Le Fanu Joseph Sheridan
Checkmate
CHAPTER LVII
LEVI'S APOLOGUE
The room had once been a stately one. Three tall windows looked toward the street. Its cornices and door-cases were ponderous, and its furniture was heterogeneous, and presented the contrasts that might be expected in a broker's store. A second-hand Turkey carpet, in a very dusty state, covered part of the floor; and a dirty canvas sack lay by the door for people coming in to rub their feet on. The table was a round one, that turned on a pivot; it was oak, massive and carved, with drawers; there were two huge gilt arm-chairs covered with Utrecht velvet, a battered office-stool, and two or three bed-room chairs that did not match. There were two great iron safes on tressels. On the top of one was some valuable old china, and on the other an electrifying machine; a French harp with only half-a-dozen strings stood in the corner near the fire-place, and several dusty pictures of various sizes leaned with their faces against the wall. A jet of gas burned right over the table, and had blackened the ceiling by long use, and a dip candle, from which Mr. Levi lighted his cigars, burned in a brass candlestick on the hob of the empty grate. Over everything lay a dark grey drift of dust. And the two figures, the elegant young man in deep mourning, and the fierce vulgar little Jew, shimmering all over with chains, rings, pins, and trinkets, stood in a narrow circle of light, in strong relief against the dim walls of the large room.
“So you will want that bit o' money in hand?” said Mr. Levi.
“I told you so.”
“Don't you think they'll ever get tired helpin' you, if you keep pulling alwaysh the wrong way?”
“You said, this morning, I might reckon upon the help of that friend to any extent within reason,” said Sir Richard, a little sourly.
“Ye're goin' fashter than yer friendsh li-likesh; ye're goin' al-ash – ye're goin' a terrible lick, you are!” said Mr. Levi, solemnly.
His usually pale face was a little flushed; he was speaking rather thickly, and there came at intervals a small hiccough, which indicated that he had been making merry.
“That's my own affair, I fancy,” replied Sir Richard, as haughtily as prudence would permit. “You are simply an agent.”
“Wish shome muff would take it off my hands; 'shan agenshy tha'll bring whoever takesh it more tr-tr-ouble than tin. By my shoul I'll not keepsh long! I'm blowsh if I'll be fool any longer!”
“I'm to suppose, then, that you have made up your mind to act no longer for my friend, whoever that friend may be?” said Sir Richard, who boded no good to himself from that step.
Mr. Levi nodded surlily.
“Have you drawn those bills?”
Mr. Levi gave the table a spin, unlocked a drawer, and threw two bills across to Sir Richard, who glancing at them said, —
“The date is ridiculously short!”
“How can I 'elp 't? and the interesht shlesh than nothin': sh-shunder the bank termsh f-or the besht paper going – I'm blesht if it ain't – it ain't f-fair interesh – the timesh short becaushe the partiesh, theysh – they shay they're 'ard hup, Shir, 'eavy sharge to pay hoff, and a big purchashe in Austriansh!”
“My uncle, David Arden, I happen to know, is buying Austrian stock this week; and Lady May Penrose is to pay off a charge on her property next month.”
The Jew smiled mysteriously.
“You may as well be frank with me,” added Sir Richard Arden, pleased at having detected the coincidence, which was strengthened by his having, the day before, surprised his uncle in conference with Lady May.
“If you don't like the time, why don't you try shomwhere else? why don't you try Lonclushe? There'sh a shwell! Two millionsh, if he's worth a pig! A year, or a month, 'twouldn't matter a tizhy to him, and you and him'sh ash thick ash two pickpockets!”
“You're mistaken; I don't choose to have any transactions with Mr. Longcluse.”
There was a little pause.
“By-the-bye, I saw in some morning paper – I forget which – a day or two ago, a letter attacking Mr. Longcluse for an alleged share in the bank-breaking combination; and there was a short reply from him.”
“I know, in the Timesh,” interposed Levi.
“Yes,” said Arden, who, in spite of himself, was always drawn into talk with this fellow more than he intended; such was the force of the ambiguously confidential relations in which he found himself. “What is thought of that in the City?”
“There'sh lotsh of opinionsh about it; not a shafe chap to quar'l with. If you rub Lonclushe this year, he'll tear you for itsh the next. He'sh a bish – a bish – a bit – bit of a bully, is Lonclushe, and don't alwaysh treat 'ish people fair. If you've quar'led with him, look oush – I shay, look oush!”
“Give me the cheque,” said Sir Richard, extending his fingers.
“Pleashe, Shir Richard, accept them billsh,” replied Levi, pushing an ink-stand toward him, “and I'll get our cheque for you.”
So Mr. Levi took the dip candle and opened one of the safes, displaying for a moment cases of old-fashioned jewellery, and a number of watches. I daresay Mr. Levi and his partner made advances on deposits.
“Why don't you cut them confounded rasesh, Shir Richard? I'm bleshed if I didn't lose five pounds on the Derby myself! There'sh lotsh of field sportsh,” he continued, approaching the table with his cheque-book. “Didn't you never shee a ferret kill a rabbit? It'sh a beautiful thing; it takesh it shomeway down the back, and bit by bit it mendsh itsh grip, moving up to-wards the head. It is really beautiful, and not a shound from either, only you'll see the rabbitsh big eyes lookin' sho wonderful! and the ferret hangsh on, swinging this way and that like a shna-ake – 'tish wery pretty! – till he worksh hish grip up to where the backbone joinish in with the brain; and then in with itsh teeth, through the shkull! and the rabbit givesh a screetch like a child in a fit. Ha, ha, ha! I'm blesht if it ain't done ash clever ash a doctor could do it. 'Twould make you laugh. That will do.”
And he took the bills from Sir Richard, and handed him two cheques, and as he placed the bills in the safe, and locked them up, he continued, —
“It ish uncommon pretty! I'd rayther shee it than a terrier on fifty rats. The rabbit's sho shimple – there'sh the fun of it – and looksh sho foolish; and every rabbit had besht look sharp,” he continued, turning about as he put the keys in his pocket, and looking with his burning black eyes full on Sir Richard, “and not let a ferret get a grip anywhere; for if he getsh a good purchase, he'll never let go till he hash his teeth in his brain, and then he'sh off with a shqueak, and there's an end of him.”
“I can get notes for one of these cheques to-night?” said Sir Richard.
“The shmall one, yesh, eashy,” answered Mr. Levi. “I'm a bachelor,” he added jollily, in something like a soliloquy, “and whenever I marry I'll be the better of it; and I'm no muff, and no cove can shay that I ever shplit on no one. And what do I care for Lonclushe? Not the snuff of this can'le!” And he snuffed the dip scornfully with his fingers, and flung the sparkling wick over the bannister, as he stood at the door, to light Sir Richard down the stairs.
CHAPTER LVIII
THE BARON COMES TO TOWN
Weeks flew by. The season was in its last throes: the session was within a day or two of its death. Lady May drove out to Mortlake with a project in her head.
Alice Arden was glad to see her.
“I've travelled all this way,” she said, “to make you come with me on Friday to the Abbey.”
“On Friday? Why Friday, dear?” answered Alice.
“Because there is to be a grand oratorio of Handel's. It is for the benefit of the clergy's sons' school, and it is one that has not been performed in England for I forget how many years. It is Saul. You have heard the Dead March in Saul, of course; everyone has; but no one has ever heard the oratorio, and come you must. There shall be no one but ourselves – you and I, and your uncle and your brother to take care of us. They have promised to come; and Stentoroni is to take Saul, and they have the finest voices in Europe; and they say that Herr Von Waasen, the conductor, is the greatest musician in the world. There have been eight performances in that great room – oh! what do you call it? – while I was away; and now there is only to be this one, and I'm longing to hear it; but I won't go unless you come with me – and you need not dress. It begins at three o'clock, and ends at six, and you can come just as you are now; and an oratorio is really exactly the same as going to church, so you have no earthly excuse; and I'll send out my carriage at one for you; and you'll see, it will do you all the good in the world.”
Alice had her difficulties, but Lady May's vigorous onset overpowered them, and at length she consented.
“Does your uncle come out here to see you?” asks Lady May.
“Often; he's very kind,” she replies.
“And Grace Maubray?”
“Oh, yes; I see her pretty often – that is, she has been here twice, I think – quite often enough.”
“Well, do you know, I never could admire Grace Maubray as I have heard other people do,” says Lady May. “There is something harsh and bold, don't you think? – something a little cruel. She is a girl that I don't think could ever be in love.”
“I don't know that,” says Alice.
“Oh! really?” says Lady May, “and who is it?”
“It is merely a suspicion,” says Alice.
“Yes – but you think she likes some one – do, like a darling, tell me who it is,” urges Lady May, a little uneasily.
“You must not tell anyone, because they would say it was sisterly vanity, but I think she likes Dick.”
“Sir Richard?” says Lady May, with as much indifference as she could.
“Yes, I think she likes my brother.”
Lady May smiles painfully.
“I always thought so,” she says; “and he admires her, of course?”
“No, I don't think he admires her at all. I'm certain he doesn't,” said Alice.
“Well, certainly he always does speak of her as if she belonged to Vivian Darnley,” remarks Lady May, more happily.
“So she does, and he to her, I hope,” said Alice.
“Hope?” repeated Lady May, interrogatively.
“Yes – I think nothing could be more suitable.”
“Perhaps so; you know them better than I do.”
“Yes, and I still think Uncle David intends them for one another.”
“I would have asked Mr. Longcluse,” Lady May begins, after a little interval, “to use his influence to get us good hearing-places, but he is in such disgrace – is he still, or is there any chance of his being forgiven?”
“I told you, darling, I have really nothing to forgive – but I have a kind of fear of Mr. Longcluse – a fear I can't account for. It began, I think, with that affair that seemed to me like a piece of insanity, and made me angry and bewildered; and then there was a dream, in which I saw such a horrible scene, and fancied he had murdered Richard, and I could not get it out of my head. I suppose I am in a nervous state – and there were other things; and, altogether, I think of him with a kind of horror – and I find that Martha Tansey has an unaccountable dread of him exactly as I have; and even Uncle David says that he has a misgiving about him that he can't get rid of, or explain.”
“I can't think, however, that he is a ghost or even a malefactor,” said Lady May, “or anything worse than a very agreeable, good-natured person. I never knew anything more zealous than his good-nature on the occasion I told you of; and he has always approached you with so much devotion and respect – he seemed to me so sensitive, and to watch your very looks; I really think that a frown from you would have almost killed him.”
Alice sighs, and looked wearily through the window, as if the subject bored her; and she said listlessly, —
“Oh, yes, he was kind, and gentlemanlike, and sang nicely, I grant you everything; but – there is something ominous about him, and I hate to hear him mentioned, and with my consent I'll never meet him more.”
Connected with the musical venture which the ladies were discussing, a remarkable person visited London. He had a considerable stake in its success. He was a penurious German, reputed wealthy, who ran over from Paris to complete arrangements about ticket-takers and treasurer, so as to ensure a system of check, such as would make it next to impossible for the gentlemen his partners to rob him. This person was the Baron Vanboeren.
Mr. Blount had an intimation of this visit from Paris, and Mr. David Arden invited him to dine, of which invitation he took absolutely no notice; and then Mr. Arden called upon him in his lodging in St. Martin's Lane. There he saw him, this man, possibly the keeper of the secret which he had for twenty years of his life been seeking for. If he had a feudal ideal of this baron, he was disappointed. He beheld a short, thick man, with an enormous head and grizzled hair, coarse pug features, very grimy skin, and a pair of fierce black eyes, that never rested for a moment, and swept the room from corner to corner with a rapid and unsettled glance that was full of fierce energy.
“The Baron Vanboeren?” inquires Uncle David courteously.
The baron, who is smoking, nods gruffly.
“My name is Arden – David Arden. I left my card two days ago, and having heard that your stay was but for a few days, I ventured to send you a very hurried invitation.”
The baron grunts and nods again.
“I wrote a note to beg the pleasure of a very short interview, and you have been so good as to admit me.”
The baron smokes on.
“I am told that you possibly are possessed of information which I have long been seeking in vain.”
Another nod.
“Monsieur Lebas, the unfortunate little Frenchman who was murdered here in London, was, I believe, in your employment?”
The baron here had a little fit of coughing.
Uncle David accepted this as an admission.
“He was acquainted with Mr. Longcluse?”
“Was he?” says the baron, removing and replacing his pipe quickly.
“Will you, Baron Vanboeren, be so good as to give me any information you possess respecting Mr. Longcluse? It is not, I assure you, from mere curiosity I ask these questions, and I hope you will excuse the trouble I give you.”
The baron took his pipe from his mouth, and blew out a thin stream of smoke.
“I have heard,” said he, in short, harsh tones, “since I came to London, nosing but good of Mr. Longcluse. I have ze greadest respect for zat excellent gendleman. I will say nosing bud zat – ze greadest respect.”
“You knew him in Paris, I believe?” urges Uncle David.
“Nosing but zat – ze greadest respect,” repeats the baron. “I sink him a very worzy gendleman.”
“No doubt, but I venture to ask whether you were acquainted with Mr. Longcluse in Paris?”
“Zere are a gread many beoble in Paris. I have nosing to say of Mr. Longcluse, nosing ad all, only he is a man of high rebudation.”
And on completing this sentence the baron replaced his pipe, and delivered several rapid puffs.
“I took the liberty of enclosing a letter from a friend explaining who I am, and that the questions I should entreat you to answer are not prompted by any idle or impertinent curiosity; perhaps, then, you would be so good as to say whether you know anything of a person named Yelland Mace, who visited Paris some twenty years since?”
“I am in London, Sir, ubon my business, and no one else's. I am sinking of myself, and not about Mace or Longcluse, and I will not speak about eizer of zem. I am well baid for my dime. I will nod waste my dime on dalking – I will nod,” he continues, warming as he proceeds; “nosing shall induce me do say one word aboud zoze gendlemen. I dake my oas I'll not, mein Gott! What do you mean by asking me aboud zem?”
He looks positively ferocious as he delivers this expostulation.
“My request must be more unreasonable than it appeared to me.”
“Nosing can be more unreasonable!”
“And I am to understand that you positively object to giving me any information respecting the persons I have named?”
The baron appeared extremely uneasy. He trotted to the door on his short legs, and looked out. Returning, he shut the door carefully. His grimy countenance, under the action of fear, assumes an expression peculiarly forbidding; and he said, with angry volubility —
“Zis visit must end, Sir, zis moment. Donnerwesser! I will nod be combromised by you. But if you bromise as a Christian, ubon your honour, never to mention what I say – ”
“Never, upon my honour.”
“Nor to say you have talked with me here in London – ”
“Never.”
“I will tell you that I have no objection to sbeak wis you, privately in Paris, whenever you are zere – now, now! zat is all. I will not have one ozer word – you shall not stay one ozer minude.”
He opens the door and wags his head peremptorily, and points with his pipe to the lobby.
“You'll not forget your promise, Baron, when I call? for visit you I will.”
“I never forget nosing. Monsieur Arden, will you go or nod?”
“Farewell, Sir,” says his visitor, too much excited by the promise opened to him, for the moment to apprehend what was ridiculous in the scene or in the brutality of the baron.
CHAPTER LIX
TWO OLD FRIENDS MEET AND PART
When he was gone the Baron Vanboeren sat down and panted; his pipe had gone out, and he clutched it in his hand like a weapon and continued for some minutes, in the good old phrase, very much disordered.
“That old fool,” he mutters, in his native German, “won't come near me again while I remain in London.”
This assurance was, I suppose, consolatory, for the baron repeated it several times; and then bounced to his feet, and made a few hurried preparations for an appearance in the streets. He put on a short cloak which had served him for the last thirty years, and a preposterous hat; and with a thick stick in his hand, and a cigar lighted, sallied forth, square and short, to make Mr. Longcluse a visit by appointment.
By this time the lamps were lighted. There had been a performance of Saul, a very brilliant success, although it pleased the baron to grumble over it that day. He had not returned from the great room where it had taken place more than an hour, when David Arden had paid his brief visit. He was now hastening to an interview which he thought much more momentous. Few persons who looked at that vulgar seedy figure, strutting through the mud, would have thought that the thread-bare black cloak, over which a brown autumnal tint had spread, and the monstrous battered felt hat, in which a costermonger would scarcely have gone abroad, covered a man worth a hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
Man is mysteriously so constructed that he cannot abandon himself to selfishness, which is the very reverse of heavenly love, without in the end contracting some incurable insanity; and that insanity of the higher man constitutes, to a great extent, his mental death. The Baron Vanboeren's insanity was avarice; and his solitary expenses caused him all the sordid anxieties which haunt the unfortunate gentleman who must make both ends meet on five-and-thirty pounds a year.
Though not sui profusus, he was alieni appetens in a very high degree; and his visit to Mr. Longcluse was not one of mere affection.
Mr. Longcluse was at home in his study. The baron was instantly shown in. Mr. Longcluse, smiling, with both hands extended to grasp his, advances to meet him.
“My dear Baron, what an unexpected pleasure! I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read your note. So you have a stake in this musical speculation, and though it is very late, and, of course, everything at a disadvantage, I have to congratulate you on an immense success.”
The baron shrugs, shakes his head, and rolls his eyes dismally.
“Ah, my friend, ze exbenses are enormous.”
“And the receipts still more so,” says Longcluse cheerfully; “you must be making, among you, a mint of money.”
“Ah! Monsieur Longcluse, id is nod what it should be! zay are all such sieves and robbers! I will never escape under a loss of a sousand bounds.”
“You must be cheerful, my dear Baron. You shall dine with me to-day. I'll take you with me to half a dozen places of amusement worth seeing after dinner. To-morrow morning you shall run down with me to Brighton – my yacht is there – and when you have had enough of that, we shall run up again and have a whitebait dinner at Greenwich; and come into town and see those fellows, Markham and the other, that poor little Lebas saw play, the night he was murdered. You must see them play the return match, so long postponed. Next day we shall – ”
“Bardon, Monsieur, bardon! I am doo old. I have no spirits.”
“What, not enough to see a game of billiards between Markham and Hood! Why, Lebas was charmed so far as he saw it, poor fellow, with their play.”
“No, no, no, no, Monsieur; a sousand sanks, no, bardon, I cannod,” says the baron. “I do not like billiards, and your friends have not found it a lucky game.”
“Well, if you don't care for billiards, we'll find something else,” replies hospitable Mr. Longcluse.
“Nosing else, nosing else,” answers the baron hastily. “I hade all zese sings, ze seatres, ze bubbedshows, and all ze ozer amusements, I give you my oas. Did you read my liddle node?”
“I did indeed, and it amused me beyond measure,” says Longcluse joyously.
“Amuse!” repeats the baron, “how so?”
“Because it is so diverting; one might almost fancy it was meant to ask me for fifteen hundred pounds.”
“I have lost, by zis sing, a vast deal more zan zat.”
“And, my dear Baron, what on earth have I to do with that?”
“I am an old friend, a good friend, a true friend,” says the baron, while his fierce little eyes sweep the walls, from corner to corner, with quivering rapidity. “You would not like to see me quide in a corner. You're the richest man in England, almost; what's one sousand five hundred to you? I have not wridden to you, or come to England, dill now. You have done nosing for your old friend yet: what are you going to give him?”
“Not as much as I gave Lebas,” said Longcluse, eyeing him askance, with a smile.
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Not a napoleon, not a franc, not a sou.”
“You are jesding; sink, sink, sink, Monsieur, what a friend I have been and am to you.”
“So I do, my dear Baron, and consider how I show my gratitude. Have I ever given a hint to the French police about the identity of the clever gentleman who managed the little tunnel through which a river of champagne flowed into Paris, under the barrier, duty free? Have I ever said a word about the confiscated jewels of the Marchioness de la Sarnierre? Have I ever asked how the Comte de Loubourg's little boy is, or directed an unfriendly eye upon the conscientious physician who extricates ladies and gentlemen from the consequences of late hours, nervous depression, and fifty other things that war against good digestion and sound sleep? Come, come, my good Baron, whenever we come to square accounts, the balance will stand very heavily in my favour. I don't want to press for a settlement, but if you urge it, by Heaven, I'll make you pay the uttermost farthing!”
Longcluse laughs cynically. The baron looks very angry. His face darkens to a leaden hue. The fingers which he plunged into his snuff-box are trembling. He takes two or three great pinches of snuff before speaking.
Mr. Longcluse watches all these symptoms of his state of mind with a sardonic enjoyment, beneath which, perhaps, is the sort of suspense with which a beast-tamer watches the eye of the animal whose fury he excites only to exhibit the coercion which he exercises through its fears, and who is for a moment doubtful whether its terrors or its fury may prevail.
The baron's restless eyes roll wickedly. He puts his hand into his pocket irresolutely, and crumbles some papers there. There was no knowing, for some seconds, what turn things might take. But if he had for a moment meditated a crisis, he thought better of it. He breaks into a fierce laugh, and extends his hand to Mr. Longcluse, who as frankly places his own in it, and the baron shakes it vehemently. And Mr. Longcluse and he laugh boisterously and oddly together. The baron takes another great pinch of snuff, and then he says, sponging out as it were, as an ignored parenthesis, the critical part of their conversation —
“No, no, I sink not; no, no, surely not. I am not fit for all zose amusements. I cannot knog aboud as I used; an old fellow, you know: beace and tranquilidy. No, I cannot dine with you. I dine with Stentoroni to-morrow; to-day I have dined with our tenore. How well you look! What nose, what tees, what chin! I am proud of you. We bart good friends, bon soir, Monsieur Longcluse, farewell. I am already a liddle lade.”
“Farewell, dear Baron. How can I thank you enough for this kind meeting? Try one of my cigars as you go home.”
The baron, not being a proud man, took half-a-dozen, and with a final shaking of hands these merry gentlemen parted, and Longcluse's door closed for ever on the Baron Vanboeren.
“That bloated spider?” mused Mr. Longcluse. “How many flies has he sucked! It is another matter when spiders take to catching wasps.”
Every man of energetic passions has within him a principle of self-destruction. Longcluse had his. It had expressed itself in his passion for Alice Arden. That passion had undergone a wondrous change, but it was imperishable in its new as in its pristine state.
This gentleman was in the dumps so soon as he was left alone. Always uncertainty; always the sword of Damocles; always the little reminders of perdition, each one contemptible, but each one in succession touching the same set of nerves, and like the fall of the drop of water in the inquisition, non vi, sed sæpe cadendo, gradually heightening monotony into excitement, and excitement into frenzy. Living always with a sense of the unreality of life and the vicinity of death, with a certain stern tremor of the heart, like that of a man going into action, no wonder if he sometimes sickened of his bargain with Fate, and thought life purchased too dear on the terms of such a lease.
Longcluse bolted his door, unlocked his desk, and there what do we see? Six or seven miniatures – two enamels, the rest on ivory – all by different hands; some English, some Parisian; very exquisite, some of them. Every one was Alice Arden. Little did she dream that such a gallery existed. How were they taken? Photographs are the colourless phantoms from which these glowing life-like beauties start. Tender-hearted Lady May has in confidence given him, from time to time, several of these from her album; he has induced foreign artists to visit London, and managed opportunities by which, at parties, in theatres, and I am sorry to say even in church, these clever persons succeeded in studying from the life, and learning all the tints which now glow before him. If I had mentioned what this little collection cost him, you would have opened your eyes. The Baron Vanboeren would have laughed and cursed him with hilarious derision, and a money-getting Christian would have been quite horror-struck, on reading the scandalous row of figures.
Each miniature he takes in turn, and looks at for a long time, holding it in both hands, his hands resting on the desk, his face inclined and sad, as if looking down into the coffin of his darling. One after the other he puts them by, and returns to his favourite one; and at last he shuts it up also, with a snap, and places it with the rest in the dark, under lock and key.
He leaned back and laid his thin hand across his eyes. Was he looking at an image that came out in the dark on the retina of memory? Or was he shedding tears?
