So being in the mood to deliver a lecture, to the residence of that uncomfortable old gentleman he drove, and walked up the flagged passage to the flagged courtyard, and knocked at the door, and looked up at the square ceiling of sickly sky, and strode up the narrow stairs after Mrs. Rumble.
“How d’ye do, sir? Your soul, particularly, quite well, I trust. Your spiritual concerns flourishing to-day?” was the greeting of Mr. Dingwell’s mocking voice.
“Thanks, Mr. Dingwell; I’m very well,” answered Mr. Larkin, with a bow which was meant to sober Mr. Dingwell’s mad humour.
Sarah Rumble, as we know, had a defined fear of Mr. Dingwell, but also a vague terror; for there was a great deal about him ill-omened and mysterious. There was a curiosity, too, active within her, intense and rather ghastly, about all that concerned him. She did not care, therefore, to get up and go away from the small hole in the carpet which she was darning on the lobby, and through the door she heard faintly some talk she didn’t understand, and Mr. Dingwell’s voice, at a high pitch, said —
“D —— you, sir, do you think I’m a fool? Don’t you think I’ve your letter, and a copy of my own? If we draw swords, egad, sir, mine’s the longer and sharper, as you’ll feel. Ha, ha, ha!”
“Oh, lawk!” gasped Sarah Rumble, standing up, and expecting the clash of rapiers.
“Your face, sir, is as white and yellow — you’ll excuse me — as an old turban. I beg your pardon; but I want you to understand that I see you’re frightened, and that I won’t be bullied by you.”
“I don’t suppose, sir, you meditate totally ruining yourself,” said Mr. Larkin, with dignity.
“I tell you, sir, if anything goes wrong with me, I’ll make a clean breast of it — everything — ha, ha, ha! — upon my honour — and we two shall grill together.”
Larkin had no idea he was going in for so hazardous and huge a game when he sat down to play. His vision was circumscribed, his prescience small. He looked at the beast he had imported, and wished him in a deep grave in Scutari, with a turbaned-stone over his head, the scheme quashed, and the stakes drawn.
But wishing would not do. The spirit was evoked — in nothing more manageable than at first; on the contrary, rather more insane. Nerve was needed, subtlety, patience, and he must manage him.
“Why the devil did you bring me here, sir, if you were not prepared to treat me properly? You know my circumstances, and you want to practise on my misfortunes, you vile rogue, to mix me up in your fraudulent machinations.”
“Pray, sir, not so loud. Do — do command yourself,” remonstrated Larkin, almost affectionately.
“Do you think I’m come all this way, at the risk of my life, to be your slave, you shabby, canting attorney? I’d better be where I was, or in kingdom come. By Allah! sir, you have me, and I’m your master, and you shan’t buy my soul for a piastre.”
There came a loud knock at the hall-door, and if it had been a shot and killed them both, the debaters in the drawingroom could not have been more instantaneously breathless.
Down glided Sarah Rumble, who had been expecting this visit, to pay the taxman.
And she had hardly taken his receipt, when Mr. Larkin, very pink, endeavouring to smile in his discomfiture, and observing with a balmy condescension, “A sweet day, Mrs. Rumble,” appeared in the hall, shook his ears a little, and adjusted his hat, and went forth, and Rosemary Court saw him no more for some time.
* * *
CHAPTER IX.
IN VERNEY HOUSE.
Mr. Larkin got into his cab, and ordered the cabman, in a loud voice, to drive to Verney House.
“Didn’t he know Verney House? He thought every cabman in London knew Verney House! The house of Lord Viscount Verney, in —— Square. Why it fills up a whole side of it!”
He looked at his watch. He had thirty-seven minutes to reach it in. It was partly to get rid of a spare half hour, that he had paid his unprofitable visit to Rosemary Court.
Mr. Larkin registered a vow to confer no more with Mr. Dingwell. He eased his feelings by making a note of this resolution in that valuable little memorandum book which he carried about with him in his pocket.
“Saw Mr. Dingwell this day — as usual impracticable and illbred to a hopeless degree — waste of time and worse — resolved that this gentleman being inaccessible to reason, is not to be argued, but DEALT with, should occasion hereafter arise for influencing his conduct.”
Somewhere about Temple Bar, Mr. Larkin’s cab got locked in a string of vehicles, and he put his head out of window, not being sorry for an opportunity of astonishing the citizens by calling to the driver —
“I say, my good fellow, can’t you get on? I told Lord Verney to expect me at halfpast one. Do, pray, get me out of this, any way, and you shall have a gratuity of half-a-crown. Verney House is a good way from this. Do try. His lordship will be as much obliged to you as I am.”
Mr. Larkin’s assiduities and flatteries were, in truth, telling upon Lord Verney, with whom he was stealing into a general confidence which alarmed many people, and which Cleve Verney hated more than ever.
With the pretty mansion of Hazelden, the relations, as Lord Verney would have said of the House of Ware, were no longer friendly. This was another instance of the fragility of human arrangements, and the vanity of human hopes. The altar had been erected, the swine sacrificed, and the augurs and haruspices on both sides had predicted nothing but amity and concord. Game, fruit, and venison, went and came,— “Much good may it do your good heart.” “It was ill-killed,” &c. Master Shallow and Master Page could not have been more courteous on such occasions. But on the fête champêtre had descended a sudden procella. The roses were whirling high in the darkened air, the flatteries and laughter were drowned in thunder, and the fiddles and glasses smashed with hailstones as large as potatoes.
A general election had come and gone, and in that brief civil war old Vane Etherage was found at the wrong side. In Lord Verney’s language neighbour meant something like vassal, and Etherage who had set up his banner and arrayed his power on the other side, was a rebel — the less forgivable that he had, as was authentically demonstrated, by this step himself inflicted that defeat in the county which had wounded Lord Verney to the quick.
So silence descended upon the interchange of civil speeches; the partridges and pheasants, winged from Ware in a new direction, and old Vane Etherage stayed his friendly hand also; and those tin cases of Irish salmon, from the old gentleman’s fisheries, packed in ice, as fresh as if they had sprung from the stream only half an hour before, were no longer known at Ware; and those wonderful fresh figs, green and purple, which Lord Verney affected, for which Hazelden is famous, and which Vane Etherage was fond of informing his guests were absolutely unequalled in any part of the known world! England could not approach them for bulk and ripeness, nor foreign parts — and he had eaten figs wherever figs grow — for aroma and flavour, no longer crossed the estuary. Thus this game of beggar-my-neighbour began. Lord Verney recalled his birds, and Mr. Etherage withdrew his figs. Mr. Etherage lost his great black grapes; and Lord Verney sacrificed his salmon, and in due time Lord Verney played a writ, and invited an episode in a court of law, and another, more formidable, in the Court of Chancery.
So the issues of the war were knit again, and Vane Etherage was now informed by his lawyers there were some very unpleasant questions mooted affecting the title to the Windermore estate, for which he payed a trifling rent to the Verneys.
So, when Larkin went into Verney House, he was closeted with its noble master for a good while, and returning to a smaller library — devoted to blue books and pamphlets — where he had left a despatch-box and umbrella during his wait for admission to his noble client, he found Cleve busy there.
“Oh, Mr. Larkin. How d’ye do? Anything to say to me?” said the handsome young man, whose eye looked angry though he smiled.
“Ah, thanks. No — no, Mr. Verney. I hope and trust I see you well; but no, I had not any comm
unication to make. Shall I be honoured, Mr. Verney, with any communication from you?”
“I’ve nothing to say, thanks, except of course to say how much obliged I am for the very particular interest you take in my affairs.”
“I should be eminently gratified, Mr. Verney, to merit your approbation; but I fear, sir, as yet I can hardly hope to have merited your thanks,” said Mr. Larkin, modestly.
“You won’t let me thank you; but I quite understand the nature and extent of your kindness. My uncle is by no means so reserved, and he has told me very frankly the care you have been so good as to take of me. He’s more obliged even than I am, and so, I am told, is Lady Wimbledon also.”
Cleve had said a great deal more than at starting he had at all intended. It would have been easy to him to have dismissed the attorney without allusion to the topic that made him positively hateful in his eyes; but it was not easy to hint at it, and quite command himself also, and the result illustrated the general fact that total abstinence is easier than moderation.
Now the effect of this little speech of Cleve’s upon the attorney, was to abash Mr. Larkin, and positively to confound him, in a degree quite unusual in a Christian so armed on most occasions with that special grace called presence of mind. The blood mounted to his hollow cheeks, and up to the summit of his tall bald head; his eyes took their rat-like character, and looked dangerously in his for a second, and then down to the floor, and scanned his own boots; and he bit his lip, and essayed a little laugh, and tried to look innocent, and broke down in the attempt. He cleared his voice once or twice to speak, but said nothing; and all this time Cleve gave him no help whatsoever, but enjoyed his evident confusion with an angry sneer.
“I hope Mr. Cleve Verney,” at length Mr. Larkin began, “where duty and expediency pull in opposite directions, I shall always be found at the right side.”
“The winning side at all events,” said Cleve.
“The right side, I venture to repeat. It has been my misfortune to be misunderstood more than once in the course of my life. It is our duty to submit to misinterpretation, as to other afflictions, patiently. I hope I have done so. My first duty is to my client.”
“I’m no client of yours, sir.”
“Well, conceding that, sir, to your uncle — to Lord Verney, I will say — to his views of what the interests of his house demand, and to his feelings.”
“Lord Verney has been good enough to consult me, hitherto, upon this subject; a not quite unnatural confidence, I venture to think; more than you seem to suspect. He seems to think, and so do I, that I’ve a voice in it, and has not left me absolutely in the hands — in a matter of so much importance and delicacy — of his country lawyer.”
“I had no power in this case, sir; not even of mentioning the subject to you, who certainly, in one view, are more or less affected by it.”
“Thank you for the concession,” sneered Cleve.
“I make it unaffectedly, Mr. Cleve Verney,” replied Larkin, graciously.
“My uncle, Lord Verney, has given me leave to talk to you upon the subject. I venture to decline that privilege. I prefer speaking to him. He seems to think that I ought to be allowed to advise a little in the matter, and that with every respect for his wishes; mine also are entitled to be a little considered. Should I ever talk to you, Mr. Larkin, it shan’t be to ask your advice. I’m detaining you, sir, and I’m also a little busy myself.”
Mr. Larkin looked at the young man a second or two a little puzzled; but encountering only a look of stern impatience, he made his best bow, and the conference ended.
A few minutes later, in came our old friend, Tom Sedley.
“Oh! Sedley! Very glad to see you here; but I thought you did not want to see my uncle just now; and this is the most likely place, except the library, to meet him in.”
“He’s gone; I saw him go out this moment. I should not have come in otherwise; and you mustn’t send me away, dear Cleve, I’m in such awful trouble. Everything has gone wrong with us at Hazelden. You know that quarrying company — the slates, that odious fellow, Larkin, led him into, before the election and all the other annoyances began.”
“You mean the Llanrwyd company?”
“Yes; so I do.”
“But that’s quite ruined, you know. Sit down.”
“I know. He has lost — frightfully — and Mr. Etherage must pay up ever so much in calls beside; and unless he can get it on a mortgage of the Windermore estate, he can’t possibly pay them — and I’ve been trying, and the result is just this — they won’t lend it anywhere till the litigation is settled.”
“Well, what can I do?” said Cleve, yawning stealthily into his hand, and looking very tired. I am afraid these tragic confidences of Tom Sedley’s did not interest Cleve very much; rather bored him, on the contrary.
“They won’t lend, I say, while this litigation is pending.”
“Depend upon it they won’t,” acquiesced Cleve.
“And in the meantime, you know, Mr. Etherage would be ruined.”
“Well, I see; but, I say again, what can I do?”
“I want you to try if anything can be done with Lord Verney,” said Tom, beseechingly.
“Talk to my uncle? I wish, dear Tom, you could teach me how to do that.”
“It can’t do any harm, Cleve — it can’t,” urged Tom Sedley, piteously.
“Nor one particle of good. You might as well talk to that picture — I do assure you, you might.”
“But it could be no pleasure to him to ruin Mr. Etherage!”
“I’m not so sure of that; between ourselves, forgiving is not one of his weaknesses.”
“But I say it’s quite impossible — an old family, and liked in the county — it would be a scandal for ever!” pleaded Tom Sedley, distractedly.
“Not worse than that business of Booth Fanshawe,” said Cleve, looking down; “no, he never forgives anything. I don’t think he perceives he’s taking a revenge; he has not mind enough for repentance,” said Cleve, who was not in good humour with his uncle just then.
“Won’t you try? you’re such an eloquent fellow, and there’s really so much to be said.”
“I do assure you, there’s no more use than in talking to the chimneypiece; if you make a point of it, of course, I will; but, by Jove, you could hardly choose a worse advocate just now, for he’s teasing me to do what I can’t do. If you heard my miserable story, it would make you laugh; it’s like a thing in a petite comédie, and it’s breaking my heart.”
“Well, then, you’ll try — won’t you try?” said Tom, overlooking his friend’s description of his own troubles.
“Yes; as you desire it, I’ll try; but I don’t expect the slightest good from it, and possibly some mischief,” he replied.
“A thousand thanks, my dear Cleve; I’m going down tonight. Would it be too much to ask you for a line, or, if it’s good news, a telegram to Llwynan.”
“I may safely promise you that, I’m sorry to say, without risk of trouble. You mustn’t think me unkind, but it would be cruel to let you hope when there is not, really, a chance.”
So Tom drove away to his club, to write his daily love letter to Agnes Etherage, in time for post; and to pen a few lines for old Vane Etherage, and try to speak comfortably to that family, over whose pretty home had gathered so awful a storm.
* * *
CHAPTER X.
A THUNDERSTORM
“That night a child might understand The de’il had business on his hand.”
I ended my last chapter with mention of a metaphoric storm; but a literal storm broke over the city of London on that night, such as its denizens remembered for many a day after. The lightning seemed, for more than an hour, the continuous pulsations of light from a sulphurous furnace, and the thunder pealed with the cracks and rattlings of one long roar of artillery. The children, waked by the din, cried in their beds in terror, and Sarah Rumble got her dress about her, and said her prayers in panic.
A
fter a while the intervals between the awful explosions were a little more marked, and Miss Rumble’s voice could be heard by the children, comforting and reassuring in the brief lulls; although had they known what a fright their comforter was herself in, their confidence in her would have been impaired.
Perhaps there was a misgiving in Sarah Rumble’s mind that the lightnings and thunders of irate heaven were invoked by the presence of her mysterious lodger. Was even she herself guiltless, in hiding under her roof-tree that impious old sinner, whom Rosemary Court disgorged at dead of night, as the churchyard does a ghost — about whose past history — whose doings and whose plans, except that they were wicked — she knew no more than about those of an evil spirit, had she chanced, in one of her spectre-seeing moods, to spy one moving across the lobby.
His talk was so cold and wicked; his temper so fiendish; his nocturnal disguises and outgoings so obviously pointed to secret guilt; and his relations with the meek Mr. Larkin, and with those potent Jews, who, grumbling and sullen, yet submitted to his caprices, as genii to those of the magician who has the secret of command, — that Mr. Dingwell had in her eyes something of a supernatural horror surrounding him. In the thunderstorm, Sarah Rumble vowed secretly to reconsider the religious propriety of harbouring this old man; and amid these qualms, it was with something of fear and anger that, in a silence between the peals of the now subsiding storm, she heard the creak of his shoe upon the stair.
That even on such a night, with the voice of divine anger in the air, about his ears, he could not forego his sinister excursion, and for once at these hours remain decorously in his rooms! Her wrath overcame her fear of him. She would not have her house burnt and demolished over her head, with thunderbolts, for his doings.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 378