Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  There is something in that pale face and spectral smile that fascinates the terrified girl; she cannot take her eyes off him. His dark eyes are near hers; his lips are still close to her; his arm is touching her dress; he leans his face to her, and talks on, in an icy tone little above a whisper, and an articulation so sharply distinct that it seems to pain her ear.

  “The oratorio!” he continued: “the music! The words, here and there are queer — a little sinister — eh? There are better words and wilder music — you shall hear them some day! Saul had his evil spirit, and a bad family have theirs — ay, they have a demon who is always near, and shapes their lives for them; they don’t know it, but, sooner or later justice catches them. Suppose I am the demon of your family — it is very funny, isn’t it? I tried to serve you both, but it wouldn’t do. I’ll set about the other thing now: the evil genius of a bad family; I’m appointed to that. It almost makes me laugh — such cross-purposes! You’re frightened? That’s a pity; you should have thought of that before. It requires some nerve to fight a man like me. I don’t threaten you, mind, but you are frightened. There is such a thing as getting a dangerous fellow bound over to keep the peace. Try that. I should like to have a talk with you before his worship in the police-court, across the table, with a corps of clever newspaper reporters sitting there. What fun in the Times and all the rest next morning.”

  It is plain to Miss Arden that Mr. Longcluse is speaking all this time with suppressed fury, and his countenance expresses a sort of smiling hatred that horrifies her.

  “I’m not bad at speaking my mind,” he continues. “It is unfortunate that I am so well thought of and listened to in London. Yes, people mind what I say a good deal. I rather think they’ll choose to believe my story. But there’s another way, if you don’t like that. Your brother’s not afraid — he’ll protect you. Tell your brother what a miscreant I am, and send him to me — do, pray! Nothing on earth I should like better than to have a talk with that young gentleman. Do pray, send him, I entreat. He’d like satisfaction — ha! ha! — and, by Heaven, I’ll give it him! Tell him to get his pistols ready; he shall have his shop! Let him come to Boulogne, or where he likes — I’ll stand it — and I don’t think he’ll need to pay his way back again. He’ll stay in France; he’ll not walk in at your hall-door, and call for luncheon, I promise you. Ha! ha! ha!”

  This pale man enjoys her terror cruelly.

  “I’m not worthy to speak to you, I believe — eh? That’s odd, for the time isn’t far off when you’ll pray to God I may have mercy on you. You had no business to encourage me. I’m afraid the crowd is getting on very slowly, but I’ll try to entertain you: you are such a good listener!”

  Miss Arden often wondered afterwards at her own passiveness through all this. There were, no doubt, close by, many worthy citizens, fathers of families, who would have taken her for a few minutes under their protection with honest alacrity. But it was a fascination; her state was cataleptic: and she could no more escape than the bird that is throbbing in the gaze of a snake. The cold murmur went distinctly on and on:

  “Your brother will probably think I should treat you more ceremoniously. Don’t you agree with him? Pray, do complain to him. Pray, send him to me, and I’ll thank him for his share in this matter. He wanted to make it a match between us — I’m speaking coarsely, for the sake of distinctness — till a title turned up. What has become of the title, by-the-bye? — I don’t see him here. The peer wasn’t in the running, after all: didn’t even start! Ha! ha! ha! Remember me to your brother, pray, and tell him the day will come when he’ll not need to be reminded of me: I’ll take care of that. And so Sir Richard is doomed to disappointment! It is a world of disappointment. The earl is nowhere! And the proudest family on earth — what is left of it — looks a little foolish. And well it may: it has many follies to expiate. You had no business encouraging me, and you are foolish enough to be terribly afraid now — ha! ha! ha! Too late, eh? I daresay you think I’ll punish you! Not I! Nothing of the sort! I’ll never punish anyone. Why should I take that trouble about you. Not I: not even your brother. Fate does that. Fate has always been kind to me, and hit my enemies pretty hard. You had no business encouraging me. Remember this: the day is not far off when you will both rue the hour you threw me over!”

  She is gazing helplessly into that dreadful face. There is a cruel elation in it. He looks on her, I think, with admiration. Mixed with his hatred, did there remain a fraction of love?

  On a sudden the voice, which was the only sound she heard, was in her ear no longer. The face which had transfixed her gaze was gone. Longcluse had apparently pushed a way for her to her friends, for she found herself again next her Uncle David. Holding his arm fast, she looked round quickly for a moment: she saw Mr. Longcluse nowhere. She felt on the point of fainting. The scene must have lasted a shorter time than she supposed, for her uncle had not missed her.

  “My dear, how pale you look! Are you tired?” exclaims Lady May, when they have come to a halt at the door.

  “Yes, indeed, so she does. Are you ill, dear?” added her uncle.

  “No, nothing, thanks, only the crowd. I shall be better immediately.” And so waiting in the air, near the door, they were soon joined by Sir Richard, and in his carriage he and she drove home to Mortlake. Lady May, taking hers, went to a tea at old Lady Elverstone’s; and David Arden, bidding them goodbye, walked homeward across the park.

  Richard had promised to spend the evening at Mortlake with her, and side by side they were driving out to that sad and sombre scene. As they entered the shaded road upon which the great gate of Mortlake opens, the setting sun streamed through the huge trunks of the trees, and tinted the landscape with a subdued splendour.

  “I can’t imagine, dear Alice, why you will stay here. It is enough to kill you,” says Sir Richard, looking out peevishly on the picturesque woodlands of Mortlake, and interrupting a long silence. “You never can recover your spirits while you stay here. There is Lady May going all over the world — I forget where, but she will be at Naples — and she absolutely longs to take you with her; and you won’t go! I really sometimes think you want to make yourself melancholy mad.”

  “I don’t know,” said she, waking herself from a reverie in which, against the dark background of the empty arches she had left, she still saw the white, wicked face that had leaned over her, and heard the low murmured stream of insult and menace. “I’m not sure that I shall not be worse anywhere else. I don’t feel energy to make a change. I can’t bear the idea of meeting people. By-and-by, in a little time, it will be different. For the present, quiet is what I like best. But you, Dick, are not looking well, you seem so overworked and anxious. You really do want a little holiday. Why don’t you go to Scotland to shoot, or take a few weeks’ yachting? All your business must be pretty well settled now.”

  “It will never be settled,” he said, a little sourly. “I assure you there never was property in such a mess — I mean leases and everything. Such drudgery, you have no idea; and I owe a good deal. It has not done me any good. I’d rather be as I was before that miserable Derby. I’d gladly exchange it all for a clear annuity of a thousand a year.”

  “Oh! my dear Dick, you can’t mean that! All the northern property, and this, and Morley?”

  “I hate to talk about it. I’m tired of it already. I have been so unlucky, so foolish, and if I had not found a very good friend, I should have been utterly ruined by that cursed race; and he has been aiding me very generously, on rather easy terms, in some difficulties that have followed; and you know I had to raise money on the estate before all this happened, and have had to make a very heavy mortgage, and I am getting into such a mess — a confusion, I mean — and really I should have sold the estates, if it had not been for my unknown friend, for I don’t know his name.”

  “What friend?”

  “The friend who has aided me through my troubles — the best friend I ever met, unless it be as I half suspect. Has anyone spoken
to you lately, in a way to lead you to suppose that he, or anyone else among our friends, has been lending me a helping hand?”

  “Yes, as we were driving into town to-day, Uncle David told me so distinctly; but I am not sure that I ought to have mentioned it. I fancy, indeed,” she added, as she remembered the reflection with which it was accompanied, “that he meant it as a secret, so you must not get me into disgrace with him by appearing to know more than he has told you himself.”

  “No, certainly,” said Richard; “and he said it was he who lent it?”

  “Yes, distinctly.”

  “Well, I all but knew it before. Of course it is very kind of him. But then, you know he is very wealthy; he does not feel it; and he would not for the world that our house should lose its position. I think he would rather sell the coat off his back, than that our name should be slurred.”

  Sir Richard was pleased that he had received this light in corroboration of his suspicions. He was glad to have ascertained that the powerful motives which he had conjectured were actually governing the conduct of David Arden, although for obvious reasons he did not choose that his nephew should be aware of his weakness.

  The carriage drew up at the hall-door. The old house in the evening beams, looked warm and cheery, and from every window in its broad front flamed the reflection which showed like so many hospitable winter fires.

  CHAPTER LXII.

  LOVE AND PLAY.

  “Here we are, Alice,” says Sir Richard, as they entered the hall. “We’ll have a good talk this evening. We’ll make the best of everything; and I don’t see if Uncle David chooses to prevent it, why the old ship should founder after all.”

  They are now in the house. It is hard to get rid of the sense of constraint that, in his father’s time, he always experienced within those walls; to feel that the old influence is exorcised and utterly gone, and that he is himself absolute master where so lately he hardly ventured to move on tip-toe.

  They did not talk so much as Sir Richard had anticipated. There were upon his mind some things that weighed heavily. He had got from Levi a list of the advances made by his luckily found friend, and the total was much heavier than he had expected. He began to fear that he might possibly exceed the limits which his uncle must certainly have placed somewhere. He might not, indeed, allow him to suffer the indignity of a bankruptcy; but he would take a very short and unpleasant course with him. He would seize his rents, and, with a friendly roughness, put his estates to nurse, and send the prodigal on a Childe Harold’s pilgrimage of five or six years, with an allowance, perhaps, of some three hundred a year, which in his frugal estimate of a young man’s expenditure, would be handsome.

  While he was occupied in these ruminations, Alice cared not to break the silence. It was a very unsociable tête-à-tête. Alice had a secret of her own to brood over. If anything could have made Longcluse now more terrible to her imagination, it would have been a risk of her brother’s knowing anything of the language he had dared to hold to her. She knew from her brother’s own lips, that he was a duellist; and she was also persuaded that Mr. Longcluse was, in his own playful and sinister phrase, very literally a “miscreant.” His face, ever since that interview, was always at her right side, with its cruel pallor, and the vindictive sarcasm of lip and tone. How she wished that she had never met that mysterious man! What she would have given to be exempted from his hatred, and blotted from his remembrance!

  One object only was in her mind, distinctly, with respect to that person. She was, thank God, quite beyond his power. But men, she knew, live necessarily a life so public, and have so many points of contact, that better opportunities present themselves for the indulgence of a masculine grudge; and she trembled at the thought of a collision. Why, then, should not Dick seek a reconciliation with him, and, by any honourable means, abate that terrible enmity.

  “I have been thinking, Dick, that, as Uncle David makes the interest he takes in your affairs a secret, and you can’t consult him, it would be very well indeed if you could find some one else able to advise, who would consult with you when you wished.”

  “Of course, I should be only too glad,” says Sir Richard, yawning and smiling as well as he could at the same time; “but an adviser one can depend on in such matters, my dear child, is not to be picked up every day.”

  “Poor papa, I think, was very wise in choosing people of that kind. Uncle David, I know, said that he made wonderfully good bargains about his mortgages, or whatever they are called.”

  “I daresay — I don’t know — he was always complaining, and always changing them,” says Sir Richard. “But if you can introduce me to a person who can disentangle all my complications, and take half my cares off my shoulders, I’ll say you are a very wise little woman indeed.”

  “I only know this — that poor papa had the highest opinion of Mr. Longcluse, and thought he was the cleverest person, and the most able to assist, of any one he knew.”

  Sir Richard Arden hears this with a stare of surprise.

  “My dear Alice, you seem to forget everything. Why, Longcluse and I are at deadly feud. He hates me implacably. There never could be anything but enmity between us. Not that I care enough about him to hate him, but I have the worst opinion of him. I have heard the most shocking stories about him lately. They insinuate that he committed a murder! I told you of that jealousy and disappointment, about a girl he was in love with and wanted to marry, and it ended in murder! I’m told he had the reputation of being a most unscrupulous villain. They say he was engaged in several conspiracies to pigeon young fellows. He was the utter ruin, they say, of young Thornley, the poor muff who shot himself some years ago; and he was thought to be a principal proprietor of that gaming-house in Vienna, where they found all the apparatus for cheating so cleverly contrived.”

  “But are any of these things proved?” urges Miss Arden.

  “I don’t suppose he would be at large if they were,” says Sir Richard, with a smile. “I only know that I believe them.”

  “Well, Dick, you know I reminded you before — you used not to believe those stories till you quarrelled with him.”

  “Why, what do you want, Alice?” he exclaims, looking hard at her. “What on earth can you mean? And what can possibly make you take an interest in the character of such a ruffian?”

  Alice’s face grew pale under his gaze. She cleared her voice and looked down; and then she looked full at him, with burning eyes, and said —

  “It is because I am afraid of him, and think he may do you some dreadful injury, unless you are again on terms with him. I can’t get it out of my head; and I daresay I am wrong, but I am sure I am miserable.”

  She burst into tears.

  “Why, you darling little fool, what harm can he do me?” said Richard fondly, throwing his arms about her neck and kissing her, as he laughed tenderly. “He exhausted his utmost malice when he angrily refused to lend me a shilling in my extremity, or to be of the smallest use to me, at a moment when he might have saved me, without risk to himself, by simply willing it. I didn’t ask him, you may be sure. An officious, foolish little friend, doing all, of course, for the best, did, without once consulting me, or giving me a voice in the matter, until he had effectually put his foot in it, as I told you. I would not for anything on earth have applied to him, I need not tell you; but it was done, and it only shows with what delight he would have seen me ruined, as, in fact, I should have been, had not my own relations taken the matter up. I do believe, Alice, the best thing I could do for myself and for you would be to marry,” he says, a little suddenly, after a considerable silence.

  Alice looks at him, doubtful whether he is serious.

  “I really mean it. It is the only honest way of making or mending a fortune now-a-days.”

  “Well, Dick, it is time enough to think of that by-and-by, don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps so; I hope so. At present it seems to me that, as far as I am concerned, it is just a race between the bishop and
the bailiff which shall have me first. If any lady is good enough to hold out a hand to a poor drowning fellow, she had better — — “

  “Take care, Dick, that the poor drowning fellow does not pull her in. Don’t you think it would be well to consider first what you have got to live on?”

  “I have plenty to live on; I know that exactly,” said Dick.

  “What is it?”

  “My wife’s fortune.”

  “You are never serious for a minute, Dick! Don’t you think it would be better first to get matters a little into order, so as to know distinctly what you are worth?”

  “Quite the contrary; she’d rather not know. She’d rather exercise her imagination than learn distinctly what I am worth. Any woman of sense would prefer marrying me so.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Why, if I succeed in making matters quite lucid, I don’t think she would marry me at all. Isn’t it better to say, ‘My Angelina,’ or whatever else it may be, ‘you see before you Sir Richard Arden, who has estates in Yorkshire, in Middlesex, and in Devonshire, thus spanning all England from north to south. We had these estates at the Conquest. There is nothing modern about them but the mortgages. I have never been able to ascertain exactly what they bring in by way of rents, or pay out by way of interest. That I stand here, with flesh upon my bones, and pretty well-made clothes, I hope, upon both, is evidence in a confused way that an English gentleman — a baronet — can subsist upon them; and this magnificent muddle I lay at your feet with the devotion of a passionate admirer of your personal — property!’ That, I say, is better than appearing with a balance-sheet in your hand, and saying, ‘Madam, I propose marrying you, and I beg to present you with a balance-sheet of the incomings and outgoings of my estates, the intense clearness of which will, I hope, compensate for the nature of its disclosures. I am there shown in the most satisfactory detail to be worth exactly fifteen shillings per annum, and how unlimited is my credit will appear from the immense amount and variety of my debts. In pressing my suit I rely entirely upon your love of perspicuity and your passion for arithmetic, which will find in the ledgers of my steward an almost inexhaustible gratification and indulgence.’ However, as you say, Alice, I have time to look about me, and I see you are tired. We’ll talk it over tomorrow morning at breakfast. Don’t think I have made up my mind; I’ll do exactly whatever you like best. But get to your bed, you poor little soul; you do look so tired!”