“No, not yet; but I know all about them.”
“He is accepted then?”
“He has not proposed yet; but there can be, I fancy, no doubt that the lady likes him, and all will go right.”
“Oh! and who is the lady?”
“I’m not at liberty to tell.”
“Quite right; I ought not to have asked,” says Mr. Longcluse; and looks down, slapping at intervals the side of his trousers lightly with his whip. He raises his eyes to Mr. Blount’s face, and looks on the point of asking another question, but he does not.
“It is my opinion,” said Mr. Blount, “the kindness would involve absolutely no risk whatever.”
There was a little pause. Mr. Longcluse looks rather dark and anxious; perhaps his mind has wandered quite from the business before them. But it returns, and he says, —
“Risk or no risk, Mr. Blount, I don’t mean to do him that kindness; and for how long will Mr. David Arden be absent?”
“Unless he should take a sudden thought to return, he’ll be away at least two months.”
“Where is he? — in Scotland?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Couldn’t one see him for a few minutes before he starts? Where does he take the steamer?”
“Southampton.”
“And on what day?”
“You really want a word with him?” asked Blount, whose hopes revived.
“I may.”
“Well, the only person who will know that is Mr. Humphries, of Pendle Castle, near that town; for he has to transact some trust-business with that gentleman as he passes through.”
“Humphries, of Pendle Castle. Very good; thanks.”
Mr. Longcluse looks again at his watch.
“And perhaps you will reconsider the matter I spoke of?”
“No use, Mr. Blount — not the least. I have quite made up my mind. Anything more? I am afraid I must be off.”
“Nothing, thanks,” said Mr. Blount.
And so the interview ended.
When he was gone, Mr. Longcluse thought darkly for a minute.
“That’s a straightforward fellow, they say. I suppose the facts are so. It can’t be, though, that Miss Maubray, that handsome creature with so much money, is thinking of marrying that insolent coxcomb. It may be Lady May, but the other is more likely. We must not allow that, Sir Richard. That would never do.”
There was a fixed frown on his face, and he was smiling in his dream. Out he went. His pale face looked as if he meditated a wicked joke, and, frowning still in utter abstraction, he took the bridle from his groom, mounted, looked about him as if just wakened, and set off at a canter, followed by his servant, for David Arden’s house.
Smiling, gay, as if no care had ever crossed him, Longcluse enters the drawingroom, where he finds the handsome young lady writing a note at that moment.
“Mr. Longcluse, I’m so glad you’ve come!” she says, with a brilliant smile. “I was writing to poor Lady Ethel, who is mourning, you know, in the country. The death of her father in the house was so awfully sudden, and I’m telling her all the news I can think of to amuse her. And is it really true that old Sir Thomas Giggles has grown so cross with his pretty young wife, and objects to her allowing Lord Knocknea to make love to her?”
“Quite true. It is a very bad quarrel, and I’m afraid it can’t be made up,” said Mr. Longcluse.
“It must be very bad, indeed, if Sir Thomas can’t make it up; for he allowed his first wife, I am told, to do anything she pleased. Is it to be a separation?”
“At least. And you heard, I suppose, of poor old Lady Glare?”
“No!”
“She has been rolling ever so long, you know, in a sea of troubles, and now, at last, she has fairly foundered.”
“How do you mean?”
“They have sold her diamonds,” said Mr. Longcluse. “Didn’t you hear?”
“No! Really? Sold her diamonds? Good Heaven! Then there’s nothing left of her but her teeth. I hope they won’t sell them.”
“It is an awful misfortune,” said Mr. Longcluse.
“Misfortune! She’s utterly ruined. It was her diamonds that people asked. I am really sorry. She was such fun; she was so fat, and such a fool, and said such delicious things, and dressed herself so like a macaw. Alas! I shall never see her more; and people thought her only use on earth was to carry about her diamonds. No one seemed to perceive what a delightful creature she was. What about Lady May Penrose? I have not seen her since I came back from Cowes, the day before yesterday, and we leave London together on Tuesday.”
“Lady May! Oh! she is to receive a very interesting communication, I believe. She is one name on a pretty long and very distinguished list, which Sir Richard Arden, I am told, has made out, and carries about with him in his pocketbook.”
“You’re talking riddles; pray speak plainly.”
“Well, Lady May is one of several ladies who are to be honoured with a proposal.”
“And would you have me believe that Sir Richard Arden has really made such a fool of himself as to make out a list of eligible ladies whom he is about to ask to marry him, and that he has had the excellent good sense and taste to read this list to his acquaintance?”
“I mean to say this — I’ll tell the whole story — Sir Richard has ruined himself at play; take that as a fact to start with. He is literally ruined. His uncle is away; but I don’t think any man in his senses would think of paying his losses for him. He turns, therefore, naturally, to the more amiable and less arithmetical sex, and means to invite, in turn, a series of fair and affluent admirers to undertake, by means of suitable settlements, that interesting office for him.”
“I don’t think you like him, Mr. Longcluse; is not that a story a little too like ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor?’”
“It is quite certain I don’t like him, and it is quite certain,” added Mr. Longcluse, with one of his cold little laughs, “that if I did like him, I should not tell the story; but it is also certain that the story is, in all its parts, strictly fact. If you permit me the pleasure of a call in two or three days, you will tell me you no longer doubt it.”
Mr. Longcluse was looking down as he said that with a gentle and smiling significance. The young lady blushed a little, and then more intensely, as he spoke, and looking through the window, asked with a laugh, —
“But how shall we know whether he really speaks to Lady May?”
“Possibly by his marrying her,” laughed Mr. Longcluse. “He certainly will if he can, unless he is caught and married on the way to her house.”
“He was a little unfortunate in showing you his list, wasn’t he?” said Grace Maubray.
“I did not say that. If there had been any, the least, confidence, nothing on earth could have induced me to divulge it. We are not even, at present, on speaking terms. He had the coolness to send a Mr. Blount, who transacts all Mr. David Arden’s affairs, to ask me to become his security, Mr. Arden being away; and by way of inducing me to do so, he disclosed, with the coarseness which is the essence of business, the matrimonial schemes which are to recoup, within a few days, the losses of the roulette, the whist-table, or the dice-box.”
“Oh! Mr. Blount, I’m told, is a very honest man.”
“Quite so; particularly accurate, and I don’t think anything on earth would induce him to tell an untruth,” testifies Mr. Longcluse.
After a little pause, Miss Maubray laughs.
“One certainly does learn,” she said, “something new every day. Could any one have fancied a gentleman descending to so gross a meanness?”
“Everybody is a gentleman now-a-days,” remarked Mr. Longcluse with a smile; “but every one is not a hero — they give way, more or less, under temptation. Those who stand the test of the crucible and the furnace are seldom met with.”
At this moment the door opened, and Lord Wynderbroke was announced. A little start, a lighting of the eyes, as Grace rose, and a fluttered advance, with a
very pretty little hand extended, to meet him, testified, perhaps, rather more surprise than one would have quite expected. For Mr. Longcluse, who did not know him so well as Miss Maubray, recognised his voice, which was peculiar, and resembling the caw of a jay, as he put a question to the servant on his way up.
Mr. Longcluse took his leave. He was not sorry that Lord Wynderbroke had called. He wished no success to Sir Richard’s wooing. He thought he had pretty well settled the question in Miss Maubray’s mind, and smiling, he rode at a pleasant canter to Lady May’s. It was as well, perhaps, that she should hear the same story. Lady May, however, unfortunately, had just gone out for a drive.
CHAPTER LXV.
BEHIND THE ARRAS.
It was quite true that Lady May was not at home. She was actually, with a little charming palpitation, driving to pay a very interesting visit to Grace Maubray. In affairs of the kind that now occupied her mind, she had no confidants but very young people.
Miss Maubray was at home — and instantly Lady May’s plump instep was seen on the carriage step. She disdained assistance, and descended with a heavy skip upon the flags, where she executed an involuntary frisk that carried her a little out of the line of advance.
As she ascended the stairs, she met her friend Lord Wynderbroke coming down. They stopped for a moment on the landing, under a picture of Cupid and Venus; Lady May, smiling, remarked, a little out of breath, what a charming day it was, and expressed her amazement at seeing him in town — a surprise which he agreeably reciprocated. He had been at Glenkiltie in the Highlands, where he had accidentally met Mr. David Arden. “Miss Maubray is in the drawingroom,” he said, observing that the eyes of the good lady glanced unconsciously upward at the door of that room. And then they parted affectionately, and turned their backs on each other with a sense of relief.
“Well, my dear,” she said to Grace Maubray as soon as they had kissed, “longing to have a few minutes with you, with ever so much to say. You have no idea what it is to be stopped on the stairs by that tiresome man — I’ll never quarrel with you again for calling him a bore. No matter, here I am; and really, my dear, it is such an odd affair — not quite that; such an odd scene, I don’t know where or how to begin.”
“I wish I could help you,” said Miss Maubray laughing.
“Oh, my dear, you’d never guess in a hundred years.”
“How do you know? Hasn’t a certain baronet something to do with it?”
“Well, well — dear me! That is very extraordinary. Did he tell you he was going to — to — Good gracious! My dear, it is the most extraordinary thing. I believe you hear everything; but — a — but listen. Not an hour ago he came — Richard Arden, of course, we mean — and, my dear Grace, he spoke so very nicely of his troubles, poor fellow, you know — debts I mean, of course — not the least his fault, and all that kind of thing, and — he went on — I really don’t know how to tell you. But he said — he said — he said he liked me, and no one else on earth; and he was on the very point of saying everything, when, just at that moment, who should come in but that gossiping old woman, Lady Botherton — and he whispered, as he was going, that he would return, after I had had my drive. The carriage was at the door, so, when I got rid of the old woman, I got into it, and came straight here to have a talk with you; and what do you think I ought to say? Do tell me, like a darling, do!”
“I wish you would tell me what one ought to say to that question,” said Grace Maubray with a slight disdain (that young lady was in the most unreasonable way piqued), “for I’m told he’s going to ask me precisely the same question.”
“You, my dear?” said Lady May after a pause, during which she was staring at the smiling face of the young lady; “you can’t be serious!”
“He can’t be serious, you mean,” answered the young lady, “and — who’s this?” she broke off, as she saw a cab drive up to the hall-door. “Dear me! is it? No. Yes, indeed, it is Sir Richard Arden. We must not be seen together. He’ll know you have been talking to me. Just go in here.”
She opened the door of the boudoir adjoining the room.
“I’ll send him away in a moment. You may hear every word I have to say. I should like it. I shall give him a lecture.”
As she thus spoke she heard his step on the stair, and motioned Lady May into the inner room, into which she hurried and closed the door, leaving it only a little way open.
These arrangements are hardly completed when Sir Richard is announced. Grace is positively angry. But never had she looked so beautiful; her eyes so tenderly lustrous under their long lashes; her colour so brilliant — an expression so maidenly and sad. If it was acting, it was very well done. You would have sworn that the melancholy and agitation of her looks, and the slightly quickened movement of her breathing, were those of a person who felt that the hour of her fate had come.
With what elation Richard Arden saw these beautiful signs!
CHAPTER LXVI.
A BUBBLE BROKEN.
After a few words had been exchanged, Grace said in reply to a question of Sir Richard’s, —
“Lady May and I are going together, you know: in a day or two we shall be at Brighton. I mean to bid Alice goodbye to-day. There — I mean at Brighton — we are to meet Vivian Darnley, and possibly another friend; and we go to meet your uncle at that pretty little town in Switzerland, where Lady May —— I wonder, by-the-bye, you did not arrange to come with us; Lady May travels with us the entire time. She says there are some very interesting ruins there.”
“Why, dear old soul!” said Sir Richard, who felt called upon to say something to set himself right with respect to Lady May, “she’s thinking of quite another place. She will be herself the only interesting ruin there.”
“I think you wish to vex me,” said pretty Grace, turning away with a smile, which showed, nevertheless, that this kind of joke was not an unmixed vexation to her. “I don’t care for ruins myself.”
“Nor do I,” he said, archly.
“But you don’t think so of Lady May. I know you don’t. You are franker with her than with me, and you tell her a very different tale.”
“I must be very frank, then, if I tell her more than I know myself. I never said a civil thing of Lady May, except once or twice, to the poor old thing herself, when I wanted her to do one or two little things, to please you.”
“Oh! come, you can’t deceive me; I’ve seen you place your hand to your heart, like a theatrical hero, when you little fancied any one but she saw it.”
“Now, really, that is too bad. I may have put my hand to my side, when it ached from laughing.”
“How can you talk so? You know very well I have heard you tell her how you admire her music and her landscapes.”
“No, no — not landscapes — she paints faces. But her colouring is, as artists say, too chalky — and nothing but red and white, like — what is it like? — like a clown. Why did not she get the late Mr. Etty — she’s always talking of him — to teach her something of his tints?”
“You are not to speak so of Lady May. You forget she is my particular friend,” says the young lady; but her pretty face does not express so much severity as her words. “I do think you like her. You merely talk so to throw dust in people’s eyes. Why should not you be frank with me?”
“I wish I dare be frank with you,” said Sir Richard.
“And why not?”
“How can I tell how my disclosures might be punished? My frankness might extinguish the best hope I live for; a few rash words might make me a very unhappy man for life.”
“Really? Then I can quite understand that reflection alarming you in the midst of a tête-à-tête with Lady May; and even interrupting an interesting conversation.”
Sir Richard looked at her quickly, but her looks were perfectly artless.
“I really do wish you would spare me all further allusion to that good woman. I can bear that kind of fun from any one but you. Why will you? she is old enough to be my mother. She is fat,
and painted, and ridiculous. You think me totally without romance? I wish to heaven I were. There is a reason, that makes your saying all that particularly cruel. I am not the sordid creature you take me for. I’m not insensible. I’m not a mere stock of stone. Never was human being more capable of the wildest passion. Oh, if I dare tell you all!”
Was all this acting? Certainly not. Never was shallow man, for the moment, more in earnest. Cool enough he was, although he had always admired this young lady, when he entered the room. He had made that entrance, nevertheless, in a spirit quite dramatic. But Miss Maubray never looked so brilliant, never half so tender. He took fire — the situation aiding quite unexpectedly — and the flame was real. It might have been over as quickly as a balloon on fire; but for the moment the conflagration was intense.
How was Miss Maubray affected? An immensely abler performer than the young gentleman who had entered the room with his part at his fingers’ ends, and all his looks and emphasis arranged — only to break through all this, and begin extemporising wildly — she, on the contrary, maintained her rôle with admirable coolness. It was not, perhaps, so easy; for notwithstanding appearances, her histrionic powers were severely tasked; for never was she more angry. Her self-esteem was wounded; the fancy (it was no more), she had cherished for him was gone, and a great disgust was there instead.
“You shall ask me no questions till I have done asking mine,” said the young lady, with decision; “and I will speak as much as I please of Lady May!”
This jealousy flattered Sir Richard.
“And I will say this,” continued Grace Maubray, “you never address her except as a lover, in what you romantic people would call the language of love.”
“Now, now, now! How can you say that? Is that fair?”
“You do.”
“No, really, I swear — that’s too bad!”
“Yes, the other day, when you spoke to her at the carriage window — you did not think I heard — you accused her so tenderly of having failed to go to Lady Harbroke’s garden-party, and you couldn’t say what you meant in plain terms, but you said, ‘Why were you false?’”
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 554