Le Fanu Joseph Sheridan
Checkmate
CHAPTER XXXV
DINNER AT MORTLAKE
Lady May's party from the Derby dined together late, that evening, at Mortlake. Lord Wynderbroke, of course, was included. He was very happy, and extremely agreeable. When Alice, and Lady May, who was to stay that night at Mortlake, and Miss Maubray, who had come with Uncle David, took their departure for the drawing-room, the four gentlemen who remained over their claret drew more together, and chatted at their ease.
Lord Wynderbroke was in high spirits. He admired Alice more than ever. He admired everything. A faint rumour had got about that something was not very unlikely to be. It did not displease him. He had been looking at diamonds the day before; he was not vexed when that amusing wag, Pokely, who had surprised him in the act, asked him that day, on the Downs, some sly questions on the subject, with an arch glance at beautiful Miss Arden. Lord Wynderbroke pooh-pooh'd this impertinence very radiantly. And now this happy peer, pleased with himself, pleased with everybody, with the flush of a complacent elation on his thin cheeks, was simpering and chatting most agreeably, and commending everything to which his attention was drawn.
In very marked contrast with this happy man was Richard Arden, who talked but little, was absent, utterly out of spirits, and smiled with a palpable effort when he did smile. His conversation with Lady May showed the same uncomfortable peculiarities. It was intermittent and bewildered. It saddened the good lady. Was he ill? or in some difficulty?
Now that she had withdrawn, Richard Arden seemed less attentive to Lord Wynderbroke than to his uncle. In so far as a wight in his melancholy mood could do so, he seemed to have laid himself out to please his uncle in those small ways where, in such situations, an anxiety to please can show itself. Once his father's voice had roused him with the intimation, “Richard, Lord Wynderbroke is speaking to you;” and he saw a very urbane smile on his thin lips, and encountered a very formidable glare from his dark eyes. The only subject on which Richard Arden at all brightened up was the defeat of the favourite. Lord Wynderbroke remarked, —
“It seems to have caused a good deal of observation. I saw Hounsley and Crackham, and they shake their heads at it a good deal, and – ”
He paused, thinking that Richard Arden was going to interpose something, but nothing followed, and he continued, —
“And Lord Shillingsworth, he's very well up in all these things, and he seems to think it is a very suspicious affair; and old Sir Thomas Fetlock, who should have known better, has been hit very hard, and says he'll have it before the Jockey Club.”
“I don't mind Sir Thomas, he blusters and makes a noise about everything,” said Richard Arden; “but it was quite palpable, when the horse showed, he wasn't fit to run. I don't suppose Sir Thomas will do it, but it certainly will be done. I know a dozen men who will sell their horses, if it isn't done. I don't see how any man can take payment of the odds on Dotheboys – I don't, I assure you – till the affair is cleared up: gentlemen, of course, I mean; the other people would like the money all the better if it came to them by a swindle. But it certainly can't rest where it is.”
No one disputing this, and none of the other gentlemen being authorities of any value upon turf matters, the subject dropped, and others came on, and Richard Arden was silent again. Lord Wynderbroke, who was to pass two or three days at Mortlake, and who had made up his mind that he was to leave that interesting place a promesso sposo, was restless, and longed to escape to the drawing-room. So the sitting over the wine was not very long.
Richard Arden made an effort, in the drawing-room, to retrieve his character with Lady May and Miss Maubray, who had been rather puzzled by his hang-dog looks and flagging conversation.
“There are times, Lady May,” said he, placing himself on the sofa beside her, “when one loses all faith in the future – when everything goes wrong, and happiness becomes incredible. Then one's wisest course seems to be, to take off one's hat to the good people in this planet, and go off to another.”
“Only that I know you so well,” said Lady May, “I should tell Reginald – I mean your father – what you say; and I think your uncle, there, is a magistrate for the county of Middlesex, and could commit you, couldn't he? for any such foolish speech. Did you observe to-day – you saw him, of course – how miserably ill poor Pindledykes is looking? I don't think, really, he'll be alive in six months.”
“Don't throw away your compassion, dear Lady May. Pindledykes has always looked dying as long as I can remember, and on his last legs; but those last legs carry some fellows a long way, and I'm very sure he'll outlive me.”
“And what pleasure can a person so very ill as he looks take in going to places like that?”
“The pleasure of winning other people's money,” laughed Arden sourly. “Pindledykes knows very well what he's about. He turns his time to very good account, and wastes very little of it, I assure you, in pitying other people's misfortunes.”
“I'm glad to see that you and Richard are on pleasanter terms,” said David Arden to his brother, as he sipped his tea beside him.
“Egad! we are not, though. I hate him worse than ever. Would you oblige me by putting a bit of wood on the fire? I told you how he has treated me. I wonder, David, how the devil you could suppose we were on pleasanter terms!”
Sir Reginald was seated with his crutch-handled stick beside him, and an easy fur slipper on his gouty foot, which rested on a stool, and was a great deal better. He leaned back in a cushioned arm-chair, and his fierce prominent eyes glanced across the room, in the direction of his son, with a flash like a scimitar's.
“There's no good, you know, David, in exposing one's ulcers to strangers – there's no use in plaguing one's guests with family quarrels.”
“Upon my word, you disguised this one admirably, for I mistook you for two people on tolerably friendly terms.”
“I don't want to plague Wynderbroke about the puppy; there is no need to mention that he has made so much unhappiness. You won't, neither will I.”
David nodded.
“Something has gone wrong with him,” said David Arden, “and I thought you might possibly know.”
“Not I.”
“I think he has lost money on the races to-day,” said David.
“I hope to Heaven he has! I'm glad of it. It will do me good; let him settle it out of his blackguard post-obit,” snarled Sir Reginald, and ground his teeth.
“If he has been gambling, he has disappointed me. He can, however, disappoint me but once. I had better thoughts of him.”
So said David Arden, with displeasure in his frank and manly face.
“Playing? Of course he plays, and of course he's been making a blundering book for the Derby. He likes the hazard-table and the turf, he likes play, and he likes making books; and what he likes he does. He always did. I'm rather pleased you have been trying to manage him. You'll find him a charming person, and you'll understand what I have had to combat with. He'll never do any good; he is so utterly graceless.”
“I see my father looking at me, and I know what he means,” said Richard Arden, with a smile, to Lady May; “I'm to go and talk to Miss Maubray. He wishes to please Uncle David, and Miss Maubray must be talked to; and I see that Uncle David envies me my little momentary happiness, and meditates taking that empty chair beside you. You'll see whether I am right. By Jove! here he comes; I sha'n't be turned away so – ”
“Oh, but, really, Miss Maubray has been quite alone,” urged poor Lady May, very much pleased; “and you must, to please me; I'm sure you will.”
Instantly he arose.
“I don't know whether that speech is most kind or un-kind; you banish me, but in language so flattering to my loyalty, that I don't know whether to be pleased or pained. Of course I obey.” He said these parting words in a very low tone, and had hardly ended them, when David Arden took the vacant chair beside the good lady, and began to talk with her.
Once or twice his eyes wandered to Richard Arden, who was by this time talking with returning animation to Grace Maubray, and the look was not cheerful. The young lady, however, was soon interested, and her good-humour was clever and exhilarating. I think that she a little admired this handsome and rather clever young man, and who can tell what such a fancy may grow to?
That night, as Richard Arden bid him good-bye, his uncle said, coldly enough, —
“By-the-bye, Richard, would you mind looking in upon me to-morrow, at five in the afternoon? I shall have a word to say to you.”
So the appointment was made, and Richard entered his cab, and drove into town dismally.
CHAPTER XXXVI
MR. LONGCLUSE SEES A LADY'S NOTE
Next day Mr. Longcluse paid an early visit at Uncle David's house, and saw Miss Maubray in the drawing-room. The transition from that young lady's former, to her new life, was not less dazzling than that of the heroine of an Arabian tale, who is transported by friendly genii, while she sleeps, from a prison to the palace of a sultan. Uncle David did not care for finery; no man's tastes could be simpler and more camp-like. But these drawing-rooms were so splendid, so elegant and refined, and yet so gorgeous in effect, that you would have fancied that he had thought of nothing else all his life but china, marqueterie, buhl, Louis Quatorze clocks, mirrors, pale-green and gold cabriole chairs, bronzes, pictures, and all the textile splendours, the names of which I know not, that make floors and windows magnificent.
The feminine nature, facile and self-adapting, had at once accommodated itself to the dominion over all this, and all that attended it. And Miss Maubray being a lady, a girl who had, in her troubled life, been much among high-bred people – her father a gentle, fashionable, broken-down man, and her mother a very elegant and charming woman – there was no contrast, in look, air, or conversation, to mark that all this was new to her: on the contrary, she became it extremely.
The young lady was sitting at the piano when Longcluse came in, and to the expiring vibration of the chord at which she was interrupted she rose, with that light, floating ascent which is so pretty, and gave him her hand, and welcomed him with a very bright smile. She thought he was a likely person to be able to throw some light upon two rumours which interested her.
“How do you contrive to keep your rooms so deliciously cool? The blinds are down and the windows open, but that alone won't do, for I have just left a drawing-room that is very nearly insupportable; yours must be the work of some of those pretty sylphs that poets place in attendance upon their heroines. How fearfully hot yesterday was! You did not go to the Derby with Lady May's party, I believe.”
He watched her clever face, to discover whether she had heard of the scene between him and Richard Arden – “I don't think she has.”
“No,” she said, “my guardian, Mr. Arden, took me there instead. On second thoughts, I feared I should very likely be in the way. One is always de trop where there is so much love-making; and I am a very bad gooseberry.”
“A very dangerous one, I should fancy. And who are all these lovers?”
“Oh, really, they are so many, it is not easy to reckon them up. Alice Arden, for instance, had two lovers – Lord Wynderbroke and Vivian Darnley.”
“What, two lovers charged upon one lady? Is not that false heraldry? And does she really care for that young fellow, Darnley?”
“I'm told she really is deeply attached to him. But that does not prevent her accepting Lord Wynderbroke. He has spoken, and been accepted. Old Sir Reginald told my guardian his brother, last night, and he told me in the carriage, as we drove home. I wonder how soon it will be. I should rather like to be one of her bridesmaids. Perhaps she will ask me.”
Mr. Longcluse felt giddy and stunned; but he said, quite gaily —
“If she wishes to be suitably attended, she certainly will. But young ladies generally prefer a foil to a rival, even when so very beautiful as she is.”
“And there was Vivian Darnley at one side, I'm told, whispering all kinds of sweet things, and poor old Wynderbroke at the other, with his glasses to his eyes, reporting all he saw. Only think! What a goose the old creature must have looked!” And the young lady laughed merrily. “But can you tell me about the other affair?” she asked.
“What is it?”
“Oh! you know, of course – Lady May and Richard Arden; is it true that it was all settled the day before yesterday, at that kettle-drum?”
“There again my information is quite behind yours. I did not hear a word of it.”
“But you must have seen how very much in love they both are. Poor young man! I really think it would have broken his heart if she had been cruel, particularly if it is true that he lost so much as they say at the Derby yesterday. I suppose he did. Do you know?”
“I'm sorry to say,” said Mr. Longcluse, “I'm afraid it's only too true. I don't know exactly how much it is, but I believe it is more than he can, at present, very well bear. A mad thing for him to do. I'm really sorry, although he has chosen to quarrel with me most unreasonably.”
“Oh? I wasn't aware. I fancied you would have heard all from him.”
“No, not a word – no.”
“Lady May was talking to me at Raleigh Court, the day we were there – she can talk of no one else, poor old thing! – and she said something had happened to make him and his sister very angry. She would not say what. She only said, ‘You know how very proud they are, and I really think,’ she said, ‘they ought to have been very much pleased, for everything, I think, was most advantageous.’ And from this I conclude there must have been a proposal for Alice; I shall ask her when I see her.”
“Yes, I daresay they are proud. Richard Arden told me so. He said that his family were always considered proud. He was laughing, of course, but he meant it.”
“He's proud of being proud, I daresay. I thought you would be likely to know whether all they say is true. It would be a great pity he should be ruined; but, you know, if all the rest is true, there are resources.”
Longcluse laughed.
“He has always been very particular and a little tender in that quarter; very sweet upon Lady May, I thought,” said he.
“Oh, very much gone, poor thing!” said Grace Maubray. “I think my guardian will have heard all about it. He was very angry, once or twice, with Richard Arden about his losing so much money at play. I believe he has lost a great deal at different times.”
“A great many people do lose money so. For the sake of excitement, they incur losses, and risk even their utter ruin.”
“How foolish!” exclaimed Miss Maubray. “Have you heard anything more about that affair of Lady Mary Playfair and Captain Mayfair? He is now, by the death of his cousin, quite sure of the title, they say.”
“Yes it must come to him. His uncle has got something wrong with his leg, a fracture that never united quite; it is an old hurt, and I'm told he is quite breaking up now. He is at Buxton, and going on to Vichy, if he lives, poor man.”
“Oh, then, there can be no difficulty now.”
“No, I heard yesterday it is all settled.”
“And what does Caroline Chambray say to that?”
And so on they chatted, till his call was ended, and Mr. Longcluse walked down the steps with his head pretty busy.
At the corner of a street he took a cab; and as he drove to Lady May's, those fragments of his short talk with Grace Maubray that most interested him were tumbling over and over in his mind. “So they are angry, very angry; and very proud and haughty people. I had no business dreaming of an alliance with Mr. Richard Arden. Angry, he may be – he may affect to be – but I don't believe she is. And proud, is he? Proud of her he might be, but what else has he to boast of? Proud and angry – ha, ha! Angry and proud. We shall see. Such people sometimes grow suddenly mild and meek. And she has accepted Lord Wynderbroke. I doubt it. Miss Maubray, you are such a good-natured girl that, if you suspected the torture your story inflicted, you would invent it, rather than spare a fellow-mortal that pang.”
In this we know he was a little unjust.
“Well, Miss Arden, I understand your brother; I shall soon understand you. At present I hesitate. Alas! must I place you, too, in the schedule of my lost friends? Is it come to this? —
‘Once I held thee dear as pearl,
Now I do abhor thee.’”
Mr. Longcluse's chin rests on his breast as, with a faint smile, he thus ruminates.
The cab stops. The light frown that had contracted his eyebrows disappears, he glances quickly up at the drawing-room windows, mounts the steps, and knocks at the hall door.
“Is Lady May Penrose at home?” he asked.
“I'll inquire, Sir.”
Was it fancy, or was there in his reception something a little unusual, and ominous of exclusion?
He was, notwithstanding, shown up-stairs. Mr. Longcluse enters the drawing-room: Lady May will see him in a few minutes. He is alone. At the further end of this room is a smaller one, furnished like the drawing-room, the same curtains, carpet, and style, but much more minute and elaborate in ornamentation – an extremely pretty boudoir. He just peeps in. No, no one there. Then slowly he saunters into the other drawing-room, picks up a book, lays it down, and looks round. Quite solitary is this room also. His countenance changes a little. With a swift, noiseless step, he returns to the room he first entered. There is a little marqueterie table, to which he directs his steps, just behind the door from the staircase, under the pretty old buhl clock that ticks so merrily with its old wheels and lever, exciting the reverential curiosity of Monsieur Racine, who keeps it in order, and comments on its antique works with a mysterious smile every time he comes, to any one who will listen to him. The door is a little bit open. All the better, Mr. Longcluse will hear any step that approaches. On this little table lies an open note, hastily thrown there, and the pretty handwriting he has recognised. He knows it is Alice Arden's. Without the slightest scruple, this odd gentleman takes it up and reads a bit, and looks toward the door; reads a little more, and looks again, and so on to the end.
On the principle that listeners seldom hear good of themselves, Mr. Longcluse's cautious perusal of another person's letter did not tell him a pleasant tale.
CHAPTER XXXVII
WHAT ALICE COULD SAY
The letter which Mr. Longcluse held before his eyes was destined to throw a strong light upon the character of Alice Arden's feelings respecting himself. After a few lines, it went on to say: – “And, darling, about going to you this evening, I hardly know what to say, or, I mean, I hardly know how to say it. Mr. Longcluse, you know, may come in at any moment, and I have quite made up my mind that I cannot know him. I told you all about the incredible scene in the garden at Mortlake, and I showed you the very cool letter with which he saw fit to follow it – and yesterday the scene at the races, by which he contrived to make everything so uncomfortable – so, my dear creature, I mean to be cruel, and cut him. I am quite serious. He has not an idea how to behave himself; and the only way to repair the folly of having made the acquaintance of such an ill-bred person is, as I said, to cut him – you must not be angry – and Richard thinks exactly as I do. So, as I long to see you, and, in fact, can't live away from you very long, we must contrive some way of meeting now and then, without the risk of being disturbed by him. In the meantime, you must come more to Mortlake. It is too bad that an impertinent, conceited man should have caused me all this very real vexation.”
There was but little more, and it did not refer to the only subject that interested Longcluse just then. He would have liked to read it through once more, but he thought he heard a step. He let it fall where he had found it, and walked to the window. Perhaps, if he had read it again, it would have lost some of the force which a first impression gives to sentences so terrible; as it was, they glared upon his retina, through the same exaggerating medium through which his excited imagination and feelings had scanned them at first.
Lady May entered, and Mr. Longcluse paid his respects, just as usual. You would not have supposed that anything had occurred to ruffle him. Lady May was just as affable as usual, but very much graver. She seemed to have something on her mind, and not to know how to begin.
At length, after some little conversation, which flagged once or twice —
“I have been thinking, Mr. Longcluse, I must have appeared very stupid,” says Lady May. “I did not ask you to be one of our party to the Derby: and I think it is always best to be quite frank, and I know you like it best. I'm afraid there has been some little misunderstanding. I hope in a short time it will be all got over, and everything quite pleasant again. But some of our friends – you, no doubt, know more about it than I do, for I must confess, I don't very well understand it – are vexed at something that has occurred, and – ”
Poor Lady May was obviously struggling with the difficulties of her explanation, and Mr. Longcluse relieved her.
“Pray, dear Lady May, not a word more; you have always been so kind to me. Miss Arden and her brother choose to visit me with displeasure. I have nothing to reproach myself with, except with having misapprehended the terms on which Miss Arden is pleased to place me. She may however, be very sure that I sha'n't disturb her happy evenings here, or anywhere assume my former friendly privileges.”
“But Mr. Longcluse, I'm not to lose your acquaintance,” said kindly Lady May, who was disposed to take an indulgent and even a romantic view of Mr. Longcluse's extravagances. “Perhaps it may be better to avoid a risk of meeting, under present circumstances; and, therefore, when I'm quite sure that no such awkwardness can occur, I can easily send you a line, and you will come if you can. You will do just as it happens to answer you best at the time.”
“It is extremely kind of you, Lady May. My evenings here have been so very happy that the idea of losing them altogether would make me more melancholy than I can tell.”
“Oh, no, I could not consent to lose you, Mr. Longcluse, and I'm sure this little quarrel can't last very long. Where people are amiable and friendly, there may be a misunderstanding, but there can't be a real quarrel, I maintain.”
With this little speech the interview closed, and the gentleman took a very friendly leave.
Mr. Longcluse was in trouble. Blows had fallen rapidly upon him of late. But, as light is polarised by encountering certain incidents of reflection and refraction, grief entering his mind changed its character.
The only articles of expense in which Mr. Longcluse indulged – and even in those his indulgence was very moderate – were horses. He was something of a judge of horses, and had that tendency to form friendships and intimacies with them which is proper to some minds. One of these he mounted, and rode away into the country, unattended. He took a long ride, at first at a tolerably hard pace. He chose the loneliest roads he could find. His exercise brought him no appetite; the interesting hour of dinner passed unimproved. The horse was tired now. Longcluse was slowly returning, and looking listlessly to his right, he thus soliloquised: —
“Alone again. Not a soul in human shape to disclose my wounds to, not a soul. This is the way men go mad. He knows too well the torture he consigns me to. How often has my hand helped him out of the penalties of the dice-box and betting-book! How wildly have I committed myself to him! – how madly have I trusted him! How plausibly has he promised. The confounded miscreant! Has he good-nature, gratitude, justice, honour? Not a particle. He has betrayed me, slandered me fatally, where only on earth I dreaded slander, and he knew it; and he has ruined the only good hope I had on earth. He has launched it: sharp and heavy is the curse. Wait: it shall find him out. And she! I did not think Alice Arden could have written that letter. My eyes are opened. Well, she has refused to hear my good angel; the other may speak differently.”
He was riding along a narrow old road, with palings, and quaint old hedgerows, and now and then an old-fashioned brick house, staid and comfortable, with a cluster of lofty timber embowering it, and chimney smoke curling cosily over the foliage; and as he rode along, sometimes a window, with very thick white sashes, and a multitude of very small panes, sometimes the summit of a gable appeared. The lowing of unseen cows was heard over the fields, and the whistle of the birds in the hedges; and behind spread the cloudy sky of sunset, showing a peaceful old-world scene, in which Izaak Walton's milkmaid might have set down her pail, and sung her pretty song.
Not another footfall was heard but the clink of his own horse's hoofs along the narrow road; and, as he looked westward, the flush of the sky threw an odd sort of fire-light over his death-pale features.
“Time will unroll his book,” said Longcluse, dreamily, as he rode onward, with a loose bridle on his horse's neck, “and my fingers will trace a name or two on the pages that are passing. That sunset, that sky – how grand, and glorious, and serene – the same always. Charlemagne saw it, and the Cæsars saw it, and the Pharaohs saw it, and we see it to-day. Is it worth while troubling ourselves here? How grand and quiet nature is, and how beautifully imperturbable! Why not we, who last so short a time – why not drift on with it, and take the blows that come, and suffer and enjoy the facts of life, and leave its dreadful dreams untried? Of all the follies we engage in, what more hollow than revenge – vainer than wealth?”
Mr. Longcluse was preaching to himself, with the usual success of preachers. He knew himself what his harangue was driving at, although it borrowed the vagueness of the sky he was looking on. He fancied that he was discussing something with himself, which, nevertheless, was settled – so fixed, indeed, that nothing had power to alter it.
