Le Fanu Joseph Sheridan
Checkmate

CHAPTER LII
MR. LONGCLUSE EMPLOYED

The funeral was not to be for some days, and then to be conducted in the quietest manner possible. Sir Reginald was to be buried in a small vault under the little church, whose steeple cast its shadow every sunny evening across the garden-hedges of the “Guy of Warwick,” and could be seen to the left from the door of Mortlake Hall, among distant trees. Further it was settled by Richard Arden and his uncle, on putting their heads together, that the funeral was to take place after dark in the evening; and even the undertaker's people were kept in ignorance of the exact day and hour.

In the meantime, Mr. Longcluse did not trouble any member of the family with his condolences or inquiries. As a raven perched on a solitary bough surveys the country round, and observes many things – very little noticed himself – so Mr. Longcluse made his observations from his own perch and in his own way. Perhaps he was a little surprised on receiving from Lady May Penrose a note, in the following terms: —

“Dear Mr. Longcluse,

“I have just heard something that troubles me; and as I know of no one who would more readily do me a kindness, I hope you won't think me very troublesome if I beg of you to make me a call to-morrow morning, at any time before twelve.

“Ever yours sincerely,

“May Penrose.”

Mr. Longcluse smiled darkly, as he read this note again. “It is better to be sought after than to offer one's self.”

Accordingly, next morning, Mr. Longcluse presented himself in Lady May's drawing-room; and after a little waiting, that good-natured lady entered the room. She liked to make herself miserable about the troubles of her friends, and on this occasion, on entering the door, she lifted her hands and eyes, and quickened her step towards Mr. Longcluse, who advanced a step or two to meet her.

“Oh! Mr. Longcluse, it is so kind of you to come,” she exclaimed; “I am in such a sea of troubles! and you are such a friend, I know I may tell you. You have heard, of course, of poor Reginald's death. How horribly sudden! – shocking! and dear Alice is so broken by it! He had been, the day before, so cross – poor Reginald, everybody knows he had a temper, poor old soul! – and had made himself so disagreeable to her, and now she is quite miserable, as if it had been her fault. But no matter; it's not about that. Only do you happen to know of people – bankers or something – called Childers and Ballard?”

“Oh! dear, yes; Childers and Ballard; they are City people, on 'Change – stockbrokers. They are people you can quite rely on, so far as their solvency is concerned.”

“Oh! it isn't that. They have not been doing any business for me. It is a very unpleasant thing to speak about, even to a kind friend like you; but I want you to advise what is best to be done; and to ask you, if it is not very unreasonable, to use any influence you can – without trouble, of course, I mean – to prevent anything so distressing as may possibly happen.”

“You have only to say, dear Lady May, what I can do. I am too happy to place my poor services at your disposal.”

“I knew you would say so,” said Lady May, again shaking hands in a very friendly way; “and I know what I say won't go any further. I mean, of course, that you will receive it entirely as a confidence.”

Mr. Longcluse was earnest in his assurances of secresy and good faith.

“Well,” said Lady May, lowering her voice, “poor Reginald, he was my cousin, you know, so it pains me to say it; but he was a good deal embarrassed; his estates were very much in debt. He owed money to a great many people, I believe.”

“Oh! Really?” Mr. Longcluse expressed his well-bred surprise very creditably.

“Yes, indeed; and these people, Childers and Ballard, have something they call a judgment, I think. It is a kind of debt, for about twelve hundred pounds, which they say must be paid at once; and they vow that if it is not they will seize the coffin, and – and – all that, at the funeral. And David Arden is so angry, you can't think! and he says that the money is not owed to them, and that they have no right by law to do any such thing; and that from beginning to end it is a mere piece of extortion. And he won't hear of Richard's paying a farthing of it; and he says that Richard must bring a law-suit against them, for ever so much money, if they attempt anything of the kind, and that he's sure to win. But that is not what I am thinking of – it is about poor Alice, she is so miserable about the mere chance of its happening. The profanation – the fracas – all so shocking and so public – the funeral, you know.”

“You are quite sure of that, Lady May?” said Longcluse.

“I heard it all as I tell you. My man of business told me; and I saw David Arden,” she answered.

“Oh! yes; but I mean, with respect to Miss Arden. Does she, in particular, so very earnestly desire intervention in this awkward business?”

“Certainly; only she – only Miss Arden – only Alice.”

He looked down in thought, and then again in her face, paler than usual. He had made up his mind.

“I shall take measures,” he said quietly. “I shall do everything – anything in my power. I shall even expose myself to the risk of insult, for her sake; only let it soften her. After I have done it, ask her, not before, to think mercifully of me.”

He was going.

“Stay, Mr. Longcluse, just a moment. I don't know what I am to say to you; I am so much obliged. And yet how can I undertake that anything you do may affect other people as you wish?”

“Yes, of course you are right; I am willing to take my chance of that. Only, dear Lady May, will you write to her? All I plead for – and it is the last time I shall sue to her for anything – is that my folly may be forgotten, and I restored to the humble privileges of an acquaintance.”

“But do you really wish me to write? I'll take an opportunity of speaking to her. Would not that be less formal?”

“Perhaps so; but, forgive me, it would not answer. I beg of you to write.”

“But why do you prefer my writing?”

“Because I shall then read her answer.”

“Then I must tell her that you are to read her reply.”

“Certainly, dear Lady May; I meant nothing else.”

“Well, Mr. Longcluse, there is no great difficulty.”

“I only make it a request, not a condition. I shall do my utmost in any case. Pray tell her that.”

“Yes, I'll write to her, as you wish it; or, at least, I'll ask her to put on paper what she desires me to say, and I'll read it to you.”

“That will answer as well. How can I thank you?”

“There is no need of thanks. It is I who should thank you for taking, I am afraid, a great deal of trouble so promptly and kindly.”

“I know those people; they are cunning and violent, difficult to deal with, harder to trust,” said Longcluse, looking down in thought. “I should be most happy to settle with them, and afterwards the executor might settle with me at his convenience; but, from what you say, Mr. David Arden and his nephew won't admit their claim. I don't believe such a seizure would be legal; but they are people who frequently venture illegal measures, upon the calculation that it would embarrass those against whom they adopt them more than themselves to bring them into court. It is not an easy card to play, you see, and they are people I hate; but I'll try.”

In another minute Mr. Longcluse had taken his leave, and was gone.

CHAPTER LIII
THE NIGHT OF THE FUNERAL

Mr. Longcluse smiled as he sat in his cab, driving City-ward to the office of Messrs. Childers and Ballard.

“How easily, now, one might get up a scene! Let Ballard, the monster – he would look the part well – with his bailiffs, seize the coffin and its precious burden in the church; and I, like Sir Edward Maulay, step forth from behind a pillar to stay the catastrophe. We could make a very fine situation, and I the hero; but the girl is too clever for that, and Richard as sharp – that is, as base – as I; knowing my objects, he would at once see a plant, and all would be spoiled. I shall do it in the least picturesque and most probable way. I should like to know the old housekeeper, Mrs. Tansey, better; I should like to be on good terms with her. An awkward meeting with Arden. What the devil do I care? besides, it is but one chance in a hundred. Yes, that is the best way. Can I see Mr. Ballard in his private room for a minute?” he added aloud, to the clerk, Mr. Blotter, behind the mahogany counter, who turned from his desk deferentially, let himself down from his stool, and stood attentive before the great man, with his pen behind his ear.

“Certainly, Mr. Longcluse – certainly, Sir. Will you allow me, Sir, to conduct you?”

Most men would have been peremptorily denied; the more fortunate would have had to await the result of an application to Mr. Ballard; but to Mr. Longcluse all doors flew open, and wherever he went, like Mephistopheles, the witches received him gaily, and the cat-apes did him homage.

Without waiting for the assistance of Mr. Blotter, he ran up the back-stairs familiarly to see Mr. Ballard; and when Mr. Longcluse came down, looking very grave, Mr. Ballard, with the red face and lowering countenance which he could not put off, accompanied him down-stairs deferentially, and held open the office-door for him; and could not suppress his grins for some time in the consciousness of the honour he had received. Mr. Ballard hoped that the people over the way had seen Mr. Longcluse step from his door; and mentioned to everyone he talked to for a week, that he had Mr. Longcluse in his private office in consultation – first it was “for a quarter of an hour by the clock over the chimney,” speedily it grew to “half-an-hour,” and finally to “upwards of an hour, by – ,” with a stare in the face of the wondering, or curious, listener. And when clients looked in, in the course of the day, to consult him, he would say, with a wag of his head and a little looseness about minutes, “There was a man sitting here a minute ago, Mr. Longcluse – you may have met him as you came up the stairs – that could have given us a wrinkle about that;” or, “Longcluse, who was here consulting with me this morning, is clearly of opinion that Italian bonds will be down a quarter by settling day;” or, “Take my advice, and don't burn your fingers with those things, for it is possible something queer may happen any day after Wednesday. I had Longcluse – I daresay you may have heard of him,” he parenthesised jocularly – “sitting in that chair to-day for very nearly an hour and a half, and that's a fellow one doesn't sit long with without hearing something worth remembering.”

From the attorney of Sir Richard Arden was served upon Messrs. Childers and Ballard, that day, a cautionary notice in very stern terms respecting their threatened attack upon Sir Reginald's funeral appointments and body; to which they replied in terms as sharp, and fixed three o'clock for payment of the bond.

It was a very short mile from Mortlake to that small old church near the “Guy of Warwick,” the bit of whose grey spire and the pinnacle of whose weather-cock you could see between the two great clumps of elms to the left. Sir Reginald, feet foremost, was to make this little journey that evening under a grove of black plumes, to the small, quiet room, which he was henceforward to share with his ancestor Sir Hugh Arden, of Mortlake Hall, Baronet, whose pillard monument decorated the little church.

He lies now, soldered up and screwed down, in his strait bed, triply secured in lead, mahogany, and oak, and as safe as “the old woman of Berkeley” hoped to be from the grip of marauders. Once there, and the stone door replaced and mortared in, the irritable old gentleman might sleep the quietest sleep his body had ever enjoyed, to the crack of doom. The space was short, too, which separated that from the bed-room he was leaving; but the interval was “Jew's ground,” trespassing on which, it was thought, he ran a great risk of being clutched by frantic creditors. A whisper of the danger had got into the housekeeper's room; and Crozier, whose north-country blood was hot, and temper warlike, had loaded the horse-pistols, and swore that he would shoot the first man who laid a hand unfriendly on the old master's coffin.

There was an agitation simmering under the grim formalities and tip-toe treadings of the house of death. Martha Tansey grew frightened, angry as she was, and told Richard Arden that Crozier was “neither to hold nor to bind, and meant to walk by the hearse, and stand by the coffin till it was shut into the vault, with loaded pistols in his coat-pockets, and would make food for worms so sure as they villains dar'd to interrupt the funeral.”

Whereupon Richard saw Crozier, took the pistols from him, shook him very hard by the hand, for he liked him all the more, and told him that he would desire nothing better than their attempting to accomplish their threats, as he was well advised the law would make examples of them. Then he went up-stairs, and saw Alice, and he could not help thinking how her black crapes became her. He kissed her, and, sitting down beside her, said, —

“Martha Tansey says, darling, that you are unhappy about something she has been telling you concerning this miserable funeral. She ought not to have alarmed you about it. If I had known that you were frightened, or, in fact, knew anything about it, I should have made a point of coming out here yesterday, although I had fifty things to do.”

“I had a very good-natured note to-day, Dick, from Lady May,” she said – “only a word, but very kindly intended.” And she placed the open note in his fingers. When he had read it, Richard dropped the note on the table with a sneer.

“That man, I suspect, is himself the secret promoter of this outrage – a very inexpensive way, this, of making character with Lady May, and placing you under an obligation – the scoundrel!”

Looks and language of hatred are not very pretty at any time, but in the atmosphere of death they acquire a character of horror. Some momentary disturbance of this kind Richard may have seen in his sister's pale face, for he said, —

“Don't mind what I say about that fellow, for I have no patience with myself for having ever known him.”

“I am so glad, Dick, you have dropped that acquaintance!” said the young lady.

“You have come at last to think as I do,” said Richard.

“It is not so much thinking as something different; the uncertainty about him – the appalling stories you have heard – and, oh! Richard, I had such a dream last night! I dreamt that Mr. Longcluse murdered you. You smile, but I could not have imagined anything that was not real, so vivid, and it was in this room, and – I don't know how, for I forget the beginning of it – the candles went out, and you were standing near the door talking to me, and bright moonlight was at the window, and showed you quite distinctly, and the open door; and Mr. Longcluse came from behind it with a pistol, and I tried to scream, but I couldn't. But you turned about and stabbed at him with a knife or something; it shone in the moonlight, and instantly there was a line of blood across his face; he fired, and I saw you fall back on the floor; I knew you were dead, and I awoke in terror. I thought I still saw his wicked face in the dark, quite white as it was in my dream. I screamed, and thought I was going mad.”

“It is only, darling, that all that has happened has made you nervous, and no wonder. Don't mind your dreams. Longcluse and I will never exchange a word more. We have turned our backs on one another, and our paths lie in very different directions.”

This was a melancholy and grizzly evening at Mortlake Hall. The undertakers were making some final and mysterious arrangements about the coffin, and stole in and out of the dead baronet's room, of which they had taken possession.

Martha Tansey was alone in her room. It was a lurid sunset. Immense masses of black cloud were piled in the west, and from a long opening in that sombre screen, near the horizon, the expiring light glared like the red fire at night, through the clink of a smithy. Mrs. Tansey, dressed in deepest mourning, awaited the hour when she was to accompany the funeral of her old master.

Without succumbing to the threat of Messrs. Childers and Ballard, David Arden and his nephew would have been glad to evade the risk of the fracas, which would no doubt have been a dismal scandal. Martha Tansey herself was not quite sure at what hour the funeral was to leave Mortlake. Opposite the window from which she looked, stand groups of gigantic elms that darken that side of the house, and underwood forms a thick screen among their trunks. Upon the edges of this foliage glinted that fierce farewell gleam, and among the glimmering leaves behind she thought she saw the sinister face of Mr. Longcluse looking toward her. Her fear and horror of Longcluse had increased, and if the very remembrance of him visited her with a sudden qualm, you may be sure that the sight of him, on this melancholy evening, was a shock. Alice's wild dream, which she had recounted to her, did not serve to dissociate him from the vague misgivings that his image called up. She stared aghast at the apparition – itself uncertain – while in the deep shadow, with a foreground of fiercely flashing leaves, had on a sudden looked at her, and before she could utter an exclamation it was gone.

“I think it is my old eyes that plays me tricks, and my weary head that's 'wildered wi' all this dowly jummlement! What sud bring him there? It was never him I sid, only a fancy, and it's past and gone; and so, in the name of God, be it now, and ever, amen! For an evil sight it is, and bodes us no good. Who's there?”

“It's me, Mrs. Tansey,” said Crozier, who had just come in. “Master Richard desired me to tell you it is to be at ten o'clock to-night. He and Mr. David thinks that best, and you're to please not to mention it to no one.”

“Ten o'clock! That's very late, ain't it? No, surely, I'll not blab to no one; let him tell them when he sees fit. Martha Tansey's na that sort; she has had mony a secret to keep, and always the confidence o' the family, and 'twould be queer if she did not know to ho'd her tongue by this time. Sit ye down, Mr. Crozier – ye're wore off yer feet, man, like myself, ever since this happened – and rest a bit; the kettle's boilin', and ye'll tak' a cup o' tea. It's hours yet to ten o'clock.”

So Mr. Crozier, who was in truth a tired man, complied, and took his seat by the fire, and talked over Sir Reginald's money matters, his fits, and his death; and, finally, he fell asleep in his chair, having taken three cups of tea.

The twilight had melted into darkness by this time, and the clear, cold moonlight was frosting all the landscape, and falling white and bright on the carriage-way outside, and casting on the floor the sharp shadows of the window-sashes, and giving the brilliant representations of the windows and the very veining of the panes of glass upon the white boards.

As Martha sat by the table, with her eyes fixed, in a reverie, on one of these reflections upon the floor, the shadow of a man was suddenly presented upon it, and raising her eyes she saw a figure, black against the moonlight, beckoning gently to her to approach.

Martha Tansey was an old lass of the Northumbrian counties, and had in her veins the fiery blood of the Border. The man wore a great-coat, and she could not discern his features; but he was tall and slight, and she was sure he was Mr. Longcluse. But “what dar' Longcluse say or do that she need fear?” And was not Crozier dozing there in the chair, “ready at call?”

Up she got, and stalked boldly to the window, and, drawing near, she plainly saw, as the stranger drew himself up from the window-pane through which he had been looking, and the moonlight glanced on his features, that the face was indeed that of Mr. Longcluse. He looked very pale, and was smiling. He nodded to her in a friendly way once or twice as she approached. She stood stock-still about two yards away, and though she knew him well, she deigned no sign of recognition, for she had learned vaguely something of the feud that had sprung up between him and the young head of the family, and no daughter of the marches was ever a fiercer partisan than lean old Martha. He tapped at the window, still smiling, and beckoned her nearer. She did come a step nearer, and asked sternly —

“What's your will wi' me?”

“I'm Mr. Longcluse,” he said, in a low tone, but with sharp and measured articulation. “I have something important to say. Open the window a little; I must not raise my voice, and I have this to give you.” He held a note by the corner, and tapped it on the glass.

Martha Tansey thought for a moment. It could not be a law-writ he had to serve; a rich man like him would never do that. Why should she not take his note, and hear what he had to say? She removed the bolt from the sash, and raised the window. There was not a breath stirring.