Le Fanu Joseph Sheridan
Checkmate
CHAPTER XXXII
UNDER THE LIME-TREES
At this garden-party, marvellous as it may appear, Lord Wynderbroke has an aunt. How old she is I know not, nor yet with what conscience her respectable relations can permit her to haunt such places, and run a risk of being suffocated in doorways, or knocked down the steps by an enamoured couple hurrying off to more romantic quarters, or of having her maundering old head knocked with a croquet mallet, as she totters drearily among the hoops.
This old lady is worth conciliating, for she has plate and jewels, and three thousand a-year to leave; and Lord Wynderbroke is a prudent man. He can bear a great deal of money, and has no objection to jewels, and thinks that the plate of his bachelor and old-maid kindred should gravitate to the centre and head of the house. Lord Wynderbroke was indulgent, and did not object to her living a little longer, for this aunt conduced to his air of juvenility more than the flower in his button-hole. However, she was occasionally troublesome, and on this occasion made an unwise mixture of fruit and other things; and a servant glided into the music-room, and with a proper inclination of his person, in a very soft tone said, —
“My lord, Lady Witherspoons is in her carriage at the door, my lord, and says her ladyship is indisposed, and begs, my lord, that your lordship will be so good as to hacompany her 'ome in her carriage, my lord.”
“Oh! tell her ladyship I am so very sorry, and will be with her in a moment.” And he turned with a very serious countenance to Alice. “How extremely unfortunate! When I saw those miserable cherries, I knew how it would be; and now I am torn away from this charming place; and I'm sure I hope she may be better soon, it is so (disgusting, he thought, but he said) melancholy! With whom shall I leave you, Miss Arden?”
“Thanks, I came with my brother, and here is my cousin, Mr. Darnley, who can tell me where he is.”
“With a croquet party, near the little bridge. I'll be your guide, if you'll allow me,” said Vivian Darnley eagerly.
“Pray, Lord Wynderbroke, don't let me delay you longer. I shall find my brother quite easily now. I so hope Lady Witherspoons may soon be better!”
“Oh, yes, she always is better soon; but in the meantime one is carried away, you see, and everything upset; and all because, poor woman, she won't exercise the smallest restraint. And she has, of course, a right to command me, being my aunt, you know, and – and – the whole thing is ineffably provoking.”
And thus he took his reluctant departure, not without a brief but grave scrutiny of Mr. Vivian Darnley. When he was gone, Vivian Darnley proffered his arm, and that little hand was placed on it, the touch of which made his heart beat faster. Though people were beginning to go, there was still a crush about the steps. This little resistance and mimic difficulty were pleasant to him for her sake. Down the steps they went together, and now he had her all to himself; and silently for a while he led her over the closely-shorn grass, and into the green walk between the lime-trees, that leads down to the little bridge.
“Alice,” at last he said – “Miss Arden, what have I done that you are so changed?”
“Changed! I don't think I am changed. What is there to change me?” she said carelessly, but in a low tone, as she looked along towards the flowers.
“It won't do, Alice, repeating my question, for that is all you have done. I like you too well to be put off with mere words. You are changed, and without a cause – no, I could not say that – not without a cause. Circumstances are altered; you are in the great world now, and admired; you have wealth and titles at your feet – Mr. Longcluse with his millions, Lord Wynderbroke with his coronet.”
“And who told you that these gentlemen were at my feet?” she exclaimed, with a flash from her fine eyes, that reminded him of moments of pretty childish anger, long ago. “If I am changed – and perhaps I am – such speeches as that would quite account for it. You accuse me of caprice – has any one ever accused you of impertinence?”
“It is quite true, I deserve your rebuke. I have been speaking as freely as if we were back again at Arden Court, or Ryndelmere, and ten years of our lives were as a mist that rolls away.”
“That's a quotation from a song of Tennyson's.”
“I don't know what it is from. Being melancholy myself, I say the words because they are melancholy.”
“Surely you can find some friend to console you in your affliction.”
“It is not easy to find a friend at any time, much less when things go wrong with us.”
“It is very hard if there is really no one to comfort you. Certainly I sha'n't try anything so hopeless as comforting a person who is resolved to be miserable. ‘There's such a charm in melancholy, I would not if I could, be gay.’ There's a quotation for you, as you like verses – particularly what I call moping verses.”
“Come, Alice! this is not like you; you are not so unkind as your words would seem; you are not cruel, Alice – you are cruel to no one else, only to me, your old friend.”
“I have said nothing cruel,” said Miss Alice, looking on the grass before her; “cruelty is too sublime a phrase. I don't think I have ever experienced cruelty in my life; and I don't think it likely that you have; I certainly have never been cruel to any one. I'm a very good-natured person, as my birds and squirrel would testify if they could.”
She laughed.
“I suppose people call that cruel which makes them suffer very much; it may be but a light look, or a cold word, but still it may be more than years of suffering to another. But I don't think, Alice, you ought to be so with me. I think you might remember old times a little more kindly.”
“I remember them very kindly – as kindly as you do. We were always very good friends, and always, I daresay, shall be. I sha'n't quarrel. But I don't like heroics, I think they are so unmeaning. There may be people who like them very well and – There is Richard, I think, and he has thrown away his mallet. If his game is over, he will come now, and Lady May doesn't want the people to stay late; she is going into town, and I stay with her to-night. We are going to the Derby to-morrow.”
“I am going also – it was so kind of her! – she asked me to be of her party,” said Vivian Darnley.
“Richard is coming also; I have never been to the Derby, and I daresay we shall be a very pleasant party; I know I like it of all things. Here comes Richard – he sees me. Was my uncle David here?”
“No.”
“I hardly thought he was, but I saw Grace Maubray, and I fancied he might have come with her,” she said carelessly.
“Yes, she was here; she came with Lady Tramway. They went away about half-an-hour ago.”
So Richard joined her, and they walked to the house together, Vivian Darnley accompanying them.
“I think I saw you a little spooney to-day, Vivian, didn't I?” said Richard Arden, laughing. He remembered what Longcluse once said to him, about Vivian's tendre for his sister, and did not choose that Alice should suspect it. “Grace Maubray is a very pretty girl.”
“She may be that, though it doesn't strike me,” began Darnley.
“Oh! come, I'm too old for that sort of disclaimer; and I don't see why you should be so modest about it. She is clever and pretty.”
“Yes, she is very pretty,” said Alice.
“I suppose she is, but you're quite mistaken if you really fancy I admire Miss Maubray. I don't, I give you my honour, I don't,” said Vivian vehemently.
Richard Arden laughed again, but prudently urged the point no more, intending to tell the story that evening as he and Alice drove together into town, in the way that best answered his purpose.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE DERBY
The morning of the Derby day dawned auspiciously. The weather-cocks, the sky, and every other prognostic portended a fine cloudless day, and many an eye peeped early from bed-room window to read these signs, rejoicing.
“Ascot would have been more in our way,” said Lady May, glancing at Alice, when the time arrived for taking their places in the carriage. “But the time answered, and we shall see a great many people we know there. So you must not think I have led you into a very fast expedition.”
Richard Arden took the reins. The footmen were behind, in charge of hampers from Fortnum and Mason's, and inside, opposite to Alice, sat Lord Wynderbroke; and Lady May's vis-à-vis was Vivian Darnley. Soon they had got into the double stream of carriages of all sorts. There are closed carriages with pairs or fours, gigs, hansom cabs fitted with gauze curtains, dog-carts, open carriages with hampers lashed to the foot-boards, dandy drags, bright and polished, with crests; vans, cabs, and indescribable contrivances. There are horses worth a hundred and fifty guineas a-piece, and there are others that look as if the knacker should have them. There are all sorts of raws, and sand-cracks, and broken knees. There are kickers and roarers, and bolters and jibbers, such a crush and medley in that densely packed double line, that jogs and crushes along you can hardly tell how.
Sometimes one line passes the other, and then sustains a momentary check, while the other darts forward; and now and then a panel is smashed, with the usual altercation, and dust unspeakable eddying and floating everywhere in the sun; all sorts of chaff exchanged, mail-coach horns blowing, and general impudence and hilarity; gentlemen with veils on, and ladies with light hoods over their bonnets, and all sorts of gauzy defences against the dust. The utter novelty of all these sights and sounds highly amuses Alice, to whom they are absolutely strange.
“I am so amused,” she said, “at the gravity you all seem to take these wonderful doings with. I could not have fancied anything like it. Isn't that Borrowdale?”
“So it is,” said Lady May. “I thought he was in France. He doesn't see us, I think.”
He did see them, but it was just as he was cracking a personal joke with a busman, in which the latter had decidedly the best of it, and he did not care to recognise his lady acquaintances at disadvantage.
“What a fright that man is!” said Lord Wynderbroke.
“But his team is the prettiest in England, except Longcluse's,” said Darnley; “and, by Jove, there's Longcluse's drag!”
“Those are very nice horses,” said Lord Wynderbroke looking at Longcluse's team, as if he had not heard Darnley's observation. “They are worth looking at, Miss Arden.”
Longcluse was seated on the box, with a veil on, through which his white smile was indistinctly visible.
“And what a fright he is, also! He looks like a picture of Death I once saw, with a cloth half over his face; or the Veiled Prophet. By Jove, a curious thing that the two most hideous men in England should have between them the two prettiest teams on earth!”
Lord Wynderbroke looks at Darnley with raised brows, vaguely. He has been talking more than his lordship perhaps thinks he has any business to talk, especially to Alice.
“You will be more diverted still when we have got upon the course,” interposes Lord Wynderbroke. “The variety of strange people there – gipsies, you know, and all that – mountebanks, and thimble-riggers, and beggars, and musicians – you'll wonder how such hordes could be collected in all England, or where they come from.”
“And although they make something of a day like this, how on earth they contrive to exist all the other days of the year, when people are sober, and minding their own business,” added Darnley.
“To me the pleasantest thing about the drive is our finding ourselves in the open country. Look out of the window there – trees and farm-steads – it is so rural, and such an odd change!” said Lady May.
“And the young corn, I'm glad to see, is looking very well,” said Lord Wynderbroke, who claimed to be something of an agriculturist.
“And the oddest thing about it is our being surrounded, in the midst of all this rural simplicity, with the population of London,” threw in Vivian Darnley.
“Remember, Miss Arden, our wager,” said Lord Wynderbroke; “you have backed May Queen.”
“May! she should be a cousin of mine,” said good Lady May, firing off her little pun, which was received very kindly by her audience.
“Ha, ha! I did not think of that; she should certainly be the most popular name on the card,” said Lord Wynderbroke. “I hope I have not made a great mistake, Miss Arden, in betting against so – so auspicious a name.”
“I sha'n't let you off, though. I'm told I'm very likely to win – isn't it so?” she asked Vivian.
“Yes, the odds are in favour of May Queen now; you might make a capital hedge.”
“You don't know what a hedge is, I daresay, Miss Arden; ladies don't always quite understand our turf language,” said Lord Wynderbroke, with a consideration which he hoped that very forward young man, on whom he fancied Miss Arden looked good-naturedly, felt as he ought. “It is called a hedge, by betting men, when – ” and he expounded the meaning of the term.
The road had now become more free, as they approached the course, and Dick Arden took advantage of the circumstance to pass the omnibuses, and other lumbering vehicles, which he soon left far behind. The grand stand now rose in view – and now they were on the course. The first race had not yet come off, and young Arden found a good place among the triple line of carriages. Off go the horses! Miss Arden is assisted to a cushion on the roof; Lord Wynderbroke and Vivian take places beside her. The sun is growing rather hot, and the parasol is up. Good-natured Lady May is a little too stout for climbing, but won't hear of anyone's staying to keep her company. Perhaps when Richard Arden, who is taking a walk by the ropes, and wants to see the horses which are showing, returns, she may have a little talk with him at the window. In the meantime, all the curious groups of figures, and a hundred more, which Lord Wynderbroke promised – the monotonous challenges of the fellows with games of all sorts, the whine of the beggar for a little penny, the guitarring, singing, barrel-organing, and the gipsy inviting Miss Arden to try her lucky sixpence – all make a curious and merry Babel about her.
CHAPTER XXXIV
A SHARP COLLOQUY
On foot, near the weighing stand, is a tall, powerful, and clumsy fellow, got up gaudily – a fellow with a lowering red face, in loud good-humour, very ill-looking. He is now grinning and chuckling with his hands in his pockets, and talking with a little Hebrew, young, sable-haired, with the sallow tint, great black eyes, and fleshy nose that characterise his race. A singularly sullen mouth aids the effect of his vivid eyes, in making this young Jew's face ominous.
“Young Dick Harden's 'ere,” said Mr. Levi.
“Eh? is he?” said the big man with the red face and pimples, the green cut-away coat, gilt buttons, purple neck-tie, yellow waistcoat, white cord tights, and top boots.
“Walking down there,” said Levi, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder. “I shaw him shpeak to a fellow in chocolate and gold livery.”
“And an eagle on the button, I know. That's Lady May Penrose's livery,” said his companion. “He came down with her, I lay you fifty. And he has a nice sister as ever you set eyes on – pretty gal, Mr. Levi – a reg'lar little angel,” and he giggled after his wont. “If there's a dragful of hangels anyvere, she's one of them. I saw her yesterday in one of Lady May Penrose's carriages in St. James' Street. Mr. Longcluse is engaged to get married to her; you may see them linked arm-in-arm, any day you please, walkin' hup and down Hoxford Street. And her brother, Richard Harden, is to marry Lady May Penrose. That will be a warm family yet, them Hardens, arter all.”
“A family with a title, Mr. Ballard, be it never so humble, Sir, like 'ome shweet 'ome, hash nine livesh in it; they'll be down to the last pig, and not the thickness of an old tizzy between them and the glue-pot; and while you'd write your name across the back of a cheque, all's right again. The title doesh it. You never shaw a title in the workus yet, Mr. Ballard, and you'll wait awhile before you 'av a hoppertunity of shayin', ‘My lord Dooke, I hope your grashe's water-gruel is salted to your noble tasht thish morning,’ or, ‘My noble marquishe, I humbly hope you are pleashed with the fit of them pepper-and-salts;’ and, ‘My lord earl, I'm glad to see by the register you took a right honourable twisht at the crank thish morning.’ No, Mishter Ballard, you nor me won't shee that, Shir.”
While these gentlemen enjoyed their agreeable banter, and settled the fortunes of Richard Arden and Mr. Longcluse, the latter person was walking down the course in the direction in which Mr. Levi had seen Arden go, in the hope of discovering Lady May's carriage. Longcluse was in an odd state of excitement. He had entered into the spirit of the carnival. Voices all around were shouting, “Twenty to five on Dotheboys;” or, “A hundred to five against Parachute.”
“In what?” called Mr. Longcluse to the latter challenge.
“In assassins!” cried a voice from the crowd.
Mr. Longcluse hustled his way into the thick of it.
“Who said that?” he thundered.
No one could say. No one else had heard it. Who cared? He recovered his coolness quickly, and made no further fuss about it. People were too busy with other things to bother themselves about his questions, or his temper. He hurried forward after young Arden, whom he saw at the turn of the course a little way on.
“The first race no one cares much about; compared with the great event of the day, it is as the farce before the pantomime, or the oyster before the feast.”
The bells had not yet rung out their warning, and Alice said to Vivian, —
“How beautifully that girl with the tambourine danced and sang! I do so hope she'll come again; and she is, I think, so perfectly lovely. She is so like the picture of La Esmeralda; didn't you think so?”
“Do you really wish to see her again?” said Vivian. “Then if she's to be found on earth you shall see her.”
He was smiling, but he spoke in the low tone that love is said to employ and understand, and his eyes looked softly on her. He was pleased that she enjoyed everything so. In a moment he had jumped to the ground, and with one smile back at the eager girl he disappeared.
And now the bells were ringing, and the police clearing the course. And now the cry, “They're off, they're off!” came rolling down the crowd like a hedge-fire. Lord Wynderbroke offered Alice his race-glass, but ladies are not good at optical aids, and she prefers her eyes; and the Earl constitutes himself her sentinel, and will report all he sees, and stands on the roof beside her place, with the glasses to his eyes. And now the excitement grows. Beggar-boys, butcher-boys, stable-helps, jump up on carriage-wheels unnoticed, and cling to the roof with filthy fingers. And now they are in sight, and a wild clamour arises. “Red's first!” “No, Blue!” “White leads!” “Pink's first!”
And here they are! White, crimson, pink, black, yellow – the silk jackets quivering like pennons in a storm – the jockeys tossing their arms madly about, the horses seeming actually to fly; swaying, reeling, whirring, the whole thing passes in a beautiful drift of a moment, and is gone!
Lord Wynderbroke is standing on tip-toe, trying to catch a glimpse of the caps as they show at the opening nearer the winning-post. Vivian Darnley is away in search of La Esmeralda. Miss Arden has seen the first race of the day, the first she has ever seen, and is amazed and delighted. The intruders who had been clinging to the carriage now jump down, and join the crowd that crush on towards the winning-post, or break in on the course. But there rises at the point next her a figure she little expected to see so near that day. Mr. Longcluse has swung himself up, and stands upon the wheel. He is bare-headed, his hat is in the hand he clings by. In the other hand he holds up a small glove – a lady's glove. His face is very pale. He is not smiling; he looks with an expression of pain, on the contrary, and very great respect.
“Miss Arden, will you forgive my venturing to restore this glove, which I happened to see you drop as the horses passed?”
She looked at him with something of surprise and fear, and drew back a little instead of taking the proffered glove.
“I find I have been too presumptuous,” he said gently. “I place it there. I see, Miss Arden, I have been maligned. Some one has wronged me cruelly. I plead only for a fair chance – for God's sake, give me a chance. I don't say hear me now, only say you won't condemn me utterly unheard.”
He spoke vehemently, but so low that, amid the hubbub of other voices, no one but Miss Arden, on whom his eyes were fixed, could hear him.
“I take my leave, Miss Arden, and may God bless you. But I rest in the hope that your noble nature will refuse to treat any creature as my enemies would have you treat me.”
His looks were so sad and even reverential, and his voice, though low, so full of agony, that no one could suppose the speaker had the least idea of forcing his presence upon the lady a moment longer than sufficed to ascertain that it was not welcome. He was about to step to the ground, when he saw Richard Arden striding rapidly up with a very angry countenance. Then and there seemed likely to occur what the newspapers term an ungentlemanlike fracas. Richard Arden caught him, and pulled him roughly to the ground. Mr. Longcluse staggered back a step or two, and recovered himself. His pale face glared wickedly, for a moment or two, on the flushed and haughty young man; his arm was a little raised, and his fist clenched. I daresay it was just the turn of a die, at that moment, whether he struck him or not.
These two bosom friends, and sworn brothers, of a week or two ago, were confronted now with strange looks, and in threatening attitude. How frail a thing is the worldly man's friendship, hanging on flatteries and community of interest! A word or two of truth, and a conflict or even a divergence of interest, and where is the liking, the friendship, the intimacy?
A sudden change marked the face of Mr. Longcluse. The vivid fires that gleamed for a moment from his eyes sunk in their dark sockets, the intense look changed to one of sullen gloom. He beckoned, and said coldly, “Please follow me;” and then turned and walked, at a leisurely pace, a little way inward from the course.
Richard Arden, perhaps, felt that had he hesitated it would have reflected on his courage. He therefore disregarded the pride that would have scorned even a seeming compliance with that rather haughty summons, and he followed him with something of the odd dreamy feeling which men experience when they are stepping, consciously, into a risk of life. He thought that Mr. Longcluse was inviting the interview for the purpose of arranging the preliminaries of who were to act as their “friends,” and where each gentleman was to be heard of that evening. He followed, with oddly conflicting feelings, to a place in the rear of some tents. Here was a sort of booth. Two doors admitted to it – one to the longer room, where was whirling that roulette round which men who, like Richard Arden, could not deny themselves, even on the meanest scale, the excitement of chance gain and loss, were betting and bawling. Into the smaller room of plank, which was now empty, they stepped.
“Now, Sir, you'll be so good as to observe that you have taken upon you a rather serious responsibility in laying your hand on me,” said Longcluse, in a very low tone, coldly and gently. “In France, such a profanation would be followed by an exchange of shots, and here, under other circumstances, I should exact the same chance of retaliation. I mean to deal differently – quite differently. I have fought too many duels, as you know, to be the least apprehensive of being misunderstood or my courage questioned. For your sister's sake, not yours, I take a peculiar course with you. I offer you an alternative; you may have reconciliation – here is my hand” (he extended it) – “or you may abide the other consequence, at which I sha'n't hint, in pretty near futurity. You don't accept my hand?”
“No, Sir,” said Arden haughtily – more than haughtily, insolently. “I can have no desire to renew an acquaintance with you. I sha'n't do that. I'll fight you, if you like it. I'll go to Boulogne, or wherever you like, and we can have our shot, Sir, whenever you please.”
“No, if you please – not so fast. You decline my friendship – that offer is over,” said Longcluse, lowering his hand resolutely. “I am not going to shoot you – I have not the least notion of that. I shall take, let me see, a different course with you, and I shall obtain on reflection your entire concurrence with the hopes I have no idea of relinquishing. You will probably understand me pretty clearly by-and-by.”
Richard Arden was angry; he was puzzled; he wished to speak, but could not light quickly on a suitable answer. Longcluse stood for some seconds, smiling his pale sinister smile upon him, and then turned on his heel, and walked quietly out upon the grass, and disappeared in the crowd.
Richard Arden was irresolute. He threw open the door, and entered the roulette-room – looked round on all the strange faces, that did not mind him, or seem to see that he was there – then, with a sudden change of mind, he retraced his steps more quickly, and followed Longcluse through the other door. But there he could not trace him. He had quite vanished. Perhaps, next morning, he was glad that he had missed him, and had been compelled to “sleep upon it.”
Now and then, with a sense of disagreeable uncertainty, recurred to his mind the mysterious intimation, or rather menace, with which he had taken his departure. It was not, however, his business to look up Longcluse. He had himself seemed to intimate that the balance of insult was the other way. If “satisfaction,” in the slang of the duellist, was to be looked for, the initiative devolved undoubtedly upon Longcluse.
Alice was so placed on the carriage, that she did not see what passed immediately beside it, between Longcluse and her brother. Still, the appearance of this man, and his having accosted her, had agitated her a good deal, and for some hours the unpleasant effect of the little scene spoiled her enjoyment of this day of wonders.
Very gaily, notwithstanding, the party returned – except, perhaps, one person who had reason to remember that day.
