Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “Hadn’t you better have one of the maids with you? I’m going now; I’ll send some one,” he said. “You must get all right, Martha. It pains me to see you ill. You’re a very old friend, remember. You must be all right again; and, if you like, we’ll have the doctor out, from town.”

  He said this, holding her thin old hand very kindly, for he was by no means without goodnature. So sending the promised attendant, he and Longcluse proceeded to the billiard-room, where, having got the lamps lighted, they began to enjoy their smoke. Each, I fancy, was thinking of the little incident in the housekeeper’s room. There was a long silence.

  “Poor old Tansey! She looked awfully ill,” said Richard Arden at last.

  “By Jove! she did. Is that her name? She rather frightened me,” said Mr. Longcluse. “I thought we had stumbled on a mad woman — she stared so. Has she ever had any kind of fit, poor thing?”

  “No. She grumbles a good deal, but I really think she’s a healthy old woman enough. She says she was frightened.”

  “We came in too suddenly, perhaps?”

  “No, that wasn’t it, for I knocked first,” said Arden.

  “Ah, yes, so you did. I only know she frightened me. I really thought she was out of her mind, and that she was going to stick me with a knife, perhaps,” said Mr. Longcluse, with a little laugh and a shrug.

  Arden laughed, and puffed away at his cigar till he had it in a glow again. Was this explanation of what he had seen in Longcluse’s countenance — a picture presented but for a fraction of a second, but thenceforward ineffaceable — quite satisfactory?

  In a short time Mr. Longcluse asked whether he could have a little brandy and water, which accordingly was furnished. In his first glass there was a great deal of brandy, and very little water indeed; and his second, sipped more at his leisure, was but little more diluted. A very faint flush tinged his pallid cheeks.

  Richard Arden was, by this time, thinking of his own debts and ill-luck, and at last he said, “I wonder what the art of getting on in the world is. Is it communicable? or is it no art at all, but a simple run of luck?”

  Mr. Longcluse smiled scornfully. “There are men who have immense faith in themselves,” said he, “who have indomitable will, and who are provided with craft and pliancy for any situation. Those men are giants from the first to the last hour of action, unless, as happened to Napoleon, success enervates them. In the cradle, they strangle serpents; blind, they pull down palaces; old as Dandolo, they burn fleets and capture cities. It is only when they have taken to bragging that the lues Napoleonica has set in. Now I have been, in a sense, a successful man — I am worth some money. If I were the sort of man I describe, I should be worth, if I cared for it, ten times what I have in as many years. But I don’t care to confess I made my money by flukes. If, having no tenderness, you have two attributes — profound cunning and perfect audacity — nothing can keep you back. I’m a commonplace man, I say; but I know what constitutes power. Life is a battle, and the general’s qualities win.”

  “I have not got the general’s qualities, I think; and I know I haven’t luck,” said Arden; “so for my part I may as well drift, with as little trouble as may be, wherever the current drives. Happiness is not for all men.”

  “Happiness is for no man,” said Mr. Longcluse. And a little silence followed. “Now suppose a fellow has got more money than ever he dreamed of,” he resumed, “and finds money, after all, not quite what he fancied, and that he has come to long for a prize quite distinct and infinitely more precious; so that he finds, at last, that he never can be happy for an hour without it, and yet, for all his longing and his pains, sees it is unattainable as that star.” (He pointed to a planet that shone down through the skylight.) “Is that man happy? He carries with him, go where he may, an aching heart, the pangs of jealousy and despair, and the longing of the damned for Paradise. That is my miserable case.”

  Richard Arden laughed, as he lighted his second cigar.

  “Well, if that’s your case, you can’t be one of those giants you described just now. Women are not the obdurate and cruel creatures you fancy. They are proud, and vain, and unforgiving; but the misery and the perseverance of a lover constitute a worship that first flatters and then wins them. Remember this, a woman finds it very hard to give up a worshipper, except for another. Now why should you despair? You are a gentleman, you are a clever fellow, an agreeable fellow; you are what is accounted a young man still, and you can make your wife rich. They all like that. It is not avarice, but pride. I don’t know the young lady, but I see no good reason why you should fail.”

  “I wish, Arden, I dare tell you all; but some day I’ll tell you more.”

  “The only thing is —— You’ll not mind my telling you, as you have been so frank with me?”

  “Pray say whatever you think. I shall be ever so much obliged. I forget so many things about English manners and ways of thinking — I have lived so very much abroad. Should I be put up for a club?”

  “Well, I should not mind a club just yet, till you know more people — quite time enough. But you must manage better. Why should those Jew fellows, and other people, who don’t hold, and never can, a position the least like yours, be among your acquaintance? You must make it a rule to drop all objectionable persons, and know none but good people. Of course, when you are strong enough it doesn’t so much matter, provided you keep them at arm’s length. But you passed your younger days abroad, as you say, and not being yet so well known here, you will have to be particular — don’t you see? A man is so much judged by his acquaintance; and, in fact, it is essential.”

  “A thousand thanks for any hints that strike you,” said Longcluse goodhumouredly.

  “They sound frivolous; but these trifles have immense weight with women,” said Arden. “By Jove!” he added, glancing at his watch, “we shall be late. Your trap is at the door — suppose we go?”

  CHAPTER III.

  MR. LONGCLUSE OPENS HIS HEART.

  The old housekeeper had drawn near her window, and stood close to the pane, through which she looked out upon the starlit night. The stars shine down over the foliage of huge old trees. Dim as shadows stand the horse and taxcart that await Mr. Longcluse and Richard Arden, who now at length appear. The groom fixes the lamps, one of which shines full on Mr. Longcluse’s peculiar face.

  “Ay — the voice; I could a’ sworn to that,” she muttered. “It went through me like a scythe. But that’s a strange face; and yet there’s summat in it, just a hint like, to call my thoughts out a-seeking up and down, and to and fro; and ‘twill not let me rest until I come to find the truth. Mace? No, no. Langly? Not he. Yet ’twas summat that night, I think — summat awful. And who was there? No one. Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord! for my heart is sore troubled.”

  Up jumped the groom. Mr. Longcluse had the reins in his hand, and he and his companion passed swiftly by the window, and the flash of the lamps crossed the panelled walls of the housekeeper’s room. The light danced wildly from corner to corner of the wainscot, accompanied by the shadows of two geraniums in bow-pots on the window-stool. The lamps flew by, and she still stood there, with the palsied shake of her head and hand, looking out into the darkness, in rumination.

  Arden and Longcluse glided through the night air in silence, under the mighty old trees that had witnessed generations of Ardens, down the darker, narrow road, and by the faded old inn, once famous in those regions as the “Guy of Warwick,” representing still on its board, in tarnished gold and colours, that redoubted champion, with a boar’s head on the point of his sword, and a grotesque lion winding itself fawningly about his horse’s legs.

  As they passed swiftly along this smooth and deserted road, Longcluse spoke. Aperit præcordia vinum. In his brandy and water he had not spared alcohol, and the quantity was considerable.

  “I have lots of money, Arden, and I can talk to people, as you say,” he suddenly said, as if Richard Arden had spoken but a moment before; “but, on
the whole, is there on earth a more miserable dog than I? There are things that trouble me that would make you laugh; there are others that would, if I dare tell them, make you sigh. Soon I shall be able; soon you shall know all. I’m not a bad fellow. I know how to give away money, and, what is harder to bestow on others, my time and labour. But who to look at me would believe it? I’m not a worse fellow than Penruddock. I can cry for pity and do a kind act like him; but I look in my glass, and I also feel like him, ‘the mark of Cain’ is on me — cruelty in my face. Why should Nature write on some men’s faces such libels on their characters? Then here’s another thing to make you laugh — you, a handsome fellow, to whom beauty belongs, I say, by right of birth — it would make me laugh also if I were not, as I am, forced every hour I live to count up, in agonies of hope and terror, my chances in that enterprise in which all my happiness for life is staked so wildly. Common ugliness does not matter, it is got over. But such a face as mine! Come, come! you are too goodnatured to say. I’m not asking for consolation; I am only summing up my curses.”

  “You make too much of these. Lady May thinks your face, she says, very interesting — upon my honour, she does.”

  “Oh, heaven!” exclaimed Mr. Longcluse, with a shrug and a laugh.

  “And what is more to the purpose (will you forgive my reporting all this — you won’t mind?), some young lady friends of hers who were by said, I assure you, that you had so much expression, and that your features were extremely refined.”

  “It won’t do, Arden; you are too goodnatured,” said he, laughing more bitterly.

  “I should much rather be as I am, if I were you, than be gifted with vulgar beauty — plump, pink and white, with black beady eyes, and all that,” said Arden.

  “But the heaviest curse upon me is that which, perhaps, you do not suspect — the curse of — secrecy.”

  “Oh, really!” said Arden, laughing, as if he had thought up to then that Mr. Longcluse’s history was as well known as that of the ex-Emperor Napoleon.

  “I don’t say that I shall come out like the enchanted hero in a fairy tale, and change in a moment from a beast into a prince; but I am something better than I seem. In a short time, if you cared to be bored with it, I shall have a great deal to tell you.”

  There followed here a silence of two or three minutes, and then, on a sudden, pathetically, Mr. Longcluse broke forth —

  “What has a fellow like me to do with love? and less than beloved, can I ever be happy? I know something of the world — not of this London world, where I live less than I seem to do, and into which I came too late ever to understand it thoroughly — I know something of a greater world, and human nature is the same everywhere. You talk of a girl’s pride inducing her to marry a man for the sake of his riches. Could I possess my beloved on those terms? I would rather place a pistol in my mouth, and blow my skull off. Arden, I’m unhappy; I’m the most miserable dog alive.”

  “Come, Longcluse, that’s all nonsense. Beauty is no advantage to a man. The being agreeable is an immense one. But success is what women worship, and if, in addition to that, you possess wealth — not, as I said, that they are sordid, but only vainglorious — you become very nearly irresistible. Now you are agreeable, successful and wealthy — you must see what follows.”

  “I’m out of spirits,” said Longcluse, and relapsed into silence, with a great sigh.

  By this time they had got within the lamps, and were threading streets, and rapidly approaching their destination. Five minutes more, and these gentlemen had entered a vast room, in the centre of which stood a billiard-table, with benches rising tier above tier to the walls, and a gallery running round the building above them, brilliantly lighted, as such places are, and already crowded with all kinds of people. There is going to be a great match of a “thousand up” played between Bill Hood and Bob Markham. The betting has been unusually high; it is still going on. The play won’t begin for nearly half an hour. The “admirers of the game” have mustered in great force and variety. There are young peers, with sixty thousand a year, and there are gentlemen who live by their billiards. There are, for once in a way, grave persons, bankers, and counsel learned in the law; there are Jews and a sprinkling of foreigners; and there are members of Parliament and members of the swell mob.

  Mr. Longcluse has a good deal to think about this night. He is out of spirits. Richard Arden is no longer with him, having picked up a friend or two in the room. Longcluse, with folded arms, and his shoulders against the wall, is in a profound reverie, his dark eyes for the time lowered to the floor, beside the point of his French boot. There unfold themselves beneath him picture after picture, the scenes of many a year ago. Looking down, there creeps over him an old horror, a supernatural disgust, and he sees in the dark a pair of wide, white eyes, staring up at him in an agony of terror, and a shrill yell, piercing a distance of many years, makes him shake his ears with a sudden chill. Is this the witches’ Sabbath of our pale Mephistopheles — his night of goblins? He raised his eyes, and they met those of a person whom he had not seen for a very long time — a third part of his whole life. The two pairs of eyes, at nearly half across the room, have met, and for a moment fixed. The stranger smiles and nods. Mr. Longcluse does neither. He affects now to be looking over the stranger’s shoulder at some more distant object. There is a strange chill and commotion at his heart.

  CHAPTER IV.

  MONSIEUR LEBAS.

  Mr. Longcluse leaned still with folded arms, and his shoulder to the wall. The stranger, smiling and fussy, was making his way to him. There is nothing in this man’s appearance to associate him with tragic incident or emotion of any kind. He is plainly a foreigner. He is short, fat, middle-aged, with a round fat face, radiant with good humour and goodnatured enjoyment. His dress is cut in the somewhat grotesque style of a low French tailor. It is not very new, and has some spots of grease upon it. Mr. Longcluse perceives that he is now making his way towards him. Longcluse for a moment thought of making his escape by the door, which was close to him; but he reflected, “He is about the most innocent and goodnatured soul on earth, and why should I seem to avoid him? Better, if he’s looking for me, to let him find me, and say his say.” So Longcluse looked another way, his arms still folded, and his shoulders against the wall as before.

  “Ah, ha! Monsieur is thinking profoundly,” said a gay voice in French. “Ah, ha, ha, ha! you are surprised, Sir, to see me here. So am I, my faith! I saw you. I never forget a face.”

  “Nor a friend, Lebas. Who could have imagined anything to bring you to London?” answered Longcluse, in the same language, shaking him warmly by the hand, and smiling down on the little man. “I shall never forget your kindness. I think I should have died in that illness but for you. How can I ever thank you half enough?”

  “And the grand secret — the political difficulty — Monsieur found it well evaded,” he said, mysteriously touching his upper lip with two fingers.

  “Not all quiet yet. I suppose you thought I was in Vienna?”

  “Eh? well, yes — so I did,” answered Lebas, with a shrug. “But perhaps you think this place safer.”

  “Hush! You’ll come to me tomorrow. I’ll tell you where to find me before we part, and you’ll bring your portmanteau and stay with me while you remain in London, and the longer the better.”

  “Monsieur is too kind, a great deal; but I am staying for my visit to London with my brother-in-law, Gabriel Laroque, the watchmaker. He lives on the Hill of Ludgate, and he would be offended if I were to reside anywhere but in his house while I stay. But if Monsieur would be so good as to permit me to call — — “

  “You must come and dine with me tomorrow; I have a box for the opera. You love music, or you are not the Pierre Lebas whom I remember sitting with his violin at an open window. So come early, come before six; I have ever so much to ask you. And what has brought you to London?”

  “A very little business and a great deal of pleasure; but all in a week,” said the little m
an, with a shrug and a hearty laugh. “I have come over here about some little things like that.” He smiled archly as he produced from his waistcoat pocket a little flat box with a glass top, and shook something in it. “Commerce, you see. I have to see two or three more of the London people, and then my business will have terminated, and nothing remain for the rest of the week but pleasure — ha, ha!”

  “You left all at home well, I hope — children?” He was going to say “Madame,” but a good many years had passed.

  “I have seven children. Monsieur will remember two. Three are by my first marriage, four by my second, and all enjoy the very best health. Three are very young — three, two, one year old; and they say a fourth is not impossible very soon,” he added archly.

  Longcluse laughed kindly, and laid his hand upon his shoulder.

  “You must take charge of a little present for each from me, and one for Madame. And the old business still flourishes?”

  “A thousand thanks! yes, the business is the same — the file, the chisel, and knife.” And he made a corresponding movement of his hand as he mentioned each instrument.

  “Hush!” said Longcluse, smiling, so that no one who did not hear him would have supposed there was so much cautious emphasis in the word. “My good friend, remember there are details we talk of, you and I together, that are not to be mentioned so suitably in a place like this,” and he pressed his hand on his wrist, and shook it gently.

  “A thousand pardons! I am, I know, too careless, and let my tongue too often run before my caution. My wife, she says, ‘You can’t wash your shirt but you must tell the world.’ It is my weakness truly. She is a woman of extraordinary penetration.”

  Mr. Longcluse glanced from the corners of his eyes about the room. Perhaps he wished to ascertain whether his talk with this man, whom you would have taken to be little above the level of a French mechanic, had excited anyone’s attention. But there was nothing to make him think so.