‘Once I held thee dear as pearl,Now I do abhor thee.’”
‘Once I held thee dear as pearl,Now I do abhor thee.’”
‘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 oldwheels 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.
Theletter 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 sentencesso 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 certainincidents 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. Andshe! 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 arepassing.That sunset, that sky—how grand, and glorious, and serene—thesame always. Charlemagne saw it, and the Cæsars saw it, and thePharaohssaw 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.
Mr. Longclusehad now reached a turn in the road, at which stands an old house that recedes a little way and has four poplars growing in front of it, two at each side of the door. There are mouldy walls, and gardens, fruit and vegetables, in the rear, and in one wing of the house the proprietor is licenced to sell beer and other refreshing drinks. This quaint greengrocery and pot-house was not flourishing, I conjecture, for a cab was at the door, and Mr. Goldshed, the eminent Hebrew, on the steps, apparently on the point of leaving.
He is a short, square man, a little round shouldered. He is very bald, with coarse, black hair, that might notunsuitablystuff a chair. His nose is big and drooping, his lips large and moist. He wears a black satin waistcoat, thrust up into wrinkles by his habit of stuffing his short hands, bedizened with rings, into his trousers pockets. He has on a peculiar low-crowned hat. He is smoking a cigar, and talking over his shoulder, at intervals, in brief sentences that have a harsh, brazen ring, and are charged with scoff and menace. No game is too small for Mr. Goldshed's pursuit. He ought to have made two hundred pounds of this little venture. He has not lost, it is true; but, when all is squared, he'll not have made a shilling, and that for a Jew, you know, is very hard to bear.
In the midst of this intermittent snarl, the large, dark eyes of this man lighted on Mr. Longcluse, and he arrested the sentence that was about to fly over his shoulder, in the disconsolate faces of the broken little family in the passage. A smile suddenly beamed all over his dusky features, his airs of lordship quite forsook him, and he lifted his hat to the great man with a cringing salutation. The weaker spirit was overawed by the more potent.It was the catape doing homage to Mephistopheles, in the witch's chamber.
He shuffled out upon the road, with a lazy smile, lifting his hat again, and very deferentially greeted “Mishter Longclooshe.” He had thrown away his exhausted cigar, and the red sun glittered in sparkles on the chains and jewelry that were looped across his wrinkled black satin waistcoat.
“How d'ye do, Mr. Goldshed? Anything particular to say to me?”
“Nothing, no, Mr. Longclooshe. I sposhe you heard of that dip in the Honduras?”
“They'll get over it, but we sha'n't see them so high again soon. Have you that cab all to yourself, Mr. Goldshed?”
“No, Shir, my partner'sh with me. He'll be out in a minute; he'sh only puttin' a chap on to make out an inventory.”
“Well, I don't want him. Would you mind walking down the road here, a couple of hundred steps or so? I have a word for you. Your partner can overtake you in the cab.”
“Shertainly, Mr. Longclooshe, shertainly, Shir.”
And he halloed to the cabman to tell the “zhentleman” who was coming out to overtake him in the cab on the road to town.
This settled, Mr. Longcluse, walking his horse along the road, and his City acquaintance by his side, slowly made their way towards the City, casting long shadows over the low fence into the field at their left; and Mr. Goldshed's stumpy legs were projected across the road in such slender proportions that he felt for a moment rather slight and elegant, and was unusually disgusted, when he glanced down upon the substance of those shadows, at the unnecessarily clumsy style in which Messrs. Shears and Goslin had cut out his brown trousers.
Mr. Longcluse had a good deal to say when they got on a little. Being earnest, he stopped his horse; and Mr. Goldshed, forgetting his reverence in his absorption, placed his broad hand on the horse's shoulder, as he looked up into Mr. Longcluse's face, and now and then nodded, or grunted a “Surely.” It was not until the shadows had grown perceptibly longer, until Mr. Longcluse's hat had stolen away to the gilded stem of the old ash-tree that was in perspective to their left, and until Mr. Goldshed's legs had grown so taper and elegant as to amount to the spindle, that the talk ended, and Mr. Longcluse, who was a little shy of being seen in such company, bid him good evening, and rode away townward at a brisk trot.
That morning Richard Arden looked as if he had got up after a month's fever. His dinner had been a pretence, and his breakfast was a sham. His luck, as he termed it, had got him at last pretty well into a corner. The placing of the horses was a dreadful record of moral impossibilities accomplished againsthim. Five minutes before the start he could have sold his book for three thousand pounds; five minutes after it no one would have accepted fifteen thousand to take it off his hands. The shock, at first a confusion, had grown in the night into ghastly order. It was all, in the terms of the good old simile, “as plain as a pike-staff.” He simply could not pay. He might sell everything he possessed, and pay about ten shillings in the pound, and then work his passage to another country, and become an Australian drayman, or a New Orleans billiard-marker.
But notpayhis bets! And how could he? Ten shillings in the pound? Not five. He forgot how far he was already involved. Whatwasto become of him. Breakfast he could eat none. He drank a cup of tea, but his tremors grew worse. He tried claret, but that, too, was chilly comfort. He was driven to an experiment he had never ventured before. He had a “nip,” and another, and with this Dutch courage rallied a little, and was able to talk to his friend and admirer, Vandeleur, who had made a miniature book after the pattern of Dick Arden's and had lost some hundreds, which he did not know how to pay; and who was, in his degree, as miserable as his chief; for is it not established that—
“The poor beetle, that we tread upon,In corporal sufferance feels a pang as greatAs when a giant dies”?
“The poor beetle, that we tread upon,In corporal sufferance feels a pang as greatAs when a giant dies”?
“The poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great
As when a giant dies”?
Young Vandeleur, with light silken hair, and innocent blue eyes, found his paragon the picture of “grim-visaged, comfortless despair,” drumming a tattoo on the window, in slippers and dressing-gown, without a collar to his shirt.
“You lost, of course,” said Richard savagely; “you followed my lead. Any fellow that does is sure to lose.”
“Yes,” answered Vandeleur, “I did, heavily; and, I give you my honour, I believe I'm ruined.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred and forty pounds!”
“Ruined!What nonsense! Who are you? or what the devil are you making such a row about? Two hundred and forty! How can you be such an ass? Don't you know it's nothing?”
“Nothing! By Jove! I wish I could see it,” said poor Van; “everything's something to any one, when there's nothing to pay it with. I'm not like you, you know; I'm awfully poor. I have just a hundred and twenty pounds from my office, and forty my aunt gives me, and ninety I get from home, and, upon my honour, that's all; and I owed just a hundred pounds to some fellows that were growing impertinent. My tailor is sixty-four,and the rest aretrifling, but they were the most impertinent, and I was so sure of this unfortunate thing that I told them I—really did—to call next week; and now I suppose it's all up with me, I may as well make a bolt of it. Instead of having any money to pay them, I'm two hundred and forty pounds worse than ever. I don't know what on earth to do. Upon my honour, I haven't an idea.”
“I wish we could exchange our accounts,” said Richard grimly: “I wish you owed my sixteen thousand. I think you'd sink through the earth. I think you'd call for a pistol, and blow”—(he was going to say, “your brains out,” but he would not pay him that compliment)—“blow your head off.”
So it was the old case—“Enter Tilburina, mad, in white satin; enter her maid, mad, in white linen.”
And Richard Arden continued—
“What's your aunt good for? Youknowshe will pay that; don't let me hear a word more about it.”
“And your uncle will pay yours, won't he?” said Van, with an innocent gaze of his azure eyes.
“My uncle has paid some trifles before, but this is too big a thing. He's tired of me and my cursed misfortunes, and he's not likely to apply any of his overgrown wealth in relieving a poor tortured beggar like me. I'm simply ruined.”
Vanwas looking ruefully out of the window, down upon the deserted pavement opposite. At length he said,—
“And why don't you give your luck a chance?”
“Whenever I give it a chance it hits me so devilish hard,” replied Richard Arden.
“But I mean at play to retrieve,” said Van.
“So do I. So I did, last night, and lost another thousand. It is utterly monstrous.”
“By Jove! that is really very extraordinary,” exclaimed little Van. “I tried it, too, last night. Tom Franklyn had some fellows to sup with him, and I went in, and they were playing loo; and I lost thirty-seven pounds more!”
“Thirty-seven confounded flea-bites! Why, don't you see how you torture me with your nonsense? If you can't talk like a man of sense, for Heaven's sake, shut up, and don't distract me in my misery.”
He emphasised the word with a Lilliputian thump with the side of his fist—that which presents the edge of the doubled-up little finger and palm—a sort of buffer, which I suppose he thought he might safely apply to the pane of glass on which he had been drumming. But he hit a little too hard, or there was a flaw in the glass, for the pane flew out, touching the window-sill, and alighted in the area with a musical jingle.
“There! see what you made me do. My luck! Now we can't talk without those brutes at that open window, over the way, hearing every word we say. By Jove, it is later than I thought! I did not sleep last night.”
“Nor I, a moment,” said Van.
“It seems like a week since that accursed race, and I don't know whether it is morning or evening, or day or night. It is past four, and I must dress and go to my uncle—he said five. Don't leave me, Van, old fellow! I think I should cut my throat if I were alone.”
“Oh, no, I'll stay with pleasure, although I don't see what comfort there is in me, for I am about the most miserable dog in London.”
“Now don't make a fool of yourself any more,” said Richard Arden. “You have only to tell your aunt, and say that you are a prodigal son, and that sort of thing, and it will be paid in a week. I look as if I was going to be hanged—or is it the colour of that glass? I hate it. I'll leave these cursed lodgings. Did you ever see such a ghost?”
“Well, you do look a trifle seedy: you'll look better when you're dressed. It's an awful world to live in,” said poor Van.
“I'll not be five minutes; you must walk with me a bit of the way. I wish I had some fellow at my other side who had lost a hundred thousand. I daresay he'd think me a fool. They say Chiffington lost a hundred and forty thousand. Perhaps he'd think me as great an ass as I think you—who knows? I may be making too much of it—and my uncle is so very rich, and neither wife nor child; and, I give you my honour, I am sick of the whole thing. I'd never take a card or a dice-box in my hand, or back a horse, while I live, if I was once fairly out of it. Hemighttry me, don't you think? I'm the only near relation he has on earth—I don't count my father, for he's—it's a different thing, you know—I and my sister, just. And, really, it would be nothing to him. And I think he suspected something about it last night; perhaps he heard a little of it. And he's rather hot, but he's a good-natured fellow, and he has commercial ideas about a man's going into the insolvent court; and, by Jove, you know, I'm ruined, and I don't think he'd like to see our name disgraced—eh, do you?”
“No, I'm quite sure,” said Van. “I thought so all along.”
“Peers and peeresses are very fine in their way, and people, whenever the peers do anything foolish, and throw out a bill, exclaim ‘Thank Heaven we have still a House of Lords!’ but you and I, Van, may thank Heaven for a better estate, the order of aunts and uncles. Do you remember the man you and I saw in the vaudeville, who exclaims every now and then, ‘Vive mon oncle! Vive ma tante!’?”
So, in better spirits, Arden prepared to visit his uncle.
“Let us get into a cab; people are staring at you,” said Richard Arden, when they had walked a little way towards his uncle's house. “You look so utterly ruined, one would think you had swallowed poison, and were dying by inches, andexpected to be in the other world before you reached your doctor's door. Here's a cab.”
They got in, and sitting side by side, said Vandeleur to him, after a minute's silence,—
“I've been thinking of a thing—why did not you take Mr. Longcluse into council? He gave you a lift before, don't you remember? and he lost nothing by it, and made everything smooth. Why don't you look him up?”
“I've been an awful fool, Van.”
“How so?”
“I've had a sort of row with Longcluse, and there are reasons—I could not, at all events, have asked him. It would have been next to impossible, and now it isquiteimpossible.”
“Why should it be? He seemed to like you; and I venture to say he'd be very glad to shake hands.”
“So he might, butIshouldn't,” said Richard imperiously. “No, no, there's nothing in that. It would take too long to tell; but I should rather go over the precipice than hold by that stay. I don't know how long my uncle may keep me. Would you mind waiting for me at my lodgings? Thompson will give you cigars and brandy and water; and I'll come back and tell you what my uncle intends.”
This appointment made, they parted, and he knocked at his uncle's door. The sound seemed to echo threateningly at his heart, which sank with a sudden misgiving.
“Ismy uncle at home?”
“No, Sir; I expect him at five. It wants about five minutes; but he desired me to show you, Sir, into the study.”
He was now alone in that large square room. The books, each in its place, in a vellum uniform, with a military precision and nattiness—seldom disturbed, I fancy, for Uncle David was not much of a book-worm—chilled him with an aspect of inflexible formality; and the busts, in cold white marble, standing at intervals on their pedestals, seemed to have called up looks, like Mrs. Pentweezle, for the occasion. Demosthenes, with his wrenched neck and square brow, had evidently heard of his dealings with Lord Pindledykes, and made up his mind, when the proper time came, to denounce him with a tempest of appropriate eloquence. There was in Cicero's face, hethought, something satirical and conceited which was new and odious; and under Plato's external solemnity he detected a pleasurable and roguish anticipation of the coming scene.
His uncle was very punctual. A few minutes would see him in the room, and then two or three sentences would disclose the purpose he meditated. In the midst of the trepidation which had thus returned, he heard his uncle's knock at the hall-door, and in another moment he entered the study.
“How d'ye do, Richard? You're punctual. I wish our meeting was a pleasanter one. Sit down. You haven't kept faith with me. It is scarcely a year since, with a large sum of money, such as at your age I should have thought a fortune, I rescued you from bad hands and a great danger. Now, Sir, do you remember a promise you then made me? and have you kept your word?”
“I confess, uncle, I know I can't excuse myself; but I was tempted, and I am weak—I am a fool, worse than a fool—whatever you please to call me, and I'm sorry. Can I say more?” pleaded the young man.
“That is saying nothing. It simply means that you do the thing that pleases you, and break your word where your inclination prompts; and you are sorry because it has turned out unluckily. I have heard that you are again in danger.Iam not going to help you.” His blue eyes looked cold and hard, and the oblique light showed severe lines at his brows and mouth. It was a face which, generally kindly, could yet look, on occasion, stern enough. “Now, observe, I'm not going to help you; I'm not even going to reason with you—you can do that for yourself, if you please—I will simply help you withlight. Thus forewarned, you need not, of course, answer any one of the questions I am about to put, and to ask which, I have no other claim than that which rests upon having put you on your feet, and paid five thousand pounds for you, only a year ago.”
“But I entreat that you do put them. I'm ashamed of myself, dear Uncle David; I implore of you to ask me whatever you please: I'll answer everything.”
“Well, I think I know everything; Lord Pindledykes makes no secret of it. He's the man, isn't he?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“That's the sallow, dissipated-looking fellow, with the eye that squints outward. I know his appearance very well; I knew his good-for-nothing father. No one likes to have transactions with that fellow—he's shunned—and you chose him, of all people; and he has pigeoned you. I've heard all about it. Everybody knows by this time. And you have really lost fifteen thousand pounds to him?”
“I am afraid, uncle, it is very near that.”
“This, you know,” resumed Uncle David, “is not debt: it is ruin. You chose to mortgage your reversion to some Jews, for fifteen hundred a year, during your father's lifetime. Three hundred would have been ample, with the hundred a year you had before—ample; but you chose to do it, and the estates, whenever you succeed to them, will come to you with a very heavy debt charged, for those Jews, upon them. I don't suppose the estates are destined to continue long in our family; but this is a vexation which don't touch you, nephew.Iam, I confess, sorry. They were in our family, some of them, before the Conquest. No matter. What you have to consider is your present position. They will come to you, if ever, saddled with a heavy debt; and, in the meantime, you have fifteen hundred a year for your father's life; and I don't think it will sell foranything like the fifteen thousand pounds you have just lost. You are therefore insolvent; there is the story told. I see nothing for it but your becoming formally an insolvent. It is thebourgeoisiewho shrink from that sort of thing; titled men, and men of pleasure and fashion, don't seem to mind it. There are Lord Harry Newgate, and the Honourable Alfred Pentonville, and Sir Aymerick Pigeon, one of the oldest baronets in England, have been in theGazettewithin the last twelve months. The money I paid, on the faith of your promise, is worse than wasted. I'll pay no more into the pockets of rooks and scoundrels; I'll divide no more of my money among blackguard jockeys and villanous peers, simply to defer for a few months the consequences of a fool's incorrigible folly.”
“But, you know, uncle, I was not quite so mad. The thing was a swindle; it can't stand. The horse was not fairly treated.”
“I daresay: I suppose it was doctored. I don't care; I only think that unless you meant to go in for drugging horses and bribing jockeys, you had no business among such people, and at that sort of game. All I want is that you clearly understand that in this matter—though I would gladly see you safely out of it—I'll waste no more money in paying gambling debts.”
“This might have happened to anyone, Sir; it might indeed, uncle. Every second man you meet is more or less on the turf, and they never come to grief by it. No one, of course, can stand against a barefaced swindle, like this thing.”
“I don't care a farthing about other people; I've seen how it tells upon you. I don't affect to value your promises, Dick; I don't think that they are worth a shilling. How many have you made me, and broken? To me it seems the vice is incurable, like drunkenness. Tattersall's, or whatever is your place of business, is no better than the gin-palace; and when once a fellow is fairly on the turf, the sooner he is under it, the better for himself and all who like him. And you have lost money at play besides. I heard that quite accidentally; and I daresay that is a ruinous item in what I may call your schedule.”
“I know what people are saying; but it isn't so immense a sum, by any means.”
“I'm sorry to hear it. I wish it was enormous; I wish it was a million. I wish your failure could ruin every blackguard in England: the more heavily you have hit them all round, the better I am pleased. They hit you and me, Dick, pretty hard last time; it is our turn now. It is not my fault now, Dick, if you don't understand me perfectly. If at any future time I should do anything for you—by mywill, mind—I shall take care so to tie it up that you can't make away with a guinea. Myadvice is not worth much to you, but I venture to give it, and I think the best thing you can do is to submit to your misfortune, and file your schedule; and when you are your own master again, I shall see if I can manage some small thing for you. You will have to work for your bread, you know, and you can't expect very much at first; but there are things—of course, I mean in commercial establishments, and railways, and that kind of thing—where I have an influence, of from a hundred and twenty to two hundred pounds a year, and for some of them you would answer pretty well, and you can tide over the time till you succeed to the title: and after a little while I may be able to get you raised a step; and when once you get accustomed to work, you can't think how you will come to like it. So that, on the whole, the knock you have got may do you some good, and make you prize your position more when you come to it. Will you go up-stairs, and take a cup of tea with Miss Maubray?”
He used to call her Grace, when speaking to Richard. Perhaps, in the concussion of this earthquake, the fabric of a matrimonial scheme may have fallen to the ground.
Richard Arden was too dejected and too agitated to accept this invitation, I need hardly tell you. He took his leave, chapfallen.
Mr. Vandeleurhad availed himself very freely of Richard Arden's invitation, to amuse himself during his absence with his cheroots and manillas, as the clouded state of the atmosphere of his drawing-room testified to that luckless gentleman—if indeed he was in a condition to observe anything, on returning from his dreadful interview with his uncle.
Richard's countenance was full of thunder and disaster. Vandeleur looked in his face, with his cigar in his fingers, and said in a faint and hollow tone—
“Well?”
To which inappropriate form of inquiry, Richard Arden deigned no reply; but in silence stalked to the box of cigars on the table, threw himself into a chair, and smoked violently for awhile.
Some minutes passed. Vandeleur's eyes were fixed, through the smoke, on Richard's, who had fixed his on the chimney-piece. Van respected his ruminations. With a delicate and noiseless attention, indeed, he ventured to slide gently to his side the water carafe, and the brandy, and a tumbler.
Still silence prevailed. After a time, Richard Arden poured brandy and water suddenly into his glass.
“Think of that fellow, that uncle of mine—pretty uncle! Kind relation—rolling in money! He sends for me simply to tell me that he won't give me a guinea. He might have waited till he was asked. If he had nothing better to say, he need not have given me the trouble of going to his odious, bleak study, to hear all his vulgar advice and arithmetic, ending in—what do you think? He says that I'm to be had up in the bankrupt court, and when all that is over he'll get me appointed a ticket-takeron a railway, or a clerk in a pawn-office, or something. By Heaven! when I think of it, I wonder how I kept my temper. I'm not quite driven to those curious expedients, that he seems to think so natural. I've some cards still left in my hand, and I'll play them first, if it is the same to him; and, hang it! my luck can't always run the same way. I'll give it another chance before I give up, and to-morrow morning things may be very different with me.”
“It's an awful pity you quarrelled with Longcluse!” exclaimed Vandeleur.
“That's done, and can't be undone,” said Richard Arden, resuming his cigar.
“I wonder why you quarrelled with him. Why, good heavens! that man is made of money, and he got you safe out of that fellow's clutches—I forget his name—about that bet with Mr. Slanter, don't you remember—and he was so very kind about it; and I'm sure he'd shake hands if you'd only ask him, and one way or another he'd pull you through.”
“I can't ask him, and I won't; he may askmeif he likes. I'm very sure there is nothing he would like better, for fifty reasons, than to be on good terms with me again, and I have no wish to quarrel any more than he has. But if there is to be a reconciliation, I can't begin it. He must make the overtures, and that's all.”
“He seemed such an awfully jolly fellow that time. And it is such a frightful state we are both in. I never came such a mucker before in my life. I know him pretty well. I met him at Lady May Penrose's, and at the Playfairs', and one night I walked home with him from the opera. It is an awful pity you are not on terms with him, and—by Jove! I must go and have something to eat; it is near eight o'clock.”
Away went Van, and out of the wreck of his fortune contrived a modest dinner at Verey's; and pondering, after dinner, upon the awful plight of himself and his comrade, he came at last to the heroic resolution of braving the dangers of a visit to Mr. Longcluse, on behalf of his friend; and as it was now past nine, he hastily paid the waiter, took his hat, and set out upon his adventure. It was a mere chance, he knew, and a very unlikely one, his finding Mr. Longcluse at home at that hour. He knew that he was doing a very odd thing in calling at past nine o'clock; but the occasion was anomalous, and Mr. Longcluse would understand. He knocked at the door, and learned from the servant that his master was engaged with a gentleman in the study, on business. From this room he heard a voice, faintly discoursing in a deep metallic drawl.
“Who shall I say, Sir?” asked the servant.
If his mission had been less monotonous, and he less excitedand sanguine as to his diplomatic success, he would have, as he said, “funked it altogether,” and gone away. He hesitated for a moment, and determined upon the form most likely to procure an interview.
“Say Mr. Vandeleur—a friend of Mr. Richard Arden's; you'll remember, please—a friend of Mr. Richard Arden's.”
In a moment the man returned.
“Will you please to walk up-stairs?” and he showed him into the drawing-room.
In little more than a minute, Mr. Longcluse himself entered. His eyes were fixed on the visitor with a rather stern curiosity. Perhaps he had interpreted the term “friend” a little too technically. He made him a ceremonious bow, in French fashion, and placed a chair for him.
“I had the pleasure of being introduced to you, Mr. Longcluse, at Lady May Penrose's. My name is Vandeleur.”
“I have had that honour, Mr. Vandeleur, I remember perfectly. The servant mentioned that you announced yourself as Mr. Arden's friend, if I don't mistake.”
Mr. Vandeleurand Mr. Longcluse were now seated, and the former gentleman said—
“Yes, I am a friend of Mr. Arden's—so much so, that I have ventured what I hope you won't think a very impertinent liberty. I was so very sorry to hear that a misunderstanding had occurred—I did not ask him about what—and he has been so unlucky about the Derby, you know—I ought to say that I am, upon my honour, a mere volunteer, so perhaps you will think I have no right to ask you to listen to me.”
“I shall be happy to continue this conversation, Mr. Vandeleur, upon one condition.”
“Pray name it.”
“That you report it fully to the gentleman for whom you are so kind as to interest yourself.”
“Yes, I'll certainly do that.”
Mr. Longcluse looked by no means so jolly as Van remembered him, and he thought he detected, at mention of Richard Arden's name, for a moment, a look of positive malevolence—I can't say absolutely, it may have been fancy—as he turned quickly, and the light played suddenly on his face.
Mr. Longcluse could, perhaps, dissemble as well as other men; but there were cases in which he would not be at the trouble to dissemble. And here his expression was so unpleasant, upon features so strangely marked and so white, that Van thought the effect ugly, and even ghastly.
“I shall be happy, then, to hear anything you have to say,” said Longcluse gently.
“You are very kind. I was just going to say that he has been so unlucky—he has lost so much money——”
“I had better say, I think, at once, Mr. Vandeleur, that nothing shall tempt me to take any part in Mr. Arden's affairs.”
Van's mild blue eyes looked on him wonderingly.
“You could be of so much use, Mr. Longcluse!”
“I don't desire to be of any.”
“But—but that may be, I think it must, in consequence of the unhappy estrangement.”
He had been conning over phrases on his way, and thought that a pretty one.
“A very happy estrangement, on the contrary, for the man who is straight and true, and who is by it relieved of a great—mistake.”
“I should be so extremely happy,” said Van lingeringly, “if I were instrumental in inducing both parties to shake hands.”
“I don't desire it.”
“But, surely, if Richard Arden were the first to offer——”
“I should decline.”
Van rose; he fiddled with his hat a little; he hesitated. He had staked too much on this—for had he not promised to report the whole thing to Richard Arden, who was not likely to be pleased?—to give up without one last effort.
“I hope I am not very impertinent,” he said, “but I can hardly think, Mr. Longcluse, that you are quite indifferent to a reconciliation.”
“I'm not indifferent—I'm averse to it.”
“I don't understand.”
“Will you take some tea?”
“No, thanks; I do so hope that I don't quite understand.”
“That's hardly my fault; I have spoken very distinctly.”
“Then what you wish to convey is——” said Van, with his hand now at the door.
“Is this,” said Longcluse, “that I decline Mr. Arden's acquaintance, that I won't consider his affairs, and that I peremptorily refuse to be of the slightest use to him in his difficulties. I hope I am now sufficiently distinct.”
“Oh, perfectly—I——”
“Pray take some tea.”
“And my visit is a failure. I'm awfully sorry I can't be of any use!”
“None here, Sir, to Mr. Arden—none, no more than I.”
“Then I have only to beg of you to accept my apologies for having given you a great deal of trouble, and to beg pardon for having disturbed you, and to say good-night.”
“No trouble—none. I am glad everything is clear now. Good-night.”
And Mr. Longcluse saw him politely to the door, and said again, in a clear, stern tone, but with a smile and another bow, “Good-night,” as he parted at the door.
About an hour later a servant arrived with a letter for Mr. Longcluse. That gentleman recognised the hand, and suspended his business to read it. He did so with a smile. It was thus expressed:—
“Sir,“I beg to inform you, in the distinctest terms, that neither Mr. Vandeleur, nor any other gentleman, had any authority from me to enter into any discussion with you, or to make the slightest allusion to subjects upon which Mr. Vandeleur, at your desire, tells me he, this evening, thought fit to converse with you. And I beg, in the most pointed manner, to disavow all connection with, or previous knowledge of, that gentleman's visit and conversation. And I do so lest Mr. Vandeleur's assertion to the same effect should appear imperfect without mine.—I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,“Richard Arden.“To Walter Longcluse, Esq.”
“Sir,
“I beg to inform you, in the distinctest terms, that neither Mr. Vandeleur, nor any other gentleman, had any authority from me to enter into any discussion with you, or to make the slightest allusion to subjects upon which Mr. Vandeleur, at your desire, tells me he, this evening, thought fit to converse with you. And I beg, in the most pointed manner, to disavow all connection with, or previous knowledge of, that gentleman's visit and conversation. And I do so lest Mr. Vandeleur's assertion to the same effect should appear imperfect without mine.—I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,
“Richard Arden.
“To Walter Longcluse, Esq.”
“Does any one wait for an answer?” he asked, still smiling.
“Yes, Sir: Mr. Thompson, please, Sir.”
“Very well; ask him to wait a moment,” said he, and he wrote as follows:—
“Mr. Longcluse takes the liberty of returning Mr. Arden's letter, and begs to decline any correspondence with him.”
“Mr. Longcluse takes the liberty of returning Mr. Arden's letter, and begs to decline any correspondence with him.”
And this note, with Richard Arden's letter, he enclosed in an envelope, and addressed to that gentleman.
While this correspondence, by no means friendly, was proceeding, other letters were interesting, very profoundly, other persons in this drama.
Old David Arden had returned early from a ponderous dinner of the magnates of that world which interested him more than the world of fashion, or even of politics, and he was sitting in his study at half-past ten, about a quarter of a mile westward of Mr. Longcluse's house in Bolton Street.
Not many letters had come for him by the late post. There were two which he chose to read forthwith. The rest would, in Swift's phrase, keep cool, and he could read them before his breakfast in the morning. The first was a note posted at Islington. He knew his niece's pretty hand. This was an “advice” from Mortlake. The second which he picked up from the little pack was a foreign letter, of more than usual bulk.