Aftera few words had been exchanged, Grace said in reply to a question of Sir Richard's,—
“Lady May and I are going together, you know: in a day or two we shall be at Brighton. I mean to bid Alice good-bye to-day. There—I mean at Brighton—we are to meet Vivian Darnley, and possibly another friend; and we go to meet your uncle at that pretty little town in Switzerland, where Lady May——I wonder, by-the-bye, you did not arrange to come with us; Lady May travels with us the entire time. She says there are some very interesting ruins there.”
“Why, dear old soul!” said Sir Richard, who felt called upon to say something to set himself right with respect to Lady May, “she's thinking of quite another place. She will be herself the only interesting ruin there.”
“I think you wish to vex me,” said pretty Grace, turning away with a smile, which showed, nevertheless, that this kind of joke was not an unmixed vexation to her. “I don't care for ruins myself.”
“Nor do I,” he said, archly.
“But you don't think so of Lady May. I know you don't. You are franker with her than with me, and you tell her a very different tale.”
“I must be very frank, then, if I tell her more than I know myself. I never said a civil thing of Lady May, except once or twice, to the poor old thing herself, when I wanted her to do one or two little things, to pleaseyou.”
“Oh! come, you can't deceive me; I've seen you place your hand to your heart, like a theatrical hero, when you little fancied any one but she saw it.”
“Now, really, that is too bad. I may have put my hand to my side, when it ached from laughing.”
“How can you talk so? You know very well I have heard you tell her how you admire her music and her landscapes.”
“No, no—not landscapes—she paints faces. But her colouring is, as artists say, too chalky—and nothing but red and white, like—what is it like?—like a clown. Why did not she get the late Mr. Etty—she's always talking of him—to teach her something of his tints?”
“You are not to speak so of Lady May. You forget she is my particular friend,” says the young lady; but her pretty face does not express so much severity as her words. “I do think you like her. You merely talk so to throw dust in people's eyes. Why should not you be frank with me?”
“I wish I dare be frank with you,” said Sir Richard.
“And why not?”
“How can I tell how my disclosures might be punished? My frankness might extinguish the best hope I live for; a few rash words might make me a very unhappy man for life.”
“Really? Then I can quite understand that reflection alarming you in the midst of atête-à-têtewith Lady May; and even interrupting an interesting conversation.”
Sir Richard looked at her quickly, but her looks were perfectly artless.
“I really do wish you would spare me all further allusion to that good woman. I can bear that kind of fun from any one but you. Why will you? she is old enough to be my mother. She is fat, and painted, and ridiculous. You think me totally without romance? I wish to heaven I were. There is a reason, that makes your saying all that particularly cruel. I am not the sordid creature you take me for. I'm not insensible. I'm not a mere stock of stone. Never was human being more capable of the wildest passion. Oh, if I dare tell you all!”
Was all this acting? Certainly not. Never was shallow man, for the moment, more in earnest. Cool enough he was, although he had always admired this young lady, when he entered the room. He had made that entrance, nevertheless, in a spirit quite dramatic. But Miss Maubray never looked so brilliant, never half so tender. He took fire—the situation aiding quite unexpectedly—and the flame was real. It might have been over as quickly as a balloon on fire; but for the moment the conflagration was intense.
How was Miss Maubray affected? An immensely abler performer than the young gentleman who had entered the room with his part at his fingers' ends, and all his looks and emphasis arranged—only to break through all this, and begin extemporising wildly—she, on the contrary, maintained herrôlewith admirable coolness. It was not, perhaps, so easy; for notwithstanding appearances, her histrionic powers wereseverely tasked; for never was she more angry. Her self-esteem was wounded; the fancy (it was no more), she hadcherishedfor him was gone, and a great disgust was thereinstead.
“You shall ask me no questions till I have done asking mine,” said the young lady, with decision; “and I will speak as much as I please of Lady May!”
This jealousy flattered Sir Richard.
“And I will say this,” continued Grace Maubray, “you never address her except as a lover, in what you romantic people would call the language of love.”
“Now, now, now! How can you say that? Is that fair?”
“You do.”
“No, really, I swear—that'stoobad!”
“Yes, the other day, when you spoke to her at the carriage window—you did not think I heard—you accused her so tenderly of having failed to go to Lady Harbroke's garden-party, and you couldn't say what you meant in plain terms, but you said, ‘Why were you false?’”
“I didn't, I swear.”
“Oh! you did; I heard every syllable; ‘false’ was the word.”
“Well, if I said ‘false,’ I must have been thinking of her hair; for she is really a very honest old woman.”
At this moment a female voice in distress is heard, and poor Lady May comes pushing out of the pretty little room, in which Grace Maubray had placed her, sobbing and shedding floods of tears.
“I can't stay there any longer, for I hear everything; I can't help hearing every word—honest old woman, and all—opprobrious. Oh! howcanpeople be so? howcanthey? Oh! I'm very angry—I'm very angry—I'm very angry!”
If Miss Maubray were easily moved to pity she might have been at sight of the big innocent eyes turned up at her, from which rolled great tears, making visible channels through the paint down her cheeks. She sobbed and wept like a fat, good-natured child, and pitifully she continued sobbing, “Oh, I'm a-a-ho—very angry; wha-at shall I do-o-o, my dear? I-I'm very angry—oh, oh—I'm very a-a-angry!”
“So am I,” said Grace Maubray, with a fiery glance at the young baronet, who stood fixed where he was, like an image of death; “and I had intended, dear Lady May, telling you a thing which Sir Richard Arden may as well hear, as I mean to write to tell Alice to-day; it is that I am to be married—I have accepted Lord Wynderbroke—and—and that's all.”
Sir Richard, I believe, said “Good-bye.” Nobody heard him. I don't think he remembers how he got on his horse. Idon't think the ladies saw him leave the room—only, he was gone.
Poor Lady May takes her incoherent leave. She has got her veil over her face, to baffle curiosity. Miss Maubray stands at the window, the tip of her finger to her brilliant lip, contemplating Lady May as she gets in with a great jerk and swing of the carriage, and she hears the footman say “Home,” and sees a fat hand, in a lilac glove, pull up the window hurriedly. Then she sits down on a sofa, and laughs till she quivers again, and tears overflow her eyes; and she says in the intervals,almostbreathlessly,—
“Oh, poor old thing! I really am sorry. Who could have thought she cared so much? Poor old soul! what a ridiculous old thing!”
Such broken sentences of a rather contemptuous pity rolled and floated along the even current of her laughter.
Thesummer span of days was gone; it was quite dark, and long troops of withered leaves drifted in rustling trains over the avenue, as Mr. Levi, observant of his appointment, drove up to the grand old front of Mortlake, which in the dark spread before him like a house of white mist.
“I shay,” exclaimed Mr. Levi, softly, arresting the progress of the cabman, who was about running up the steps, “I'll knock myshelf—wait you there.”
Mr. Levi was smoking. Standing at the base of the steps, he looked up, and right and left with some curiosity. It was too dark; he could hardly see the cold glimmer of the windows that reflected thegreyhorizon. Vaguely, however, he could see that it was a grander place than he had supposed. He looked down the avenue, and between the great trees over the gate he saw the distant lights, and heard throughthedim air the chimes, far off, from London steeples, succeeding one another, or mingling faintly, and telling all whom it might concern the solemn lesson of the flight of time.
Mr. Levi thought it might be worth while coming down in the day-time, and looking over the house and place to see what could be made of them; the thing was sure to go a dead bargain. At present he could see nothing but the wide, vague, grey front, and the faint glow through the hall windows, which showed their black outlines sharply enough.
“Well,he'sh come a mucker, anyhow,” murmured Mr. Levi, with one of his smiles that showed so wide his white sharp teeth.
He knocked at the door and rang the bell. It was not a footman, but Crozier who opened it. The old servant of the family did not like the greasy black curls, the fierce jet eyes, the sallow face and the large, moist, sullen mouth, that presented themselves under the brim of Mr. Levi's hat, nor the tawdry glimmer of chains on his waistcoat, nor the cigar still burning in his fingers. Sir Richard had told Crozier, however, that a Mr. Levi, whom he described, was to call at a certain hour, on very particular business, and was to be instantly admitted.
Mr. Levi looks round him, and extinguishes his cigar before following Crozier, whose countenance betrays no small contempt and dislike, as he eyes the little man askance, as if he would like well to be uncivil to him.
Crozier leads him to the right, through a small apartment, to a vast square room, long disused, still called the library, though but few books remain on the shelves, and those in disorder. It is a chilly night, and a little fire burns in the grate, over which Sir Richard is cowering. Very haggard, the baronet starts up as the name of his visitor is announced.
“Come in,” cries Sir Richard, walking to meet him. “Here—here I am, Levi, utterly ruined. There isn't a soul I dare tell how I am beset, or anything to, but you. Do, for God's sake take pity on me, and think of something! my brain's quite gone—you're such a clever fellow” (he is dragging Levi by the arm all this time towards thecandles): “do now, you're sure to see some way out. It is a matter ofhonour; I only want time. If I could only find my Uncle David: think of his selfishness—good heaven! was there ever man so treated? and there's the bank letter—there—on the table; you see it—dunning me, the ungrateful harpies, for the trifle—what is it?—three hundred and something, I overdrew; and that blackguard tallow-chandler has been three times to my house in town, for payment to-day, and it's more than I thought—near four thousand, he says—the scoundrel! It's just the same to him two months hence; he's full of money, the beast—a fellow like that—it's delight to him to get hold of a gentleman, and he won't take a bill—the lying rascal! He is pressed for cash just now—a pug-faced villain with three hundred thousand pounds! Those scoundrels! I mean the people, whatever they are, that lent me the money; it turns out it was all but at sight, and they were with my attorney to-day, and they won't wait. I wish I was shot; I envy the dead dogs rolling in the Thames! By heaven; Levi, I'll say you're the best friend man ever had on earth, I will, if you manage something! I'll never forget it to you; I'll have it in my power, yet! no one ever said I was ungrateful; I swear I'll be the making of you!Do, Levi, think; you're accustomed to—to emergency, and unless you will, I'mutterly ruined—ruined, by heaven, before I have time tothink!”
The Jew listened to all this with his hands in his pockets, leaning back in his chair, with his big eyes staring on the wild face of the baronet, and his heavy mouth hanging. He was trying to reduce his countenance to vacancy.
“What about them shettlements, Sir Richard—a nishe young lady with a ha-a-tful o' money?” insinuated Levi.
“I've been thinking over that, but it wouldn't do, with my affairs in this state, it would not be honourable or straight. Put that quite aside.”
Mr. Levi gaped at him for a moment solemnly, and turned suddenly, and, brute as he was, spit on the Turkey carpet. He was not, as you perceive, ceremonious; but he could not allow the baronet to see the laughter that without notice caught him for a moment, and could think of no better way to account for his turning away his head.
“That'sh wery honourable indeed,” said the Jew, more solemn than ever; “and if you can't play in that direction, I'm afraid you're in queer shtreet.”
The baronet was standing before Levi, and at these words from that dirty little oracle, a terrible chill stole up from his feet to the crown of his head. Like a frozen man he stood there, and the Jew saw that his very lips were white. Sir Richard feels, for the first time, actually, that he is ruined.
The young man tries to speak, twice. The big eyes of the Jew are staring up at the contortion. Sir Richard can see nothing but those two big fiery eyes; he turns quickly away and walks to the end of the room.
“There's just one fiddle-string left to play on,” muses the Jew.
“For God's sake!” exclaims Sir Richard, turning about, in a voice you would not have known, and for fully a minute the room was so silent you could scarcely have believed that two men were breathing in it.
“Shir Richard, will you be so good as to come nearer a bit? There, that'sh the cheeshe. I brought thish 'ere thing.”
It is a square parchment with a good deal of printed matter, and blanks, written in, and a law stamp fixed with an awful regularity, at the corner.
“Casht your eye over it,” says Levi, coaxingly, as he pushes it over the table to the young gentleman, who is sitting now at the other side.
The young man looks at it, reads it, but just then, if it had been a page of “Robinson Crusoe,” he could not have understood it.
“I'm not quite myself, I can't follow it; too much to think of. What is it?”
“A bond and warrant to confess judgment.”
“What is it for?”
“Ten thoushand poundsh.”
“Sign it, shall I? Can you do anything with it?”
“Don't raishe your voishe, but lishten. Your friend”—and at the phrase Mr. Levi winked mysteriously—“has enough to do it twishe over; and upon my shoul, I'll shwear on the book, azh I hope to be shaved, it will never shee the light; he'll never raishe a pig on it, sho' 'elp me, nor let it out of hish 'ands, till he givesh it back to you. He can't ma-ake no ushe of it; I knowshe him well, and he'll pay you the ten thoushand to-morrow morning, and he wantsh to shake handsh with you, and make himself known to you, and talk a bit.”
“But—but my signature wouldn't satisfy him,” began Sir Richard bewildered.
“Oh!no—no, no?” murmured Mr. Levi, fiddling with the corner of the bank's reminder which lay on the table.
“Mr. Longcluse won't sign it,” said Sir Richard.
Mr. Levi threw himself back in his chair, and looked with a roguish expression still upon the table, and gave the corner of the note a little fillip.
“Well,” said Levi, after both had been some time silent, “it ain't much, only to write his name on the penshil line,there, you see, andthere—he shouldn't make no bonesh about it. Why, it's done every day. Do you think I'd help in a thing of the short if there was any danger? The Sheneral's come to town, is he? What are you afraid of? Don't you be a shild—ba-ah!”
All this Mr. Levi said so low that it was as if he were whispering to the table, and he kept looking down as he put the parchment over to Sir Richard, who took it in his hand, and the bond trembled so much that he set it down again.
“Leave it with me,” he said faintly.
Levi got up with an unusual hectic in each cheek, and his eyes very brilliant.
“I'll meet you what time you shay to-night; you had besht take a little time. It'sh ten now. Three hoursh will do it. I'll go on to my offish by one o'clock, and you come any time from one to two.”
Sir Richard was trembling.
“Between one and two, mind. Hang it! Shir Richard, don't you be a fool about nothing,” whispers the Jew, as black as thunder.
He is fumbling in his breast-pocket, and pulling out a sheaf of letters; he selects one, which he throws upon the parchment that lies open on the table.
“That'sh the note you forgot in my offish yeshterday,with hishname shined to it. There, now you have everything.”
Without any form of valediction, the Jew had left the room. Sir Richard sits with his teeth set, and a strange frown upon his face, scarcely breathing. He hears the cab drive away. Before him on the table lie the papers.
Twohours had passed, and more, of solitude. With a candle in his hand, and his hat and great-coat on, Sir Richard Arden came out into the hall. His trap awaited him at the door.
In the interval of his solitude, something incredible has happened to him. It is over. A spectral secret accompanies him henceforward. A devil sits in his pocket, in that parchment. He dares not think of himself. Something sufficient to shake the world of London, and set all English Christian tongues throughout the earth wagging on one theme, has happened.
Does he repent? One thing is certain: he dares not falter. Something within him once or twice commanded him to throw his crime into the fire, while yet it is obliterable. But what then? what of to-morrow? Into that sheer black sea of ruin, that reels and yawns as deep as eye can fathom beneath him, he must dive and see the light no more. Better his chance.
He won't think of what he has done, of what he is going to do. He suspects his courage: he dares not tempt his cowardice. Braver, perhaps, it would have been to meet the worst at once. But surely, according to the theory of chances, we have played the true game. Is not a little time gained, everything? Are we not in friendly hands? Has not that little scoundrel committed himself, by an all but actual participation in the affair? It can never come tothat. “I have only to confess, and throw myself at Uncle David's feet, and the one dangerous debt would instantly be brought up and cancelled.”
These thoughts came vaguely, and on his heart lay an all but insupportable load. The sight of the staircase reminded him that Alice must long since have gone to her room. He yearned to see her and say good-night. It was the last farewell that the brother she had known from her childhood till now should everspeak or look. That brother was to die to-night, and a spirit of guilt to come in his stead.
He taps lightly at her door. She is asleep. He opens it, and dimly sees her innocent head upon the pillow. If his shadow were cast upon her dream, what an image would she have seen looking in at the door! A sudden horror seizes him—he draws back and closes the door; on the lobby he pauses. It was a last moment of grace. He stole down the stairs, mounted his tax-cart, took the reins from his servant in silence, and drove swiftly into town. In Parliament Street, near the corner of the street leading to Levi's office, they passed a policeman, lounging on the flagway. Richard Arden is in a strangely nervous state; he fancies he will stop and question him, and he touches the horse with the whip to get quickly by.
In his breast-pocket he carried his ghastly secret. A pretty business if he happened to be thrown out, and a policeman should make an inventory of his papers, as he lay insensible in an hospital—a pleasant thing if he were robbed in these villanous streets, and the bond advertised, for a reward, by a pretended finder. A nice thing, good heaven! if it should wriggle and slip its way out of his pocket, in the jolting and tremble of the drive, and fall into London hands, either rascally or severe. He pulled up, and gave the reins to the servant, and felt, however gratefully, with his fingers, the crisp crumple of the parchment under the cloth! Did his servant look at him oddly as he gave him the reins? Not he; but Sir Richard began to suspect him and everything. He made him stop near the angle of the street, and there he got down, telling him rather savagely—for his fancied look was still in the baronet's brain—not to move an inch from that spot.
It was half-past one as his steps echoed down the street in which Mr. Levi had his office. There was a figure leaning with its back in the recess of Levi's door, smoking. Sir Richard's temper was growing exasperated.
It was Levi himself. Upstairs they stumble in the dark. Mr. Levi has not said a word. He is not treating his visitor with much ceremony. He lets himself into his office, secured with a heavy iron bar, and a lock that makes a great clang, and proceeds to light a candle. The flame expands and the light shows well-barred shutters, and the familiar objects.
When Mr. Levi had lighted a second candle, he fixed his great black eyes on the young baronet, who glances over his shoulder at the door, but the Jew has secured it. Their eyes meet for a moment, and Sir Richard places his hand nervously in his breast-pocket and takes out the parchment. Levi nods and extends his hand. Each now holds it by a corner, and as Sir Richard lets it go hesitatingly, he says faintly—
“Levi, you wouldn't—you could not run any risk with that?”
Levi stands by his great iron safe, with the big key in his hand. He nods in reply, and locking up the document, he knocks his knuckles on the iron door, with a long and solemn wink.
“Sha-afe!—that'sh the word,” says he, and then he drops the keys into his pocket again.
There was a silence of a minute or more. A spell was stealing over them; an influence was in the room. Each eyed the other, shrinkingly, as a man might eye an assassin. The Jew knew that there was danger in that silence; and yet he could not break it. He could not disturb the influence acting on Richard Arden's mind. It was his good angel's last pleading, before the long farewell.
In a dreadful whisper Richard Arden speaks:—
“Give me that parchment back,” says he.
Satan finds his tongue again.
“Give it back?” repeats Levi, and a pause ensues. “Of course I'll give it back; and I wash my hands of it and you, and you're throwing away ten thoushand poundsh fornothing.”
Levi was taking out his keys as he spoke, and as he fumbled them over one by one, he said—
“You'll want a lawyer in the Insholwent Court, and you'd find Mishter Sholomonsh azh shatisfactory a shengleman azh any in London. He'sh an auctioneer, too; and there'sh no good in your meetin' that friendly cove here to-morrow, for he'sh one o' them honourable chaps, and he'll never look at you after your schedule's lodged, and the shooner that'sh done the better; and them women we was courting, won't they laugh!”
Hereupon, with great alacrity, Mr. Levi began to apply the key to the lock.
“Don't mind. Keep it; and mind, you d——d little swindler, so sure as you stand there, if you play me a trick, I'll blow your brains out, if it were in the police-office!”
Mr. Levi looked hard at him, and nodded. He was accustomed to excited language in certain situations.
“Well,” said he coolly, a second time returning the keys to his pocket, “your friend will be here at twelve to-morrow, and if you please him as well as he expects, who knows wha-at may be? If he leavesh you half hish money, you'll not 'ave many bill transhactionsh on your handsh.”
“May God Almighty have mercy on me!” groans Sir Richard, hardly above his breath.
“You shall have the cheques then. He'll be here all right.”
“I—I forget; did you say an hour?”
Levi repeats the hour. Sir Richard walks slowly to the stairs, down which Levi lights him. Neither speaks.
In a few minutes more the young gentleman is driving rapidly to his town house, where he means to end that long-remembered night.
When he had got to his room, and dismissed his valet, he sat down. He looked round, and wondered how collected he now was. The situation seemed like a dream, or his sense of danger had grown torpid. He could not account for the strange indifference that had come over him. He got quickly into bed. It was late, and he exhausted, and aided, I know not by what narcotic, he slept a constrained, odd sleep—black as Erebus—the thread of which snaps suddenly, and he is awake with a heart beating fast, as if from a sudden start. A hard bitter voice has said close by the pillow, “You are the first Arden that ever did that!” and with these words grating in his ears, he awoke, and had a confused remembrance of having been dreaming of his father.
Another dream, later on, startled him still more. He was in Levi's office, and while they were talking over the horrid document, in a moment it blew out of the window; and a lean, ill-looking man, in a black coat, like the famous person who, in old woodcuts, picked up the shadow of Peter Schlemel, caught the parchment from the pavement, and with his eyes fixed corner-wise upon him, and a dreadful smile, tapped his long finger on the bond, and with wide paces stepped swiftly away with it in his hand.
Richard Arden started up in his bed; the cold moisture of terror was upon his forehead, and for a moment he did not know where he was, or how much of his vision was real. The grey twilight of early morning was over the town. He welcomed the light; he opened the window-shutters wide. He looked from the window down upon the street. A lean man with tattered black, with a hammer in his hand, just as the man in his dream had held the roll of parchment, was slowly stepping with long strides away from his house, along the street.
As his thoughts cleared, his panic increased. Nothing had happened between the time of his lying down and his up-rising to alter his situation, and the same room sees him now half mad.
Nearthe appointed hour, he walked across the park, and through the Horse Guards, and in a few minutes more was between the tall old-fashioned houses of the street in which Mr. Levi's office is to be found. He passes by a dingy hired coach, with a tarnished crest on the door, and sees two Jewish-looking men inside, both smiling over some sly joke. Whose door are they waiting at? He supposes another Jewish office seeks the shade of that pensive street.
Mr. Levi opened his office door for his handsome client. They were quite to themselves. Mr. Levi did not look well. He received him with a nod. He shut the door when Sir Richard was in the room.
“He'sh not come yet. We'll talk to him inshide.” He indicates the door of the inner room, with a little side jerk of his head. “That'sh private. He hazh that—thingall right.”
Sir Richard says nothing. He follows Levi into a small inner room, which had, perhaps, originally been a lady's boudoir, and had afterwards, one might have conjectured, served as the treasury of cash and jewels of a pawn-office; for its door was secured with iron bars, and two great locks, and the windows were well barred with iron. There were two huge iron safes in the room, built into the wall.
“I'll show you a beauty of a dresshing-ca-ashe,” said Levi, rousing himself; “I'll shell it a dead bargain, and give time for half, if you knowsh any young shwell as wantsh such a harticle. Look here; it was made for the Duchess of Horleans—all in gold, hemerald, and brilliantsh.”
And thus haranguing, he displayed its contents, and turned them over, staring on them with a livid admiration. SirRichard is not thinking of the duchess's dressing-case, nor is he much more interested when Mr. Levi goes on to tell him, “There'sh three executions against peersh out thish week—two gone down to the country. Sholomonsh nobbled Lord Bylkington's carriage outshide Shyner's at two o'clock in the morning, and his lordship had to walk home in the rain;” and Levi laughs and wriggles pleasantly over the picture. “I think he'sh coming,” says Levi suddenly, inclining his ear toward the door. He looked back over his shoulder with an odd look, a little stern, at the young gentleman.
“Who?” asked the young man, a little uncertain, in consequence of the character of that look.
“Your—that—your friend, of course,” said Levi, with his eyes again averted, and his ear near the door.
It was a moment of trepidation and of hope to Richard Arden. He hears the steps of several persons in the next room. Levi opens a little bit of the door, and peeps through, and with a quick glance towards the baronet, he whispers, “Ay, it's him.”
Oh, blessed hope! here comes, at last, a powerful friend to take him by the hand, and draw him, in his last struggle, from the whirlpool.
Sir Richard glances towards the door through which the Jew is still looking, and signing with his hand as, little by little, he opens it wider and wider; and a voice in the next room, at sound of which Sir Richard starts to his feet, says sharply, “Is all right?”
“Allright,” replies Levi, getting aside; and Mr. Longcluse entered the room and shut the door.
His pale face looked paler than usual, his thin cruel lips were closed, his nostrils dilated with a terrible triumph, and his eyes were fixed upon Arden, as he held the fatal parchment in his hand.
Levi saw a scowl so dreadful contract Sir Richard Arden's face—was it pain, or was it fury?—that, drawing back as far as the wall would let him, he almost screamed, “It ain't me!—it ain't my fault!—I can't help it!—I couldn't!—I can't!” His right hand was in his pocket, and his left, trembling violently, extended toward him, as if to catch his arm.
But Richard Arden was not thinking of him—did not hear him. He was overpowered. He sat down in his chair. He leaned back with a gasp and a faint laugh, like a man just overtaken by a wave, and lifted half-drowned from the sea. Then, with a sudden cry, he threw his hands and head on the table.
There was no token of relenting in Longcluse's cruel face. There was a contemptuous pleasure in it. He did not removehis eyes from that spectacle of abasement as he replaced the parchment in his pocket. There is a silence of about a minute, and Sir Richard sits up and says vaguely,—
“Thank God, it's over! Take me away; I'm ready to go.”
“You shall go, time enough; I have a word to say first,” said Longcluse, and he signs to the Jew to leave them.
On being left to themselves, the first idea that struck Sir Richard was the wild one of escape. He glanced quickly at the window. It was barred with iron. There were men in the next room—he could not tell how many—and he was without arms. The hope lighted up, and almost at the same moment expired.
“Clearyour head,” says Mr. Longcluse, sternly, seating himself before Sir Richard, with the table between; “you must conceive a distinct idea of your situation, Sir, and I shall then tell you something that remains. You have committed a forgery under aggravated circumstances, for which I shall have you convicted and sentenced to penal servitude at the next sessions. I have been a good friend to you on many occasions; you have been a false one to me—who baser?—and while I was anonymously helping you with large sums of money, you forged my name to a legal instrument for ten thousand pounds, to swindle your unknown benefactor, little suspecting who he was.”
Longcluse smiled.
“I have heard how you spoke of me. I'm an adventurer, a leg, an assassin, a person whom you were compelled to drop; rather a low person, I fear, if a felon can't afford to sit beside me! You were always too fine a man for me. Your get up was always peculiar; you were famous for that. It will soon be more singular still, when your hair and your clothes are cut after the fashion of the great world you are about to enter. How your friends willlaugh!”
Sir Richard heard all this with a helpless stare.
“I have only to stamp on the ground, to call up the men who will accomplish your transformation. I can change your life by a touch, into convict dress, diet, labour, lodging, for the rest of your days. What plea have you to offer to my mercy?”
Sir Richard would have spoken, but his voice failed him. With a second effort, however, he said—“Would it not be more manly if you let me meet my fate, without this.”
“And you are such an admirable judge of what is manly, oreven gentlemanlike!” said Longcluse. “Now, mind, I shall arrest you in five minutes, on your three over-due bills. The men with the writ are in the next room. I sha'n't immediately arrest you for the forgery. That shall hang over you. I mean to make you, for a while, my instrument. Hear, and understand; I mean to marry your sister. She don't like me, but she suits me; I have chosen her, and I'll not be baulked. When that is accomplished, you are safe. No man likes to see his brother a spectacle of British justice, with cropped hair, and a log to his foot. I may hate and despise you, as you deserve, but that would not do. Failing that, however, you shall have justice, I promise you. The course I propose taking is this: you shall be arrested here, fordebt. You will be good enough to allow the people who take you, to select your present place of confinement. It is arranged. I will then, by a note, appoint a place of meeting for this evening, where I shall instruct you as to the particulars of that course of conduct I prescribe for you. If you mean to attempt an escape, you had better try itnow; I will give you fourteen hours' start, and undertake to catch and bring you back to London as a forger. If you make up your mind to submit to fate, and do precisely as you are ordered, you may emerge. But on the slightest evasion, prevarication, or default, the blow descends. In the meantime we treat each other civilly before these people. Levi is in my hands, and you, I presume, keep your own secret.”
“That is all?” inquired Sir Richard, faintly, after a minute's silence.
“All for thepresent,” was the reply; “you will see more clearly, by-and-by, that you are my property, and you will act accordingly.”
The two Jewish-looking gentlemen, whom Richard had passed in a conference in their carriage which stood now at the steps of the house, were the sheriff's officers destined to take charge of the fallen gentleman, and convey him, by Levi's direction, to a “sponging house,” which, I believe, belonged jointly to him and his partner, Mr. Goldshed.
It was on the principle, perhaps, on which hunters tame wild beasts, by a sojourn at the bottom of a pit-fall, that Mr. Longcluse doomed the young baronet to some ten hours' solitary contemplation of his hopeless immeshment in that castle of Giant Despair, before taking him out and setting him again before him, for the purpose of instructing him in the conditions and duties of the direful life on which he was about to enter.
Mr. Longcluse left the baronet suddenly, and returned to Levi's office no more.
Sir Richard'srôlewas cast. He was to figure, at least first, as a captive in the drama for which fate had selected him. Hehad no wish to retard the progress of the piece. Nothing more odious than his present situation was likely to come.
“You have something to say to me?” said the baronet, making tender, as it were, of himself. The offer was, obligingly, accepted, and the sheriffs, by his lieutenants, made prisoner of Sir Richard Arden, who strode down the stairs between them, and entered the seedy coach, and sitting as far back as he could, drove rapidly toward the City.
Stunned and confused, there was but one image vividly present to his recollection, and that was the baleful face of Walter Longcluse.
Atabout eight o'clock that evening, a hurried note reached Alice Arden, at Mortlake. It was from her brother, and said,—
“My Darling Alice,“I can't get away from town to-night, I am overwhelmed with business; but to-morrow, before dinner, I hope to see you, and stay at Mortlake till next morning.—Your affectionate brother,“Dick.”
“My Darling Alice,
“I can't get away from town to-night, I am overwhelmed with business; but to-morrow, before dinner, I hope to see you, and stay at Mortlake till next morning.—Your affectionate brother,
“Dick.”
The house was quiet earlier than in former times, when Sir Reginald, of rakish memory, was never in his bed till past three o'clock in the morning. Mortlake was an early house now, and all was still by a quarter past eleven. The last candle burning was usually that in Mrs. Tansey's room. She had not yet gone to bed, and was still in “the housekeeper's room,” when a tapping came at the window. It reminded her of Mr. Longcluse's visit on the night of the funeral.
She was now the only person up in the house, except Alice, who was at the far side of the building, where, in the next room, her maid was in bed asleep. Alice, who sat at her dressing-table, reading, with her long rich hair dishevelled over her shoulders, was, of course, quite out of hearing.
Martha went to the window with a little frown of uncertainty. Opening a bit of the shutter, she saw Sir Richard's face close to her. Was ever old housekeeper so pestered by nightly tappings at her window-pane?
“La! who'd a thought o' seeing you, Master Richard! why,youtold Miss Alice you'd not be here till to-morrow!” she sayspettishly, holding the candle high above her head.
He makes a sign of caution to her, and placing his lips near the pane, says,—
“Open the window the least bit in life.”
With a dark stare in his face, she obeys. An odd approach, surely, for a master to make to his own house!
“No one up in the house but you?” he whispers, as soon as the window is open.
“Not one!”
“Don't say a word, only listen: come, softly, round to the hall-door, and let me in; and light those candles there, and bring them with you to the hall. Don't let a creature know I have been here, and make no noise for your life!”
The old woman nodded with the same little frown; and he, pointing toward the hall door, walks away silently in that direction.
“What makes you look so white and dowley?” mutters the old woman, as she secures the window, and bars the shutters again.
“Good creature!” whispers Sir Richard, as he enters the hall, and places his hand kindly on her shoulder, and with a very dark look; “you have always been true to me, Martha, and I depend on your good sense; not a word of my having been here to any one—not to Miss Alice! I have to search for papers. I shall be here but an hour or so. Don't lock or bar the door, mind, and get to your bed! Don't come up this way again—good-night!”
“Won't you have some supper?”
“No, thanks.”
“A glass of sherry and a bit o' something?”
“Nothing.”
And he places his hand on her shoulder gently, and looks toward the corridor that led to her room; then taking up one of the candles she had left alight on the table in the hall, he says,—
“I'll give you a light,” and he repeats, with a wondrous heavy sigh, “Good-night, dear old Martha.”
“God bless ye, Master Dick. Ye must chirp up a bit, mind,” she says very kindly, with an earnest look in her face. “I'm getting to rest—ye needn't fear me walkin' about to trouble ye. But ye must be careful to shut the hall-door close. I agree, as it is a thing to be done; but ye must also knock at my bed-room window when ye've gane out, for I must get up, and lock the door, and make a' safe; and don't ye forget, Master Richard, what I tell ye.”
He held the candle at the end of the corridor, down which thewiry old woman went quickly; and when he returned to the hall, and set the candle down again, he felt faint. In his ears are ever the terrible words: “Mind,Itake command of the house,Idispose of and appoint the servants; I don't appear, you do all ostensibly—but from garret to cellar, I'mmaster. I'll look it over, and tell you what is to be done.”
Sir Richard roused himself, and having listened at the staircase, he very softly opened the hall-door. The spire of the old church showed hoar in the moonlight. At the left, from under a deep shadow of elms, comes silently a tall figure, and softly ascends the hall-door steps. The door is closed gently.
Alice sitting at her dressing-table, half an hour later, thought she heard steps—lowered her book, and listened. But no sound followed. Again the same light foot-falls disturbed her—and again, she was growing nervous. Once more she heard them, very stealthily, and now on the same floor on which her room was. She stands up breathless. There is no noise now. She was thinking of waking her maid, but she remembered that she and Louisa Diaper had in a like alarm, discovered old Martha, only two or three nights before, poking about the china-closet, dusting and counting, at one o'clock in the morning, and had then exacted a promise that she would visit that repository no more, except at seasonable hours. But old Martha was so pig-headed, and would take it for granted that she was fast asleep, and would rather fidget through the house and poke up everything at that hour than at any other.
Quite persuaded of this, Alice takes her candle, determined to scold that troublesome old thing, against whom she is fired with the irritation that attends on a causeless fright. She walks along the gallery quickly, in slippers, flowing dressing-gown and hair, with her candle in her hand, to the head of the stairs, through the great window of which the moonlight streams brightly. Through the keyhole of the door at the opposite side, a ray of candlelight is visible, and from this room opens the china-closet, which is no doubt the point of attraction for the troublesome visitant. Holding the candle high in her left hand, Alice opens the door.
What she sees is this—a pair of candles burning on a small table, on which, with a pencil, Mr. Longcluse is drawing, it seems, with care, a diagram; at the same moment he raises his eyes, and Richard Arden, who is standing with one hand placed on the table over which he is leaning a little, looks quickly round, and rising walks straight to the door, interposing between her and Longcluse.
“Oh, Alice? You didn't expect me: I'm very busy, looking for—looking over papers. Don't mind.”
He had placed his hands gently on her shoulders, and she receded as he advanced.
“Oh! it don't matter. I thought—I thought—I did not know.”
She was smiling her best. She was horrified. He looked like a ghost. Alice was gazing piteously in his face, and with a little laugh, she began to cry convulsively.
“What is the matter with the little fool! There, there—don't, don't—nonsense!”
With an effort she recovered herself.
“Only a little startled, Dick; I did not think you were there—good-night.”
And she hastened back to her chamber, and locked the door; and running into her maid's room, sat down on the side of her bed, and wept hysterically. To the imploring inquiries of her maid, she repeated only the words, “I am frightened,” and left her in a startled perplexity.
She knew that Longcluse had seen her, and he, that she had seen him. Their eyes had met. He saw with a bleak rage the contracting look of horror, so nearly hatred, that she fixed on him for a breathless moment. There was a tremor of fury at his heart, as if it could have sprung at her, from his breast, at her throat, and murdered her; and—she looked so beautiful! He gazed with an idolatrous admiration. Tears were welling to his eyes, and yet he would have laughed to see her weltering on the floor. A madman for some tremendous seconds!