Sir. I object to my sister being exposed to the least chance of annoyance from your visits. I protest against it, and you will be so good as to understand that I distinctly forbid them.”
“The young lady's father, I presume, will hardly ask your advice in the matter, and I certainly shall not ask your leave. I shall call when I please, so long as I am received at Mortlake, and shall direct my own conduct, without troubling you for counsel in my affairs.” Mr. Longcluse laughed again icily.
“And so shall I, mine,” said Arden sharply.
“You have no right to treat anyone so,” said Longcluse angrily – “as if one had broken his honour, or committed a crime.”
“A crime!” repeated Richard Arden. “Oh! That, indeed, would pretty well end all relations.”
“Yes, as, perhaps, you shall find,” answered Longcluse, with sudden and oracular ferocity.
Each gentleman had gone a little farther than he had at first intended. Richard Arden had a proud and fierce temper when it was roused. He was near saying what would have amounted to insult. It was a chance opening of the door that prevented it. Both gentlemen had stood up.
“Please, Sir, have you done with the room, Sir?” asked the man.
“Yes,” said Longcluse, and laughed again as he turned on his heel.
“Because three gentlemen want the room, if it's not engaged, Sir. And Lord Wynderbroke is waiting for you, please, Mr. Arden.”
So with a little toss of his head, which he held unusually high, and a flushed and “glooming” countenance, Richard Arden marched a little swaggeringly forth, to his dinner tête-à-tête with Lord Wynderbroke.
CHAPTER XXVIII
STORIES ABOUT MR. LONGCLUSE
The irritation of this unpleasant interview soon subsided, but Mr. Longcluse's anxiety rather increased.
Next day early in the afternoon he drove to Lady May's and she received him just as usual. He learned from her, without appearing to seek the information, that Alice Arden was still at Mortlake. His visit was one of but two or three minutes. He jumped into a hansom and drove out to Mortlake. He knocked. Man of the world as he was, his heart beat faster.
“Is Miss Arden at home?”
“No, Sir.”
“Not at home?”
“Miss Arden is gone out, Sir.”
“Oh! perhaps in the garden?”
“No, Sir; she has gone out, and won't be back for some time.”
The man spoke with the promptitude and decision of a servant instructed to deny his mistress to the visitor. He had not a card; he would call again another day.
He heard the piano faintly, and, he thought, Alice's voice also; and certainly he saw Vivian Darnley in the drawing-room window, as his cab turned away from the door. With a swelling heart he drove into town. The portcullis, then, had fallen; access was denied him; and he should see her no more!
Good Heaven! what had he done? He walked distractedly, for a while, up and down his study. Should he employ Lady May's intervention, and tell her the whole story? Good-natured Lady May! Perhaps she would undertake his cause, and plead for his re-admission. But was even that so certain? How could he tell what view she might take of the matter? And were she to intercede for him ever so vehemently, how could he tell that she had any chance of prevailing?
No; on the whole it was better to be his own advocate. He would sit down then and there, and write to the offended or alarmed lady, and lay his piteous case before her in his own words and rely on her compassion, without an intervenient.
How many letters he began, how many he even finished, and rejected, I need not tire you by telling. Some were composed in the first, others in the third person. Not one satisfied him. Here was the man of a million and more, who would dash off a note to his stock-broker, to buy or sell a hundred thousand pounds' worth of stock – who would draft a resolution of the bank of which he was the chairman, directing an operation which would make men open their eyes, without the tremor of a nerve or the hesitation of a moment – unmanned, helpless, distracted in the endeavour to write a note to a young and inexperienced girl!
O beautiful sex! what a triumph is here! O Love! what fools will you not make of us poor masculine wiseacres! The letter he dispatched was in these terms. I daresay he had torn better ones to pieces: —
“Dear Miss Arden, – I had hoped that my profound contrition might have atoned for a momentary indiscretion – the declaration, though in terms the most respectful, of feelings which I had not self-command sufficient to suppress, and which had for nearly a year remained concealed in my own breast. I am sure, Miss Arden, that you are incapable of a gratuitous cruelty. Have I not sworn that one word to recall the remembrance of that, to me, all but fatal madness shall never escape my lips, in your presence? May I not entreat that you will forget it, that you will forbear to pass upon me the agonising sentence of exclusion? You shall never again have to complain of my uttering one word that the merest acquaintance, who is permitted the happiness of conversing with you, might not employ. You shall never regret your forbearance. I shall never cease to bless you for it; and whatever decision you arrive at, it shall be respected by me as sacred law. I shall never cease to reverence and bless the hand that spares or – afflicts me. May I be permitted this one melancholy hope, may I be allowed to interpret your omitting to answer this miserable letter as a concession of its prayer? Unless forbidden, I will endeavour to construe your silence as oblivion.
“I have the honour to remain, dear Miss Arden, with deep compunction and respect, but not altogether without hope in your mercy,
“Yours the most unhappy and distracted man in England,
“Walter Longcluse.”
Mr. Longcluse sealed this letter in its envelope, and addressed it. He would have liked to send it that moment, by his servant, but an odd shyness prevented. He did not wish his servants to conjure and put their heads together over it; he could not endure the idea; so with his own hand he dropped it in the post. Somewhat in the style of the old novel was this composition of Mr. Longcluse's – a little theatrical, and, one would have fancied, even affected; yet never was man more desperately sincere.
Night came, and brought no reply. Was no news good news, or would the morning bring, perhaps from Richard Arden, a withering answer? Morning came, and no answer: what was he to conjecture?
That day, in Grosvenor Square, he passed Richard Arden, who looked steadily and sternly a little to his right, and cut him.
It was a marked and decided cut. His ears tingled as if he had received a slap in the face. So things had assumed a very decided attitude indeed! Longcluse felt very oddly enraged, at first; then anxious. It was insulting that Richard Arden should have taken the initiative in dissolving relations. But had he not been himself studiously impertinent to Arden, in that brief colloquy of yesterday? He ought to have been prepared for this. Without explanation, and the shaking of hands, it was impossible that relations of amity should have been resumed between them. But Longcluse had been entirely absorbed by a threatened alienation that affected him much more nearly. There was a thesis for conjecture in the situation, which made him still more anxious. A very little time would probably clear all up.
He was walking homeward, saying to himself as he went, “No, I shall find no answer; I should be a fool to fancy anything else;” and yet walking all the more quickly, as he approached his house, in the hope of the very letter which he affected, to himself, to have quite rejected as an impossibility. Some letters had come, but none from Mortlake. His letter to Alice was still unanswered. He was now in the agony of suspense and distraction.
The same evening Richard Arden was talking about him, as he leaned with his elbow on the mantelpiece at Mortlake. He and Alice were alone in the drawing-room, awaiting the arrival of the little dinner-party. This, as you know, was to include Lord Wynderbroke, before whose advances, in Richard Arden's vision, Mr. Longcluse had waned, and even become an embarrassment and a nuisance.
“It is easier to cut him than to explain,” thought Richard Arden. “It bores one so inexpressibly, giving reasons for what one does, and I'm so glad he has saved me the trouble by his vulgar impertinence.”
They had talked for some time, Alice chiefly a listener. How was she affected toward Mr. Longcluse? He was agreeable; he flattered her; he was passionately in love with her. All but this latter condition she liked very well; but this was embarrassing, and quite impracticable. Who knows what that tiny spark we term a fancy, a whim, a penchant might have grown to, had it not been blown away by this untimely gust? But, for my part, I don't think it ever would have grown to a matter of the heart. There was something in the way. A fancy is one thing, and passion quite another. Pique is a common state of mind, and comes and goes, and comes again, in many a courtship. But a liking that has once entered the heart cannot be torn out in a hasty moment, and takes a long time, and many a struggle, to kill.
She was a little sorry, just then, to lose him so inevitably. Perhaps his letter, to which he had trusted to move her, had rendered the return of old relations impossible. In this letter she felt herself the owner of a secret – a secret which she could not keep without a sort of understanding growing up between them – which therefore she had no idea of keeping.
She was resolved to tell it. The letter she had locked, in marked isolation, as if no property of hers, but simply a document that was in her keeping, in the pretty ormolu casket that stood on the drawing-room chimney-piece. She had intended showing it, and telling the story of the scene in the garden, to Richard. But he was speaking with a mysterious asperity of Mr. Longcluse, which made her hesitate. A very little thing, it seemed to her, might suffice to make a very violent quarrel out of a coldness. Instinctively, therefore, she refrained, and listened to Richard while, with his arm touching the casket on the chimney-piece, he descanted on the writer of the unknown letter.
She experienced an odd feeling of insecurity as, in the course of his talk, his fingers began to trifle with the pretty fingers that stood out in relief upon the casket; for she knew that the ordeal of the pistol, discountenanced in England, was still in force on the Continent, and Mr. Longcluse's ideas were all Continental; and how near were those fingers to the letter which might suffice to explode the dangerous element that had already accumulated!
“He has talked of us to his low companions; he chooses to associate with usurers and worse people; and he has been speaking of us in the most insolent terms.”
“Really!” said Alice. Her large eyes looked larger as they fixed on him.
“Yes, and I'll tell you how I heard it. You must know, dear Alice, that I happened to want a little money; and when one does, the usual course is to borrow it. So I paid a visit to my harpy – and a harpy in need is a harpy indeed. Being hard up, he fleeced me; and the gentleman, I suppose, thinking he might be familiar, told me he was on confidential terms with Mr. Longcluse and wished me a good deal of joy. ‘Of what?’ I ventured to ask, for he had just hit me rather hard. ‘Of your chance,’ or, as he called it chanshe, he said, with a delightfully arch leer. I thought he meant I had backed the right horse for the Derby, but it turned out he meant our chance of inducing Mr. Longcluse to make up his mind to marry you. I was very near knocking him down; but a man who has one's bill for three hundred pounds must be respected. So I merely ventured to ask on whose authority he congratulated me, when it appeared it was on Mr. Longcluse's own, who, it seems, had said a great deal more, equally intolerable. In plain, coarse terms, he says that, being poor, we have conspired with you to secure him, Mr. Longcluse, for your husband. As to the fact of his having actually conveyed that, and to more people than one, there is and can be no doubt whatever. I can imagine, considering all things, nothing more vulgar, audacious, and cowardly.”
A blush of anger glowed in Alice's face. Richard Arden liked the proud fire that gleamed from her dark grey eyes. It satisfied him that his words were not lost.
“I lighted on a man who knew more about him than I had learned before,” resumed Richard Arden. “He was suspected at Berlin of having been engaged in a conspiracy to pigeon Dacre and Wilmot, who were travelling. He did not appear, but he is said to have supplied the money, and had a lion's share of the spoil. There is no good in repeating these things generally, you know, because they are so hard to prove; and a fellow like that is dangerous. They say he is very litigious.”
“Upon my word, if your information is at all to be relied on, it is plain we have made a great mistake. It is a disappointing world, but I could not have fancied him doing anything so low; and I must say for him that he was gentlemanlike and quiet, and very unlike the person he appears to be. I think I never heard of anything so outrageous! Vivian Darnley told me that he was a great duellist, and thought to be a very quarrelsome, dangerous companion abroad. But he had only heard this, and what you tell me is so much worse, so mean, so utterly intolerable!”
“Oh! There's worse than that,” said Richard, with a faint sinister smile.
“What?” said she, returning it with an almost frightened gaze.
“There was a very beautiful girl at the opera in Vienna; her name was Piccardi, a daughter of a good old Roman family. You can't imagine how admired she was! And she was thought to be on the point of marrying Count Baddenoff; Mr. Longcluse, it seems, chose to be in love with her; he was not then anything like so rich as he became afterwards – and this poor girl was killed.”
“Good heavens! Richard – what can you mean?”
“I mean that she was assassinated, and that from that day Mr. Longcluse was never received in society in Vienna, and had to leave it.”
“You ought to tell May Penrose,” said she, after a silence of dismay.
“Not for the world,” said Richard; “she talks enough for six – and where's the good? She'll only take up the cudgels for him, and we shall be in the centre of a pretty row.”
“Well, if you think it best – ” she began.
“Certainly,” said he. And a silence followed.
“Here is a carriage at the door,” said Richard Arden. “Let us dismiss Longcluse, and look a little more like ourselves.”
That evening there came letters as usual to Mr. Longcluse, and among others a note from Lady May Penrose, reminding him of her little garden-party at Richmond next day.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, starting up and reading the cards on his chimney, “I thought it was the day after. It was very good-natured, poor old thing, her reminding me. I shall see Alice Arden there. Not one line does she vouchsafe. But is not she right? I think the more highly of her for not writing. I don't think she ought to write. Oh, Heaven grant she may meet me as usual? Does she mean it? If she did not, would she not have got her brother to write, or have written herself a cold line, to end our acquaintance?”
So he tried to comfort himself, and to keep alive his dying hope by these artificial stimulants.
