“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 are passing. That sunset, that sky — how grand, and glorious, and serene — the same always. Charlemagne saw it, and the Cæsars saw it, and the Pharaohs saw 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.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
GENTLEMEN IN TROUBLE.
Mr. Longcluse had 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 not unsuitably stuff 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 against him. 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 pikestaff.” 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 not pay his bets! And how could he? Ten shillings in the pound? Not five. He forgot how far he was already involved. What was to 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 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 are trifling, 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? You know she 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.”
CHAPTER XXXIX.
BETWEEN FRIENDS.
Van was 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 windowsill, 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. He might try 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 goodnatured 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, and expected 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 is quite impossible.”
“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, but I shouldn’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.
CHAPTER XL.
AN INTERVIEW IN THE STUDY.
“Is my 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, he thought, 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. I am 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 with light. 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?”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 541
