Checkmate Part 56

"Bardon, Monsieur, bardon! I am doo old. I have no spirits."

"What, not enough to see a game of billiards between Markham and Hood!

Why, Lebas was charmed so far as he saw it, poor fellow, with their play."

"No, no, no, no, Monsieur; a sousand sanks, no, bardon, I cannod," says the baron. "I do not like billiards, and your friends have not found it a lucky game."

"Well, if you don't care for billiards, we'll find something else,"

replies hospitable Mr. Longcluse.

"Nosing else, nosing else," answers the baron hastily. "I hade all zese sings, ze seatres, ze bubbedshows, and all ze ozer amus.e.m.e.nts, I give you my oas. Did you read my liddle node?"

"I did indeed, and it amused me beyond measure," says Longcluse joyously.

"Amuse!" repeats the baron, "how so?"

"Because it is so diverting; one might almost fancy it was meant to ask me for fifteen hundred pounds."

"I have lost, by zis sing, a vast deal more zan zat."

"And, my dear Baron, what on earth have I to do with that?"

"I am an old friend, a good friend, a true friend," says the baron, while his fierce little eyes sweep the walls, from corner to corner, with quivering rapidity. "You would not like to see me quide in a corner. You're the richest man in England, almost; what's one sousand five hundred to you? I have not wridden to you, or come to England, dill now. You have done nosing for your old friend yet: what are you going to give him?"

"Not as much as I gave Lebas," said Longcluse, eyeing him askance, with a smile.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Not a napoleon, not a franc, not a sou."

"You are jesding; sink, sink, sink, Monsieur, what a friend I have been and _am_ to you."

"So I do, my dear Baron, and consider how I show my grat.i.tude. Have I ever given a hint to the French police about the ident.i.ty of the clever gentleman who managed the little tunnel through which a river of champagne flowed into Paris, under the barrier, duty free? Have I ever said a word about the confiscated jewels of the Marchioness de la Sarnierre? Have I ever asked how the Comte de Loubourg's little boy is, or directed an unfriendly eye upon the conscientious physician who extricates ladies and gentlemen from the consequences of late hours, nervous depression, and fifty other things that war against good digestion and sound sleep? Come, come, my good Baron, whenever we come to square accounts, the balance will stand very heavily in my favour. I don't want to press for a settlement, but if you urge it, by Heaven, I'll make you pay the uttermost farthing!"

Longcluse laughs cynically. The baron looks very angry. His face darkens to a leaden hue. The fingers which he plunged into his snuff-box are trembling. He takes two or three great pinches of snuff before speaking.

Mr. Longcluse watches all these symptoms of his state of mind with a sardonic enjoyment, beneath which, perhaps, is the sort of suspense with which a beast-tamer watches the eye of the animal whose fury he excites only to exhibit the coercion which he exercises through its fears, and who is for a moment doubtful whether its terrors or its fury may prevail.

The baron's restless eyes roll wickedly. He puts his hand into his pocket irresolutely, and crumbles some papers there. There was no knowing, for some seconds, what turn things might take. But if he had for a moment meditated a crisis, he thought better of it. He breaks into a fierce laugh, and extends his hand to Mr. Longcluse, who as frankly places his own in it, and the baron shakes it vehemently. And Mr.

Longcluse and he laugh boisterously and oddly together. The baron takes another great pinch of snuff, and then he says, sponging out as it were, as an ignored parenthesis, the critical part of their conversation--

"No, no, I sink not; no, no, surely not. I am not fit for all zose amus.e.m.e.nts. I cannot knog aboud as I used; an old fellow, you know: beace and tranquilidy. No, I cannot dine with you. I dine with Stentoroni to-morrow; to-day I have dined with our _tenore_. How well you look! What nose, what tees, what chin! I am proud of you. We bart good friends, _bon soir_, Monsieur Longcluse, farewell. I am already a liddle lade."

"Farewell, dear Baron. How can I thank you enough for this kind meeting?

Try one of my cigars as you go home."

The baron, not being a proud man, took half-a-dozen, and with a final shaking of hands these merry gentlemen parted, and Longcluse's door closed for ever on the Baron Vanboeren.

"That bloated spider?" mused Mr. Longcluse. "How many flies has he sucked! It is another matter when spiders take to catching wasps."

Every man of energetic pa.s.sions has within him a principle of self-destruction. Longcluse had his. It had expressed itself in his pa.s.sion for Alice Arden. That pa.s.sion had undergone a wondrous change, but it was imperishable in its new as in its pristine state.

This gentleman was in the dumps so soon as he was left alone. Always uncertainty; always the sword of Damocles; always the little reminders of perdition, each one contemptible, but each one in succession touching the same set of nerves, and like the fall of the drop of water in the inquisition, _non vi, sed saepe cadendo_, gradually heightening monotony into excitement, and excitement into frenzy. Living always with a sense of the unreality of life and the vicinity of death, with a certain stern tremor of the heart, like that of a man going into action, no wonder if he sometimes sickened of his bargain with Fate, and thought life purchased too dear on the terms of such a lease.

Longcluse bolted his door, unlocked his desk, and there what do we see?

Six or seven miniatures--two enamels, the rest on ivory--all by different hands; some English, some Parisian; very exquisite, some of them. Every one was Alice Arden. Little did she dream that such a gallery existed. How were they taken? Photographs are the colourless phantoms from which these glowing life-like beauties start.

Tender-hearted Lady May has in confidence given him, from time to time, several of these from her alb.u.m; he has induced foreign artists to visit London, and managed opportunities by which, at parties, in theatres, and I am sorry to say even in church, these clever persons succeeded in studying from the life, and learning all the tints which now glow before him. If I had mentioned what this little collection cost him, you would have opened your eyes. The Baron Vanboeren would have laughed and cursed him with hilarious derision, and a money-getting Christian would have been quite horror-struck, on reading the scandalous row of figures.

Each miniature he takes in turn, and looks at for a long time, holding it in both hands, his hands resting on the desk, his face inclined and sad, as if looking down into the coffin of his darling. One after the other he puts them by, and returns to his favourite one; and at last he shuts it up also, with a snap, and places it with the rest in the dark, under lock and key.

He leaned back and laid his thin hand across his eyes. Was he looking at an image that came out in the dark on the retina of memory? Or was he shedding tears?

CHAPTER LX.

"SAUL."

The day arrived on which Alice Arden had agreed to go with Lady May to Westminster Abbey, to hear the masterly performance of _Saul_. When it came to the point, she would have preferred staying at home; but that was out of the question. Every one has experienced that ominous forboding which overcomes us sometimes with a shapeless forecasting of evil. It was with that vague misgiving that she had all the morning looked forward to her drive to town, and the long-promised oratorio. It was a dark day, and there was a thunderous weight in the air, and the melancholy atmosphere deepened her gloom.

Her Uncle David arrived in Lady May's carriage, to take care of her.

They were to call at Lady May's house, where its mistress and Sir Richard Arden awaited them.

A few kind words followed Uncle David's affectionate greeting, as they drove into town. He did not observe that Alice was unusually low. He seemed to have something not very pleasant himself to think upon, and he became silent for some time.

"I want," said he at last, looking up suddenly, "to give you a little advice, and now mind what I say. Don't sign any legal paper without consulting me, and don't make any promise to Richard. It is just possible--I hope he may not, but it is just possible--that he may ask you to deal in his favour with your charge on the Yorkshire estate. Do you tell him if he should, that you have promised me faithfully not to do anything in the matter, except as I shall advise. He may, as I said, never say a word on the subject, but in any case my advice will do you no harm. I have had bitter experience, my dear, of which I begin to grow rather ashamed, of the futility of trying to a.s.sist Richard. I have thrown away a great deal of money upon him, utterly thrown it away. _I_ can afford it, but _you_ cannot, and you shall not lose your little provision." And here he changed the subject of his talk, I suppose to avoid the possibility of discussion. "How very early the autumn has set in this year! It is the extraordinary heat of the summer. The elms in Mortlake are quite yellow already."

And so they talked on, and returned no more to the subject at which he had glanced. But the few words her uncle had spoken gave Alice ample matter to think on, and she concluded that Richard was in trouble again.

Lady May did not delay them a moment, and Sir Richard got into the carriage after her, with the tickets in his charge. Very devoted, Alice thought him, to Lady May, who appeared more than usually excited and happy.

We follow our party without comment into the choir, where they take possession of their seats. The chorus glide into their places like shadows, and the vast array of instrumental musicians as noiselessly occupy the seats before their desks. The great a.s.sembly is marshalled in a silence almost oppressive, but which is perhaps the finest preparation for the wondrous harmonies to come.

And now the grand and unearthly oratorio has commenced. Each person in our little group hears it with different ears. I wonder whether any two persons in that vast a.s.sembly heard it precisely alike. Sir Richard Arden, having many things to think about, hears it intermittently as he would have listened to a bore, and with a secret impatience. Lady May hears it not much better, but felt as if she could have sat there for ever. Old David Arden enjoyed music, and is profoundly delighted with this. But his thoughts also begin to wander, for as the mighty ba.s.so singing the part of Saul delivers the words,

"I would that, by thy art, thou bring me up The man whom I shall name,"

David Arden's eye lighted, with a little shock, upon the enormous head and repulsive features of the Baron Vanboeren. What a mask for a witch!

The travesti lost its touch of the ludicrous, in Uncle David's eye, by virtue of the awful interest he felt in the possible revelations of that ugly magician, who could, he fancied, by a word, call up the image of Yelland Mace. The baron is sitting about the steps in front of him, face to face. He wonders he has not seen him till now. His head is a little thrown back, displaying his short bull neck. His restless eyes are fixed now in a sullen reverie. His calculation as to the exact money value of the audience is over; he is polling them no longer, and his unresting brain is projecting pictures into the darkness of the future.

His face in a state of apathy was ill-favoured and wicked, and now lighted with a cadaverous effect, by the dull purplish halo which marks the blending of the feeble daylight, with the glow of the lamp that is above him.

The baron had seen and recognised David Arden, and a train of thoughts horribly incongruous with the sacred place was moving through his brain.

As he looks on, impa.s.sive, the great ba.s.so rings out--

"If heaven denies thee aid, seek it from h.e.l.l."

And the soprano sends forth the answering incantation, wild and piercing--