Le Fanu Joseph Sheridan
Checkmate
CHAPTER XXIX
THE GARDEN PARTY
Next morning Mr. Longcluse rose with a sense of something before him.
“So I shall see her to-day! If she's the girl I've thought her, she will meet me as usual. That frantic scene, in which I risked all on the turn of a die, will be forgotten. Hasty words, or precipitate letters, are passed over every day; the man who commits such follies, under a transitory insanity, is allowed the privilege of recalling them. There were no witnesses present to make forgiveness difficult. It all lies with her own good sense, and a heart proud but gentle. Let but those mad words be sponged out, and I am happy. Alice, if you forgive me, I forgive your brother, and take his name from where it is, and write it in my heart. Oh, beautiful Alice! will you belie your looks? Oh, clear bright mind! will you be clouded and perverted? Oh, gentle heart! can you be merciless?”
Mr. Longcluse made his simple morning toilet very carefully. A very plain man, extremely ugly some pronounce him; yet his figure is good, his get-up unexceptionable, and altogether he is a most gentlemanlike man to look upon, and in his movements and attitudes, quite unstudied, there is an undefinable grace. His accent is a little foreign – the slightest thing in the world, and Lady May Penrose declares it is so very pretty. Then he is so agreeable, when he pleases; and he is so very rich!
Some people wonder why he does not withdraw from all speculations, retire upon his enormous wealth, and with his elegant tastes, and the art of being magnificent without glare, even gorgeous without vulgarity – for has he not shown this refined talent in the service of others, who have taken him into council? – he could eclipse all the world in splendid elegance, and make his way, force d'argent, to the pinnacle of half the world's ambition. Were those stories true that Richard Arden told his sister on the night before?
I don't think that Richard Arden stuck at trifles, where he had an object to gain, and I don't believe a word of his story of Mr. Longcluse's insulting talk. It was not his way to boast and vapour; and he had a secret contempt for many of the Jewish and other agents whom he chose to employ. But undoubtedly Mr. Longcluse had the reputation among his discounting admirers of being a dangerous man to quarrel with; and also it was true that he had fought three or four savage duels in the course of his Continental life. There were other stories, unauthenticated, unpleasant. These were whispered with sneers by Mr. Longcluse's enemies. But there's a divinity doth hedge a King Crœsus, and his character bore a charmed life, among the missiles that would have laid that of many a punier man in the dust.
With an agitated heart, Mr. Longcluse approached the pretty little place known as Raleigh Court, to which he had been invited. Through the quaint, old-fashioned gate-way, under the embowering branches of tall trees, he drove up a short, broad avenue, clumped at each side with old timber, to the open hall-door of the pretty Elizabethan house. Carriages of all sorts were discernible under the branches, assembled at the further side to the right of the hall-door, over the wide steps of which was spread a scarlet cloth. Croquet parties were already visible on the shorn grass, under boughs that spread high in the air, and cast a pleasant shadow on the sward. Groups were strolling among the flower-beds – some walking in, some emerging from the open door – and the scene presented the usual variety of dress, and somewhat listless to-ing and fro-ing.
Did anyone, of all the guests of Lady May, mask so profound an agitation, under the conventional smile, as that which beat at Walter Longcluse's heart? Two or three people whom he knew, he met and talked to – some for a minute, others for a longer time – as he drew near the steps. His eye all the time was busy in the search after one pretty figure, the least glimpse of which he would have recognised with the thrill of a sure intuition, far or near. He would have liked to ask the friends he met whether the Ardens were here. But what would have been easy to him a week before, was now an effort for which he could not find courage.
He entered the hall, quaint and lofty, rising to the entire height of the house, with two galleries, one above the other, surrounding it on three sides. Ancestors of the late Mr. Penrose, who had left all this and a great deal more to his sorrowing relict, stood on the panelled walls at full length – some in ruffs and trunk-hose, others in perukes and cut-velvet, one with a bâton in his hand, and three with falcon on fist – all stately and gentlemanlike, according to their several periods; with corresponding ladies, some stiff and pallid, who figured in the days of the virgin queen, and others in the graceful déshabille of Sir Peter Lely. This quaint oak hall was now resonant with the buzz and clack of modern gossip, prose, and flirtation, and a great deal crowded, notwithstanding its commodious proportions. Lady May was still receiving her company near the doorway of the first drawing-room, and her kindly voice was audible from within as the visitor approached. Mr. Longcluse was very graciously received.
“I want you so particularly, to introduce you to Lady Hummington. She is such a charming person. She is so thoroughly up in German literature. She's a great deal too learned for me, but you and she will understand one another so perfectly, and you will be quite charmed with her. Mr. Addlings, did you happen to see Lady Hummington, or have you any idea where she's gone?”
“I shall go and look for her, with pleasure. Is not she the tall lady with grey hair? Shall I tell her you want to say a word to her?”
“You're very kind, but I'll not mind, thank you very much. It is so provoking, Mr. Longcluse! you would have been perfectly charmed with her.”
“I shall be more fortunate, by-and-by, perhaps,” said Mr. Longcluse. “Are any of our friends from Mortlake here?” he added, looking a little fixedly in her eyes, for he was thinking whether Alice had betrayed his secret, and was trying to read an answer there.
Lady May answered quite promptly —
“Oh, yes, Alice is here, and her brother. He went out that way with some friends,” she said, indicating with a little nod a door which, from a second hall, opened on a terrace. “I asked him to show them the three fountains. You must see them also; they are in the Dutch garden; they were put up in the reign of George the First. – How d'ye do, Mrs. Frumply? How d'ye do, Miss Frumply?”
“What a charming house!” exclaims Mrs. Frumply, “and what a day! We were saying, Arabella and I, as we drove out, that you must really have an influence with the clerk of the weather, ha, ha, ha! didn't we, Arabella? So charming!”
Lady May laughed affably, and said – “Won't you and your daughter go in and take some tea? Mr. (she was going to call on Longcluse, but he had glided away) – Oh, Mr. Darnley!”
And the introduction was made, and Vivian Darnley, with Mrs. Frumply on his arm, attended by her daughter Arabella, did as he was commanded and got tea for that simpering lady, and fruit and Naples biscuits, and plum-cake, and was rewarded with the original joke about the clerk of the weather.
Mr. Longcluse, in the meantime, had passed the door indicated by Lady May, and stood upon the short terrace that overlooked the pretty flower-garden cut out in grotesque patterns, so that looking down upon its masses of crimson, blue, and yellow, as he leaned on the balustrade, it showed beneath his eye like a wide deep-piled carpet, on the green ground of which were walking groups of people, the brilliant hues of the ladies' dresses rivalling the splendour of the verbenas, and making altogether a very gay picture.
The usual paucity of male attendance made Mr. Longcluse's task of observation easy. He was looking for Richard Arden's well-known figure among the groups, thinking that probably Alice was not far off. But he was not there, nor was Alice; and Walter Longcluse, gloomy and lonely in this gay crowd, descended the steps at the end of this terrace, and sauntered round again to the front of the house, now and then passing some one he knew, with an exchange of a smile or a bow, and then lost again in the Vanity Fair of strange faces and voices.
Now he is at the hall door – he mounts the steps. Suddenly, as he stands upon the level platform at top, he finds himself within four feet of Richard Arden. He looks on him as he might on the carved pilaster, at the side of the hall door; no one could have guessed, by his inflexible but unaffected glance, that he and Mr. Arden had ever been acquainted. The younger man showed something in his countenance, a sudden hauteur, a little elevation of the chin, a certain sternness, more melodramatic, though less effective, than the simple blank of Mr. Longcluse's glance.
That gentleman looked about coolly. He was in search of Miss Arden, but he did not see her. He entered the hall again, and Richard Arden a little awkwardly resumed his conversation, which had suddenly subsided into silence on Longcluse's appearance.
By this time Lady May was more at ease, having received all her company that were reasonably punctual, and in the hall Longcluse now encountered her.
“Have you seen Mr. Arden?” she inquired of him.
“Yes, he's at the door, at the steps.”
“Would you mind telling him kindly that I want to say a word to him?”
“Certainly, most happy,” said Longcluse, without any distinct plan as to how he was to execute her awkward commission.
“Thank you very much. But, oh! dear, here is Lady Hummington, and she wishes so much to know you; I'll send some one else. I must introduce you, come with me – Lady Hummington, I want to introduce my friend, Mr. Longcluse.” So Mr. Longcluse was presented to Lady Hummington, who was very lean, and a “blue,” and most fatiguingly well up in archæology, and all new books on dry and difficult subjects. So that Mr. Longcluse felt that he was, in Joe Willett's phrase, “tackled” by a giant, and was driven to hideous exertions of attention and memory to hold his own. When Lady Hummington, to whom it was plain kind Lady May, with an unconscious cruelty, had been describing Mr. Longcluse's accomplishments and acquirements, had taken some tea and other refection, and when Mr. Longcluse's kindness “had her wants supplied,” and she, like Scott's “old man” in the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” “was gratified,” she proposed visiting the music-room, where she had heard a clever organist play, on a harmonium, three distinct tunes at the same time, which being composed on certain principles, that she explained with much animation and precision, harmonised very prettily.
So this clever woman directed, and Mr. Longcluse led, the way to the music-room.
CHAPTER XXX
HE SEES HER
Mr. Longcluse's attention was beginning to wander a little, and his eyes were now busy in search of some one whom he had not found; and knowing that the duration of people's stay at a garden-party is always uncertain, and that some of those gaily-plumed birds who make the flutter, and chirping, and brilliancy of the scene, hardly alight before they take wing again, he began to fear that Alice Arden had gone.
“Just like my luck!” he thought bitterly; “and if she is gone, when shall I have an opportunity of seeing her again?”
Lady Hummington's well-informed conversation had been, unheeded, accompanying the ruminations and distractions of this “passionate pilgrim;” and as they approached the door of the music-room, the little crush there brought the learned lady's lips so near to his ear, that with a little start he heard the words – “All strictly arithmetical, you know, and adjusted by the relative frequency of vibrations. That theory, I am sure, you approve, Mr. Longcluse.”
To which the distracted lover made answer, “I quite agree with you, Lady Hummington.”
The music-room at Raleigh Court is an apartment of no great size, and therefore when, with Lady Hummington on his arm, he entered, it was at no great distance that he saw Miss Arden standing near the window, and talking with an elderly gentleman, whose appearance he did not know, but who seemed to be extremely interested in her conversation. She saw him, he had not a doubt, for she turned a little quickly, and looked ever so little more directly out at the window, and a very slight tinge flushed her cheek. It was quite plain, he thought, and a dreadful pang stole through his breast, that she did not choose to see him – quite plain that she did see him – and he thought, from a subtle scrutiny of her beautiful features, quite plain also that it gave her pain to meet without acknowledging him.
Lady Hummington was conversing with volubility; but the air felt icy, and there was a strange trembling at his heart, and this, in many respects, hard man of the world, felt that the tears were on the point of welling from his eyes. The struggle was but for a few moments, and he seemed quite himself again. Lady Hummington wished to go to the end of the room where the piano was, and the harmonium on which the organist had performed his feat of the three tunes. That artist was taking his departure, having a musical assignation of some kind to keep. But to oblige Lady Hummington, who had heard of Thalberg's doing something of the kind, he sat down and played an elaborate piece of music on the piano with his thumbs only. This charming effort over, and applauded, the performer took his departure. And Lady Hummington said —
“I am told, Mr. Longcluse, that you are a very good musician.”
“A very indifferent performer, Lady Hummington.”
“Lady May Penrose tells a very different tale.”
“Lady May Penrose is too kind to be critical,” said Longcluse; and as he maintained this dialogue, his eye was observing every movement of Alice Arden. She seemed, however, to have quite made up her mind to stand her ground. There was a strange interest, to him, even in being in the same room with her. Perhaps Miss Arden saw that Mr. Longcluse's movements were dependent upon those of the lady whom he accompanied, and might have thought that, the musician having departed, their stay in that room would not be very long.
“I should be so glad to hear you sing, Mr. Longcluse,” pursued Lady Hummington. “You have been in the East, I think; have you any of the Hindostanee songs? There are some, I have read, that embody the theories of the Brahmin philosophy.”
“Long-winded songs, I fancy,” said Mr. Longcluse, laughing; “it is a very voluminous philosophy, but the truth is, I've got a little cold, and I should not like to make a bad impression so early.”
“But surely there are some simple little things, without very much compass, that would not distress you. How pretty those old English songs are that they are collecting and publishing now! I mean songs of Shakespeare's time – Ben Jonson's, Beaumont and Fletcher's, and Massinger's, you know. Some of them are so extremely pretty!”
“Oh! yes, I'll sing you one of those with pleasure,” said he with a strange alacrity, quite forgetting his cold, sitting down at the instrument, and striking two or three fierce chords.
I am sure that most of my readers are acquainted with that pretty old English song, of the time of James the First, entitled, “Once I Loved a Maiden Fair.” That was the song he chose.
Never, perhaps, did he sing so well before, with a fluctuation of pathos and scorn, tenderness and hatred, expressed with real dramatic fire, and with more power of voice than at moments of less excitement he possessed. He sang it with real passion, and produced, exactly where he wished, a strange but unavowed sensation. He omitted one verse, and the song as he delivered it was thus: —
“Once I loved a maiden fair,
But she did deceive me:
She with Venus could compare,
In my mind, believe me.
She was young, and among
All our maids the sweetest:
Now I say, Ah, well-a-day!
Brightest hopes are fleetest.
Maidens wavering and untrue
Many a heart have broken;
Sweetest lips the world e'er knew
Falsest words have spoken.
Fare thee well, faithless girl,
I'll not sorrow for thee:
Once I held thee dear as pearl,
Now I do abhor thee.”
When he had finished the song, he said coldly, but very distinctly, as he rose —
“I like that song, there is a melancholy psychology in it. It is a song worthy of Shakespeare himself.”
Lady Hummington urged him with an encore, but he was proof against her entreaties. And so, after a little, she took Mr. Longcluse's arm; and Alice felt relieved when the room was rid of them.
CHAPTER XXXI
ABOUT THE GROUNDS
Lady Hummington, well pleased at having found in Mr. Longcluse what she termed a kindred mind, was warned by the hour that she must depart. She took her leave of Mr. Longcluse with regret, and made him promise to come to luncheon with her on the Thursday following. Mr. Longcluse called her carriage for her, and put in, besides herself, her maiden sister and two daughters, who all exhibited the family leanness, with noses more or less red and aquiline, and small black eyes, set rather close together.
As he ascended the steps he was accosted by a damsel in distress.
“Mr. Longcluse, I'm so glad to see you! You must do a very good-natured thing,” said handsome Miss Maubray, smiling on him. “I came here with old Sir Arthur and Lady Tramway, and I've lost them; and I've been bored to death by a Mr. Bagshot, and I've sent him to look for my pocket-handkerchief in the tea-room; and I want you, as you hope for mercy, to show it now, and rescue me from my troubles.”
“I'm too much honoured. I'm only too happy, Miss Maubray. I shall put Mr. Bagshot to death, if you wish it, and Sir Arthur and Lady Tramway shall appear the moment you command.”
Mr. Longcluse was talking his nonsense with the high spirits which sometimes attend a painful excitement.
“I told them I should get to that tree if I were lost in the crowd, and that they would be sure to find me under it after six o'clock. Do take me there; I am so afraid of Mr. Bagshot's returning!”
So over the short grass that handsome girl walked, with Mr. Longcluse at her side.
“I'll sit at this side, thank you; I don't want to be seen by Mr. Bagshot.”
So she sat down, placing herself at the further side of the great trunk of the old chestnut-tree. Mr. Longcluse stood nearly opposite, but so placed as to command a view of the hall-door steps. He was still watching the groups that emerged, with as much interest as if his life depended on the order of their to-ing and fro-ing. But, in spite of this, very soon Miss Maubray's talk began to interest him.
“Whom did Alice Arden come with?” asked Miss Maubray. “I should like to know; because, if I should lose my people, I must find some one to take me home.”
“With her brother, I fancy.”
“Oh! yes, to be sure – I saw him here. I forgot. But Alice is very independent, just now, of his protection,” and she laughed.
“How do you mean?”
“Oh! Lord Wynderbroke, of course, takes care of her while she's here. I saw them walking about together, so happy! I suppose it is all settled.”
“About Lord Wynderbroke?” suggested Longcluse, with a gentle carelessness, as if he did not care a farthing – as if a dreadful pain had not at that moment pierced his heart.
“Yes, Lord Wynderbroke. Why, haven't you heard of that?”
“Yes, I believe – I think so. I am sure I have heard something of it; but one hears so many things, one forgets, and I don't know him. What kind of man is he?”
“He's hard to describe; he's not disagreeable, and he's not dull; he has a great deal to say for himself about pictures, and the East, and the Crimea, and the opera, and all the people at all the courts in Europe, and he ought to be amusing; but I think he is the driest person I ever talked to. And he is really good-natured; but I think him much more teasing than the most ill-natured man alive, he's so insufferably punctual and precise.”
“You know him very well, then?” said Longcluse, with an effort to contribute his share to the talk.
“Pretty well,” said the young lady, with just a slight tinge flushing her haughty cheek. “But no one, who has been a week in the same house with him, could fail to see all that.”
Miss Maubray herself, I am told, had hopes of Lord Wynderbroke about a year before, and was not amiably disposed towards him now, and looked on the triumph of Alice a little sourly; although something like the beginning of a real love had since stolen into her heart – not, perhaps, destined to be much more happy.
“Lord Wynderbroke – I don't know him. Is that gentleman he whom I saw talking to Miss Arden in the music-room, I wonder? He's not actually thin, and he is not at all stout; he's a little above the middle height, and he stoops just a little. He appears past fifty, and his hair looks like an old-fashioned brown wig, brushed up into a sort of cone over his forehead. He seems a little formal, and very polite and smiling, with a flower in his button-hole; a blue coat; and he has a pair of those little gold Paris glasses, and was looking out through the window with them.”
“Had he a high nose?”
“Yes, rather a thin, high nose, and his face is very brown.”
“Well, if he was all that, and had a brown face and a high nose, and was pretty near fifty-three, and very near Alice Arden, he was positively Lord Wynderbroke.”
“And has this been going on for some time, or is it a sudden thing?”
“Both, I believe. It has been going on a long time, I believe, in old Sir Reginald's head; but it has come about, after all, rather suddenly; and my guardian says – Mr. David Arden, you know – that he has written a proposal in a letter to Sir Reginald, and you see how happy the young lady looks. So I think we may assume that the course of true love, for once, runs smooth – don't you?”
“And I suppose there is no objection anywhere?” said Longcluse, smiling. “It is a pity he is not a little younger, perhaps.”
“I don't hear any complaints; let us rather rejoice he is not ten or twenty years older. I am sure it would not prevent his happiness, but it would heighten the ridicule. Are you one of Lady May Penrose's party to the Derby to-morrow?” inquired the young lady.
“No; I haven't been asked.”
“Lord Wynderbroke is going.”
“Oh! of course he is.”
“I don't think Mr. David Arden likes it; but, of course, it is no business of his if other people are pleased. I wonder you did not hear all this from Richard Arden, you and he are so intimate.”
So said the young lady, looking very innocent. But I think she suspected more than she said.
“No, I did not hear it,” he said carelessly; “or, if I did, I forgot it. But do you blame the young lady?”
“Blame her! not at all. Besides, I am not so sure that she knows.”
“How can you think so?”
“Because I think she likes quite another person.”
“Really! And who is he?”
“Can't you guess?”
“Upon my honour, I can't.”
There was something so earnest, and even vehement, in this sudden asseveration, that Miss Maubray looked for a moment in his face; and seeing her curious expression, he said more quietly, “I assure you I don't think I ever heard; I'm rather curious to know.”
“I mean Mr. Vivian Darnley.”
“Oh! Well, I've suspected that a long time. I told Richard Arden, one day – I forget how it came about – but he said no.”
“Well, I say yes,” laughed the young lady, “and we shall see who's right.”
“Oh! Recollect I'm only giving you his opinion. I rather lean to yours, but he said there was positively nothing in it, and that Mr. Darnley is too poor to marry.”
“If Alice Arden resembles me,” said the young lady, “she thinks there are just two things to marry for – either love or ambition.”
“You place love first, I'm glad to hear,” said Mr. Longcluse, with a smile.
“So I do, because it is most likely to prevail with a pig-headed girl; but what I mean is this: that social pre-eminence – I mean rank, and not trumpery rank; but such as, being accompanied with wealth and precedence, is also attended with power – is worth an immense sacrifice of all other objects; my reason tells me, worth the sacrifice of love. But that is a sacrifice which impatient, impetuous people can't always so easily make – which I daresay I could not make if I were tried; but I don't think I shall ever be fool enough to become so insane, for the state of a person in love is a state of simple idiotism. It is pitiable, I allow, but also contemptible; but, judging by what I see, it appears to me a more irresistible delusion than ambition. But I don't understand Alice well. I think, if I knew a little more of her brother – certain qualities so run in families – I should be able to make a better guess. What do you think of him?”
“He's very agreeable, isn't he? and, for the rest, really, until men are tried as events only can try them, it is neither wise nor safe to pronounce.”
“Is he affectionate?”
“His sister seems to worship him,” he answered; “but young ladies are so angelic, that where they like they resent nothing, and respect selfishness itself as a manly virtue.”
“But you know him intimately; surely you must know something of him.”
Under different circumstances, this audacious young lady's cross-examination would have amused Mr. Longcluse; but in his present relations, and spirits, it was otherwise.
“I should but mislead you if I were to answer more distinctly. I answer for no man, hardly for myself. Besides, I question your theory. I don't think, except by accident, that a brother's character throws any light upon a sister's; and I hope – I think, I mean – that Miss Arden has qualities illimitably superior to those of her brother. Are these your friends, Miss Maubray?” he continued.
“So they are,” she answered. “I'm so much obliged to you, Mr. Longcluse! I think they are leaving.”
Mr. Longcluse, having delivered her into the hands of her chaperon, took his leave, and walked into the broad alleys among the trees, and in solitude under their shade, sat himself down by a pond, on which two swans were sailing majestically. Looking down upon the water with a pallid frown, he struck the bank beneath him viciously with his heel, peeling off little bits of the sward, which dropped into the water.
“It is all plain enough now. Richard Arden has been playing me false. It ought not to surprise me, perhaps. The girl, I still believe, has neither act nor part in the conspiracy. She has been duped by her brother. I have thrown myself upon her mercy; I will now appeal to her justice. As for him – what vermin mankind are! He must return to his allegiance; he will. After all, he may not like to lose me. He will act in the way that most interests his selfishness. Come, come! it is no impracticable problem. I'm not cruel? Not I! No, I'm not cruel; but I am utterly just. I would not hang a mouse up by the tail to die, as they do in France, head downwards, of hunger, for eating my cheese; but should the vermin nibble at my heart, in that case, what says justice? Alice, beautiful Alice, you shall have every chance before I tear you from my heart – oh, for ever! Ambition! That coarse girl, Miss Maubray, can't understand you. Ambition, in her sense, you have none; there is nothing venal in your nature. Vivian Darnley, is there anything in that either? I think nothing. I observed them closely, that night, at Mortlake. No, there was nothing. My conversation and music interested her, and when I was by, he was nothing.
“They are going to the Derby to-morrow. I think Lady May has treated me rather oddly, considering that she had all but borrowed my drag. She might have put me off civilly; but I don't blame her. She is good-natured, and if she has any idea that I and the Ardens are not quite on pleasant terms, it quite excuses it. Her asking me here, and her little note to remind, were meant to show that she did not take up the quarrel against me. Never mind; I shall know all about it, time enough. They are going to the Derby to-morrow. Very well, I shall go also. It will all be right yet. When did I fail? When did I renounce an object? By Heaven, one way or other, I'll accomplish this!”
Tall Mr. Longcluse rose, and looked round him, and in deep thought, marched with a resolute step towards the house.
