Richard Arden did read the letter, with open eyes and breathless interest. The old man’s eyes were upon him as he did so.
“Well, Richard, what do you think?”
“There can be but one opinion about it. Nothing can be more handsome. Everything suitable. I only hope that Alice will not be foolish.”
“She sha’n’t be that, I’ll take care,” said the old man, locking down his desk again upon the letter.
“It might possibly be as well, Sir, to prepare her a little at first. I may possibly be of some little use, and so may Lady May. I only mean that it might hardly be expedient to make it from the first a matter of authority, because she has romantic ideas, and she is spirited.”
“I’ll sleep upon it. I sha’n’t see her again till tomorrow evening. She does not care about anyone in particular, I suppose?”
“Not that I know of,” said Richard.
“You’ll find it will all be right — it will — all right. It shall be right,” said Sir Reginald. And then there was a silence. He was meditating the other business he had in hand, and again circuitously he proceeded.
“What’s going on at the opera? Who is your great danseuse at present?” inquired the baronet, with a glimmer of a leer. “I haven’t seen a ballet for more than six years. And why? I needn’t tell you. You know the miserable life I lead. Egad! there are fellows placed everywhere to watch me. There would be an execution in this house this night, if the miserable tables and chairs were not my brother David’s property. Upon my life, Craven, my attorney, had to serve two notices on the sheriff in one term, to caution him not to sell your uncle’s furniture for my debts. I shouldn’t have had a joint-stool to sit down on, if it hadn’t been for that. And I had to get out of the railway-carriage, by heaven! for fear of arrest, and come home — if home I can call this ruin — by posting all the way, except a few miles. I did not dare to tell Craven I was coming back. I wrote from Twyford, where I — I — took a fancy to sleep last night, to no human being but yourself. My comfort is that they and all the world believe that I’m still in France. It is a pleasant state of things!”
“I am grieved, Sir, to think you suffer so much.”
“I know it. I knew it. I know you are, Dick,” said the old man eagerly. “And my life is a perfect hell. I can nowhere in England find rest for the sole of my foot. I am suffering perpetually the most miserable mortifications, and the tortures of the damned. I know you are sorry. It can’t be pleasant to you to see your father the miserable outcast, and fugitive, and victim he so often is. And I’ll say distinctly — I’ll say at once — for it was with this one purpose I sent for you — that no son with a particle of human feeling, with a grain of conscience, or an atom of principle, could endure to see it, when he knew that by a stroke of his pen he could undo it all, and restore a miserable parent to life and liberty! Now, Richard, you have my mind. I have concealed nothing, and I’m sure, Dick, I know, I know you won’t see your father perish by inches, rather than sign the warrant for his liberation. For God’s sake, Dick, my boy speak out! Have you the heart to reject your miserable father’s petition? Do you wish me to kneel to you? I love you, Dick, although you don’t admit it. I’ll kneel to you, Dick — I’ll kneel to you. I’ll go on my knees to you.”
His hands were clasped; he made a movement. His great prominent eyes were fixed on Richard Arden’s face, which he was reading with a great deal of eagerness, it is true, but also with a dark and narrow shrewdness.
“Good heaven, Sir, don’t stir, I implore! If you do, I must leave the room,” said Richard, embarrassed to a degree that amounted to agitation. “And I must tell you, Sir — it is very painful, but, I could not help it, necessity drove me to it — if I were ever so desirous, it is out of my power now. I have dealt with my reversion. I have executed a deed.”
“You have been with the Jews!” cried the old man, jumping to his feet. “You have been dealing, by way of post obit, with my estate!”
Richard Arden looked down. Sir Reginald was as nearly white as his yellow tint would allow; his large eyes were gleaming fire — he looked as if he would have snatched the poker, and brained his son.
“But what could I do, Sir? I had no other resource. I was forbidden your house; I had no money.”
“You lie, Sir!” yelled the old man, with a sudden flash, and a hammer of his thin trembling fist on the table. “You had a hundred and fifty pounds a year of your mother’s.”
“But that, Sir, could not possibly support any one. I was compelled to act as I did. You really, Sir, left me no choice.”
“Now, now, now, now, now! you’re not to run away with the thing, you’re not to run away with it; you sha’n’t run away with it, Sir. You could have made a submission, you know you could. I was open to be reconciled at any time — always too ready. You had only to do as you ought to have done, and I’d have received you with open arms; you know I would — I would — you had only to unite our interests in the estates, and I’d have done everything to make you happy, and you know it. But you have taken the step — you have done it, and it is irrevocable. You have done it, and you’ve ruined me; and I pray to God you have ruined yourself!”
With every sinew quivering, the old man was pulling the bell-rope violently with his left hand. Over his shoulder, on his son, he glanced almost maniacally. “Turn him out!” he screamed to Crozier, stamping; “put him out by the collar. Shut the door upon him, and lock it; and if he ever dares to call here again, slam it in his face. I have done with him for ever!”
Richard Arden had already left the room, and this closing passage was lost on him. But he heard the old man’s voice as he walked along the corridor, and it was still in his ears as he passed the hall-door; and, running down the steps, he jumped into his cab. Crozier held the cab-door open, and wished Mr. Richard a kind goodnight. He stood on the steps to see the last of the cab as it drove down the shadowy avenue and was lost in gloom. He sighed heavily. What a broken family it was! He was an old servant, born on their northern estate — loyal, and somewhat rustic — and, certainly, had the baronet been less in want of money, not exactly the servant he would have chosen.
“The old gentleman cannot last long,” he said, as he followed the sound of the retreating wheels with his gaze, “and then Master Richard will take his turn, and what one began the other will finish. It is all up with the Ardens. Sir Reginald ruined, Master Harry murdered, and Master David turned tradesman! There’s a curse on the old house.”
He heard the baronet’s tread faintly, pacing the floor in agitation, as he passed his door; and when he reached the housekeeper’s room, that old lady, Mrs. Tansey, was alone and all of a tremble, standing at the door. Before her dim staring eyes had risen an oft-remembered scene: the ivy-covered gatehouse at Mortlake Hall; the cold moon glittering down through the leafless branches; the grey horse on its side across the gig-shaft, and the two villains — one rifling and the other murdering poor Henry Arden, the baronet’s gay and reckless brother.
“Lord, Mr. Crozier! what’s crossed Sir Reginald?” she said huskily, grasping the servant’s wrist with her lean hand. “Master Dick, I do suppose. I thought he was to come no more. They quarrel always. I’m like to faint, Mr. Crozier.”
“Sit ye down, Mrs. Tansey, Ma’am; you should take just a thimbleful of something. What has frightened you?”
“There’s a scritch in Sir Reginald’s voice — mercy on us! — when he raises it so; it is the very cry of poor Master Harry — his last cry, when the knife pierced him. I’ll never forget it!”
The old woman clasped her fingers over her eyes, and shook her head slowly.
“Well, that’s over and ended this many a day, and past cure. We need not fret ourselves no more about it— ’tis thirty years since.”
“Two-and-twenty the day o’ the Longden steeplechase. I’ve a right to remember it.” She closed her eyes again. “Why can’t they keep apart?” she resumed. “If father and son can’t look one another in the face wi
thout quarrelling, better they should turn their backs on one another for life. Why need they come under one roof? The world’s wide enough.”
“So it is — and no good meeting and argufying; for Mr. Dick will never open the estate,” remarked Mr. Crozier.
“And more shame for him!” said Mrs. Tansey. “He’s breaking his father’s heart. It troubles him more,” she added in a changed tone, “I’m thinking, than ever poor Master Harry’s death did. There’s none living of his kith or kin cares about it now but Master David. He’ll never let it rest while he lives.”
“He may let it rest, for he’ll never make no hand of it,” said Crozier. “Would you object, Ma’am, to my making a glass of something hot? — you’re gone very pale.”
Mrs. Tansey assented, and the conversation grew more comfortable. And so the night closed over the passions and the melancholy of Mortlake Hall.
CHAPTER XVI.
A MIDNIGHT MEETING.
A couple of days passed; and now I must ask you to suppose yourself placed, at night, in the centre of a vast heath, undulating here and there like a sea arrested in a ground-swell, lost in a horizon of monotonous darkness all round. Here and there rises a scrubby hillock of furze, black and rough as the head of a monster. The eye aches as it strains to discover objects or measure distances over the blurred and black expanse. Here stand two trees pretty close together — one in thick foliage, a black elm, with a funereal and plume-like stillness, and blotting out many stars with its gigantic canopy; the other, about fifty paces off, a withered and half barkless fir, with one white branch left, stretching forth like the arm of a gibbet. Nearly under this is a flat rock, with one end slanting downwards, and half buried in the ferns and the grass that grow about that spot. One other fir stands a little way off, smaller than these two trees, which in daylight are conspicuous far away as landmarks on a trackless waste. Overhead the stars are blinking, but the desolate landscape lies beneath in shapeless obscurity, like drifts of black mist melting together into one wide vague sea of darkness that forms the horizon. Over this comes, in fitful moanings, a melancholy wind. The eye stretches vainly to define the objects that fancy sometimes suggests, and the ear is strained to discriminate the sounds, real or unreal, that seem to mingle in the uncertain distance.
If you can conjure up all this, and the superstitious freaks that in such a situation imagination will play in even the hardest and coarsest natures, you have a pretty distinct idea of the feelings and surroundings of a tall man who lay that night his length under the blighted tree I have mentioned, stretched on its roots, with his chin supported on his hands, and looking vaguely into the darkness. He had been smoking, but his pipe was out now, and he had no occupation but that of forming pictures on the dark background, and listening to the moan and rush of the distant wind, and imagining sometimes a voice shouting, sometimes the drumming of a horse’s hoofs approaching over the plain. There was a chill in the air that made this man now and then shiver a little, and get up and take a turn back and forward, and stamp sharply as he did so, to keep the blood stirring in his legs and feet. Then down he would lay again, with his elbows on the ground, and his hands propping his chin. Perhaps he brought his head near the ground, thinking that thus he could hear distant sounds more sharply. He was growing impatient, and well he might.
The moon now began to break through the mist in fierce red over the far horizon. A streak of crimson, that glowed without illuminating anything, showed through the distant cloud close along the level of the heath. Even this was a cheer, like a red ember or two in a pitch-dark room. Very far away he thought now he heard the tread of a horse. One can hear miles away over that level expanse of deathlike silence. He pricked his ears, he raised himself on his hands, and listened with open mouth. He lost the sound, but on leaning his head again to the ground, that vast sounding-board carried its vibration once more to his ear. It was the canter of a horse upon the heath. He was doubtful whether it was approaching, for the sound subsided sometimes; but afterwards it was renewed, and gradually he became certain that it was coming nearer. And now, like a huge, red-hot dome of copper, the moon rose above the level strips of cloud that lay upon the horizon of the heath, and objects began to reveal themselves. The stunted fir, that had looked to the fancy of the solitary watcher like a ghostly policeman, with arm and truncheon raised, just starting in pursuit, now showed some lesser branches, and was more satisfactorily a tree; distances became measurable, though not yet accurately, by the eye; and ridges and hillocks caught faintly the dusky light, and threw blurred but deep shadows backward.
The tread of the horse approaching had become a gallop as the light improved, and horse and horseman were soon visible. Paul Davies stood erect, and took up a position a few steps in advance of the blighted tree at whose foot he had been stretched. The figure, seen against the dusky glare of the moon, would have answered well enough for one of those highwaymen who in old times made the heath famous. His low-crowned felt hat, his short coat with a cape to it, and the leather casings, which looked like jack-boots, gave this horseman, seen in dark outline against the glow, a character not unpicturesque. With a sudden strain of the bridle, the gaunt rider pulled up before the man who awaited him.
“What are you doing there?” said the horseman roughly.
“Counting the stars,” answered he.
Thus the signs and countersigns were exchanged, and the stranger said —
“You’re alone, Paul Davies, I take it.”
“No company but ourselves, mate,” answered Davies.
“You’re up to half a dozen dodges, Paul, and knows how to lime a twig; that’s your little game, you know. This here tree is clean enough, but that ‘ere has a hatful o’ leaves on it.”
“I didn’t put them there,” said Paul, a little sulkily.
“Well, no. I do suppose a sight o’ you wouldn’t exactly put a tree in leaf, or a rose-bush in blossom; nor even make wegitables grow. More like to blast ‘em, like that rum un over your head.”
“What’s up?” asked the ex-detective.
“Jest this — there’s leaves enough for a bird to roost there, so this won’t do. Now, then, move on you with me.”
As the gaunt rider thus spoke, his long red beard was blowing this way and that in the breeze; and he turned his horse, and walked him towards that lonely tree in which, as he lay gazing on its black outline, Paul had fancied the shape of a phantom policeman.
“I don’t care a cuss,” said Davies. “I’m half sorry I came a leg to meet yer.”
“Growlin’, eh?” said the horseman.
“I wish you was as cold as me, and you’d growl a bit, maybe, yourself,” said Paul. “I’m jolly cold.”
“Cold, are ye?”
“Cold as a lock-up.”
“Why didn’t ye fetch a line o’ the old author with you?” asked the rider — meaning brandy.
“I had a pipe or two.”
“Who’d a-guessed we was to have a night like this in summer-time?”
“I do believe it freezes all the year round in this queer place.”
“Would ye like a drop of the South-Sea mountain (gin)?” said the stranger, producing a flask from his pocket, which Paul Davies took with a great deal of goodwill, much to the donor’s content, for he wished to find that gentleman in goodhumour in the conversation that was to follow.
“Drink what’s there, mate. D’ye like it?”
“It ain’t to be by no means sneezed at,” said Paul Davies.
The horseman looked back over his shoulder. Paul Davies remarked that his shoulders were round enough to amount almost to a deformity. He and his companion were now a long way from the tree whose foliage he feared might afford cover to some eavesdropper.
“This tree will answer. I suppose you like a post to clap your back to while we are palaverin’,” said the rider. “Make a finish of it, Mr. Davies,” he continued, as that person presented the half-emptied flask to his hand. “I’m as hot as steam, myself, and I’
d rather have a smoke by-and-by.”
He touched the bridle here, and the horse stood still, and the rider patted his reeking neck, as he stooped with a shake of his ears and a snort, and began to sniff the scant herbage at his feet.
“I don’t mind if I have another pull,” said Paul, replenishing the goblet that fitted over the bottom of the flask.
“Fill it again, and no heel-taps,” said his companion.
Mr. Davies sat down, with his mug in his hand, on the ground, and his back against the tree. Had there been a donkey near, to personate the immortal Dapple, you might have fancied, in that uncertain gloom, the Knight and Squire of La Mancha overtaken by darkness, and making one of their adventurous bivouacs under the boughs of the tree.
“What you saw in the papers three days ago did give you a twist, I take it?” observed the gentleman on horseback, with a grin that made the red bristles on his upper lip curl upwards and twist like worms.
“I can’t tumble to a right guess what you means,” said Mr. Davies.
“Come, Paul, that won’t never do. You read every line of that there inquest on the French cove at the Saloon, and you have by rote every word Mr. Longcluse said. It must be a queer turning of the tables, for a clever chap like you to have to look slippy, for fear other dogs should lag you.”
“‘Tain’t me that ‘ill be looking slippy, as you and me well knows; and it’s jest because you knows it well you’re here. I suppose it ain’t for love of me quite?” sneered Paul Davies.
“I don’t care a rush for Mr. Longcluse, no more nor I care for you; and I see he’s goin’ where he pleases. He made a speech in yesterday’s paper, at the meetin’ at the Surrey Gardens. He was canvassin’ for Parliament down in Derbyshire a week ago; and he printed a letter to the electors only yesterday. He don’t care two pins for you.”
“A good many rows o’ pins, I’m thinkin’,” sneered Mr. Davies.
“Thinkin’ won’t make a loaf, Mr. Davies. Many a man has bin too clever, and thought himself into the block-house. You’re making too fine a game, Mr. Davies; a playin’ a bit too much with edged tools, and fiddlin’ a bit too freely with fire. You’ll burn your fingers, and cut ‘em too, do ye mind? unless you be advised, and close the game where you stand to win, as I rather think you do now.”
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 528