Checkmate

“Do you mean that Uncle David is going to marry? I think it would be an awful pity!” exclaimed Alice.

“Well, dear, to put you out of pain, I'll tell you at once; I only know this – that he is going to provide for her somehow, but whether by adopting her as a child, or taking her for a wife, I can't tell. Only I never saw any one looking archer than Mr. Brounker did to-day when he told me; and I fancied from that it could not be so dull a business as merely making her his daughter.”

“And who is the young lady?” asked Alice.

“Did you ever happen to meet anywhere a Miss Grace Maubray?”

“Oh, yes,” answered Alice quickly. “She was staying, and her father, Colonel Maubray, at the Wymerings' last autumn. She's quite lovely, I think, and very clever – but I don't know – I think she's a little ill-natured, but very amusing. She seems to have a talent for cutting people up – and a little of that kind of thing, you know, is very well, but one does not care for it always. And is she really the young lady?”

“Yes, and – Dear me! Mr. Darnley, I'm afraid my story has alarmed you.”

“Why should it?” laughed Vivian Darnley, partly to cover, perhaps, a little confusion.

“I can't tell, I'm sure, but you blushed as much as a man can; and you know you did. I wonder, Alice, what this under-plot can be, where all is so romantic. Perhaps, after all, Mr. David Arden is to adopt the young lady, and some one else, to whom he is also kind, is to marry her. Don't you think that would be a very natural arrangement?”

Alice laughed, and Darnley laughed; but he was embarrassed.

“And Colonel Maubray, is he still living?” asked Alice.

“Oh, no, dear; he died ten or eleven months ago. A very foolish man, you know; he wasted a very good property. He was some distant relation, also; Mr. Brounker said your uncle, Mr. David Arden, was very much attached to him – they were schoolfellows, and great friends all their lives.”

“I should not wonder,” said Alice smiling – and then became silent.

“Do you know the young lady, this fortunate Miss Maubray?” said Lady May, turning to Vivian Darnley again.

“I? Yes – that is, I can't say more than a mere acquaintance – and not an old one. I made her acquaintance at Mr. Arden's house. He is her guardian. I don't know about any other arrangements. I daresay there may be.”

“Well, I know her a little, also,” said Lady May. “I thought her pretty – and she sings a little, and she's clever.”

“She's all that,” said Alice. “Oh, here comes Dick! What do you say, Richard – is not Miss Maubray very pretty? We are making a plot to marry her to Vivian Darnley, and get Uncle David to contribute her dot.”

“What benevolent people! You don't object, I dare say, Vivian.”

“I have not been consulted,” said he; “and, of course, Uncle David need not be consulted, as he has simply to transfer the proper quantity of stock.”

Richard Arden had drawn near Lady May, and said a few words in a low tone, which seemed not unwelcome to her.

“I saw Longcluse this morning. He has not been here, has he?” he added, as a little silence threatened the conversation.

“No, he has not turned up. And what a charming person he is!” exclaimed Lady May.

“I quite agree with you, Lady May,” said Arden. “He is, take him on every subject, I think, about the cleverest fellow I ever met – art, literature, games, chess, which I take to be a subject by itself. He is very great at chess – for an amateur, I mean – and when I was chess-mad, nearly a year ago and beginning to grow conceited, he opened my eyes, I can tell you; and Airly says he is the best musical critic in England, and can tell you at any hour who is who in the opera, all over Europe; and he really understands, what so few of us here know anything about, foreign politics, and all the people and their stories and scandals he has at his fingers' ends. And he is such good company, when he chooses, and such a gentleman always!”

“He is very agreeable and amusing when he takes the trouble; I always like to listen when Mr. Longcluse talks,” said Alice Arden, to the secret satisfaction of her brother, whose enthusiasm was, I think, directed a good deal to her – and to, perhaps, the vexation of other people, whom she did not care at that moment to please.

“An Admirable Crichton!” murmured Vivian Darnley, with a rather hackneyed sneer. “Do you like his style of —beauty, I suppose I should call it? It has the merit of being very uncommon, at least, don't you think?”

“Beauty, I think, matters very little. He has no beauty, but his face has what, in a man, I think a great deal better – I mean refinement, and cleverness, and a kind of satire that rather interests one,” said Miss Arden, with animation.

Sir Walter Scott, in his “Rob Roy” – thinking, no doubt, of the Diana Vernon of his early days, the then beautiful lady, long afterwards celebrated by Basil Hall as the old Countess Purgstorf (if I rightly remember the title), and recurring to some cherished incident, and the thrill of a pride that had ceased to agitate, but was at once pleasant and melancholy to remember – wrote these words: “She proceeded to read the first stanza, which was nearly to the following purpose. [Then follow the verses.] ‘There is a great deal of it,’ said she, glancing along the paper, and interrupting the sweetest sounds that mortal ears can drink in – those of a youthful poet's verses, namely, read by the lips which are dearest to them.” So writes Walter Scott. On the other hand, in certain states, is there a pain intenser than that of listening to the praises of another man from the lips we love?

“Well,” said Darnley, “as you say so, I suppose there is all that, though I can't see it. Of course, if he tries to make himself agreeable (which he never does to me), it makes a difference, it affects everything – it affects even his looks. But I should not have thought him good-looking. On the contrary, he appears to me about as ugly a fellow as one could see in a day.”

“He's not that,” said Alice. “No one could be ugly with so much animation and so much expression.”

“You take up the cudgels very prettily, my dear, for Mr. Longcluse,” said Lady May. “I'm sure he ought to be extremely obliged to you.”

“So he would be,” said Richard Arden. “It would upset him for a week, I have no doubt.”

There are few things harder to interpret than a blush. At these words the beautiful face of Alice Arden flushed, first with a faint, and then, as will happen, with a brighter crimson. If Lady May had seen it, she would have laughed, probably, and told her how much it became her. But she was, at that moment, going to her chair in the window, and Richard Arden would, of course, accompany her. He did see it, as distinctly as he saw the glow in the sky over the park trees. But, knowing what a slight matter will sometimes make a recoil, and even found an antipathy, he wisely chose to see it not – and chatting gaily, followed Lady May to the window.

But Vivian Darnley, though he said nothing, saw that blush, of which Alice, with a sort of haughty defiance, was conscious. It did not make him like or admire Mr. Longcluse more.

“Well, I suppose he is very charming – I don't know him well enough myself to give an opinion. But he makes his acquaintances rather oddly, doesn't he? I don't think any one will dispute that.”

“I don't know really. Lady May introduced him to me, and she seems to like him very much. So far as I can see, people are very well pleased at knowing him, and don't trouble their heads as to how it came about,” said Miss Arden.

“No, of course; but people not fortunate enough to come within the influence of his fascination, can't help observing. How did he come to know your brother, for instance? Did any one introduce him? Nothing of the kind. Richard's horse was hurt or lame at one of the hunts in Warwickshire, and he lent him a horse, and introduced himself, and they dined together that evening on the way back, and so the thing was done.”

“Can there be a better introduction than a kindness?” asked Alice.

“Yes, where it is a kindness, I agree; but no one has a right to push his services upon a stranger who does not ask for them.”

“I really can't see. Richard need not have taken his horse if he had not liked,” she answered.

“And Lady May, who thinks him such a paragon, knows no more about him than any one else. She had her footman behind her – didn't she tell you all about it?”

“I really don't recollect; but does it very much matter?”

“I think it does – that is, it has been a sort of system. He just gave her his arm over a crossing, where she had taken fright, and then pretended to think her a great deal more frightened than she really can have been, and made her sit down to recover in a confectioner's shop, and so saw her home, and that affair was concluded. I don't say, of course, that he is never introduced in the regular way; but a year or two ago, when he was beginning, he always made his approaches by means of that kind of stratagem; and the fact is, no one knows anything on earth about him; he has emerged, like a figure in a phantasmagoria, from total darkness, and may lose himself in darkness again at any moment.”

“I am interested in that man, whoever he is; his entrance, and his probable exit, so nearly resemble mine,” said a clear, deep-toned voice close to them; and looking up, Miss Arden saw the pale face and peculiar smile of Mr. Longcluse in the fading twilight.

Mr. Longcluse was greeted by Lady May and by Richard Arden, and then again he drew near Alice, and said, “Do you recollect, Miss Arden, about ten days ago I told you a story that seemed to interest you – the story of a young and eloquent friar, who died of love in his cell in an abbey in the Tyrol, and whose ghost used to be seen pensively leaning on the pulpit from which he used to preach, too much thinking of the one beautiful face among his audience, which had enthralled him. I had left the enamel portrait I told you of at an artist's in Paris, and I wrote for it, thinking you might wish to see it – hoping you might care to see it,” he added, in a lower tone, observing that Vivian Darnley, who was not in a happy temper, had, with a sudden impulse of disdain, removed himself to another window, there to contemplate the muster of the stars in the darkening sky, at his leisure.

“That was so kind of you, Mr. Longcluse! You have had a great deal of trouble. It is such an interesting story!” said Alice.

In his reception, Mr. Longcluse found something that pleased, almost elated him. Had Richard Arden been speaking to her on the subject of their morning's conversation? He thought not, Lady May had mentioned that he had not been with them till just twenty minutes ago, and Arden had told him that he had dined with his uncle David and Mr. Blount, upon the same business on which he had been occupied with both nearly all day. No, he could not have spoken to her. The slight change which made him so tumultuously proud and happy, was entirely spontaneous.

“So it seemed to me – an eccentric and interesting story – but pray do not wound me by speaking of trouble. I only wish you knew half the pleasure it has been to me to get it to show you. May I hold the lamp near for a moment while you look at it?” he said, indicating a tiny lamp which stood on a pier-table, showing a solitary gleam, like a lighthouse, through the gloom; “you could not possibly see it in this faint twilight.”

The lady assented. Had Mr. Longcluse ever felt happier?

CHAPTER XI

THE TELEGRAM ARRIVES

Mr. Longcluse placed the little oval enamel, set in gold, in Miss Arden's fingers, and held the lamp beside her while she looked.

“How beautiful! – how very interesting!” she exclaimed. “What suffering in those thin, handsome features! What a strange enthusiasm in those large hazel eyes! I could fancy that monk the maddest of lovers, the most chivalric of saints. And did he really suffer that incredible fate? Did he really die of love?”

“So they say. But why incredible? I can quite imagine that wild shipwreck, seeing what a raging sea love is, and how frail even the strongest life.”

“Well, I can't say, I am sure. But your own novelists laugh at the idea of any but women – whose business it is, of course, to pay that tribute to their superiors – dying of love. But if any man could die such a death, he must be such as this picture represents. What a wild, agonised picture of passion and asceticism! What suicidal devotion and melancholy rapture! I confess I could almost fall in love with that picture myself.”

“And I think, were I he, I could altogether die to earn one such sentence, so spoken,” said Mr. Longcluse.

“Could you lend it to me for a very few days?” asked the young lady.

“As many – as long as you please. I am only too happy.”

“I should so like to make a large drawing of this in chalks!” said Alice, still gazing on the miniature.

“You draw so beautifully in chalks! Your style is not often found here – your colouring is so fine.”

“Do you really think so?”

“You must know it, Miss Arden. You are too good an artist not to suspect what everyone else must see, the real excellence of your drawings. Your colouring is better understood in France. Your master, I fancy, was a Frenchman?” said Mr. Longcluse.

“Yes, he was, and we got on very well together. Some of his young lady pupils were very much afraid of him.”

“Your poetry is fired by that picture, Miss Arden. Your copy will be a finer thing than the original,” said he.

“I shall aim only at making it a faithful copy; and if I can accomplish anything like that, I shall be only too glad.”

“I hope you will allow me to see it?” pleaded Longcluse.

“Oh, certainly,” she laughed. “Only I'm a little afraid of you, Mr. Longcluse.”

“What can you mean, Miss Arden?”

“I mean, you are so good a critic in art, every one says, that I really am afraid of you,” answered the young lady, laughing.

“I should be very glad to forfeit any little knowledge I have, if it were attended with such a misfortune,” said Longcluse. “But I don't flatter; I tell you truly, a critic has only to admire, when he looks at your drawings; they are quite above the level of an amateur's work.”

“Well, whether you mean it or not, I am very much flattered,” she laughed. “And though wise people say that flattery spoils one, I can't help thinking it very agreeable to be flattered.”

At this point of the dialogue Mr. Vivian Darnley – who wished that it should be plain to all, and to one in particular, that he did not care the least what was going on in other parts of the room – began to stumble through the treble of a tune at the piano with his right hand. And whatever other people may have thought of his performance, to Miss Alice Arden it seemed very good music indeed, and inspired her with fresh animation. Such as it was, Mr. Darnley's solo also turned the course of Miss Arden's thoughts from drawing to another art, and she said —

“You, Mr. Longcluse, who know everything about the opera, can you tell me – of course you can – anything about the great basso who is coming?”

“Stentoroni?”

“Yes; the newspapers and critics promise wonders.”

“It is nearly two years since I heard him. He was very great, and deserves all they say in ‘Robert le Diable.’ But there his greatness began and ended. The voice, of course, you had, but everything else was defective. It is plain, however, that the man who could make so fine a study of one opera, could with equal labour make as great a success in others. He has not sung in any opera for more than a year and a half, and has been working diligently; and so everyone is in the dark very much, and I am curious to hear the result – and nobody knows more than I have told you. You are sure of a good ‘Robert le Diable,’ but all the rest is speculation.”

“And now, Mr. Longcluse, I shall try your good-nature.”

“How?”

“I am going to make Lady May ask you to sing a song.”

“Pray don't.”

“Why not?”

“I should so much rather you asked me yourself.”

“That's very good of you; then I certainly shall. I do ask you.”

“And I instantly obey. And what shall the song be?” asked he, approaching the piano, to which she also walked.

“Oh, that ghostly one that I liked so much when you sang it here about a week ago,” she answered.

“I know it – yes, with pleasure.” And he sat down at the piano, and in a clear, rich baritone, sang the following odd song: —

“The autumn leaf was fallingAt midnight from the tree,When at her casement calling,‘I'm here, my love,’ says he.‘Come down and mount behind me,And rest your little head,And in your white arms wind me,Before that I be dead.“‘You've stolen my heart by magic,I've kissed your lips in dreams:Our wooing wild and tragicHas been in ghostly scenes.The wondrous love I bear youHas made one life of twain,And it will bless or scare you,In deathless peace or pain.“‘Our dreamland shall be glowing,If you my bride will be;To darkness both are going,Unless you come with me.Come now, and mount behind me,And rest your little head,And in your white arms wind me,Before that I be dead.’”

“Why, dear Alice, will you choose that dismal song, when you know that Mr. Longcluse has so many others that are not only charming, but cheery and natural?”

“It is because it is unnatural that I like that song so much; the air is so ominous and spectral, and yet so passionate. I think the idea is Icelandic – those ghostly lovers that came in the dark to win their beloved maidens, who as yet knew nothing of their having died, to ride with them over the snowy fields and frozen rivers, to join their friends at a merry-making which they were never to see; but there is something more mysterious even in this lover, for his passion has unearthly beginnings that lose themselves in utter darkness. Thank you very much, Mr. Longcluse. It is so very kind of you! And now, Lady May, isn't it your turn to choose? May she choose, Mr. Longcluse?”

“Any one, if you desire it, may choose anything I possess, and have it,” said he, in a low impassioned murmur.

How the young lady would have taken this, I know not, but all were suddenly interrupted. For at this moment a servant entered with a note, which he presented, upon a salver, to Mr. Longcluse.

“Your servant is waiting, Sir, please, for orders in the awl,” murmured the man.

“Oh, yes – thanks,” said Mr. Longcluse, who saw a shabby letter, with the words “Private” and “Immediate” written in a round, vulgar hand over the address.

“Pray read your note, Mr. Longcluse, and don't mind us,” said Lady May.

“Thank you very much. I think I know what this is. I gave some evidence to-day at an inquest,” began Mr. Longcluse.

“That wretched Frenchman,” interposed Lady May, “Monsieur Lebrun or – ”

“Lebas,” said Vivian Darnley.

“Yes, so it was, Lebas; what a frightful thing that was!” continued Lady May, who was always well up in the day's horrors.

“Very melancholy, and very alarming also. It is a selfish way of looking at it, but one can't help thinking it might just as well have happened to any one else who was there. It brings it home to one a little uncomfortably,” said Mr. Longcluse, with an uneasy smile and a shrug.

“And you actually gave evidence, Mr. Longcluse?” said Lady May.

“Yes, a little,” he answered. “It may lead to something. I hope so. As yet it only indicates a line of inquiry. It will be in the papers, I suppose, in the morning. There will be, I daresay, a pretty full report of that inquest.”

“Then you saw something occur that excited your suspicions?” said Lady May.

Mr. Longcluse recounted all he had to tell, and mentioned having made inquiries as to the present abode of the man, Paul Davies, at the police office.

“And this note, I daresay, is the one they promised to send me, telling the result of their inquiries,” he added.

“Pray open it and see,” said Lady May.

He did so. He read it in silence. From his foot to the crown of his head there crept a cold influence as he read. Stream after stream, this aura of fear spread upwards to his brain. Pale Mr. Longcluse shrugged and smiled, and smiled and shrugged, as his dark eye ran down the lines, and with a careless finger he turned the page over. He smiled, as prizefighters smile for the spectators, while every nerve quivered with pain. He looked up, smiling still, and thrust the note into his breast-pocket.

“Well, Mr. Longcluse, a long note it seems to have been,” said Lady May, curiously.

“Not very long, but what is as bad, very illegible,” said Mr. Longcluse gaily.

“And what about the man – the person the police were to have inquired after?” she persisted.

“I find it is no police information, nothing of the kind,” answered Longcluse with the same smile. “It comes by no means from one of that long-headed race of men; on the contrary, poor fellow, I believe he is literally a little mad. I make him a trifling present every Christmas, and that is a very good excuse for his plaguing me all the year round. I was in hopes this letter might turn out an amusing one, but it is not; it is a failure. It is rather sensible, and disgusting.”

“Well, then, I must have my song, Mr. Longcluse,” said Lady May, who, under cover of music, sometimes talked a little, in gentle murmurs, to that person with whom talk was particularly interesting.

But that song was not to be heard in Lady May's drawing-room that night, for a kindred interruption, though much more serious in its effects upon Mr. Longcluse's companions, occurred. A footman entered, and presented on a salver a large brown envelope to Miss Alice Arden.

“Oh, dear! It is a telegram,” exclaimed Miss Arden, who had taken it to the window. Lady May Penrose was beside her by this time. Alice looked on the point of fainting.

“I'm afraid papa is very ill,” she whispered, handing the paper, which trembled very much in her hand, to Lady May.

“H'm! Yes – but you may be sure it's exaggerated. Bring some sherry and water, please. You look a little frightened, my dear. Sit down, darling. There now! These messages are always written in a panic. What do you mean to do?”

“I'll go, of course,” said Alice.

“Well, yes – I think you must go. What is the place? Twyford, the ‘Royal Oak?’ Look out Twyford, please Mr. Darnley – there's a book there. It must be a post-town. It was thoughtful saying it is on the Dover coach road.”

Vivian Darnley was gazing in deep concern at Alice. Instantly he began turning over the book, and announced in a few moments more – “It is a post-town – only thirty-six miles from London,” said Mr. Darnley.

“Thanks,” said Lady May. “Oh, here's the wine – I'm so glad! You must have a little, dear; and you'll take Louisa Diaper with you, of course; and you shall have one of my carriages, and I'll send a servant with you, and he'll arrange everything; and how soon do you wish to go?”

“Immediately, instantly – thanks, darling. I'm so much obliged!”

“Will your brother go with you?”

“No, dear. Papa, you know, has not forgiven him, and it is, I think, two years since they met. It would only agitate him.”

And with these words she hurried to her room, and in another moment, with the aid of her maid, was completing her hasty preparations.

In wonderfully little time the carriage was at the door. Mr. Longcluse had taken his leave. So had Richard Arden, with the one direction to the servant, “If anything should go very wrong, be sure to telegraph for me. Here is my address.”

“Put this in your purse, dear,” said Lady May. “Your father is so thoughtless, he may not have brought money enough with him; and you will find it is as I say – he'll be a great deal better by the time you get there; and God bless you, my dear.”

And she kissed her as heartily as she dared, without communicating the rouge and white powder which aided her complexion.

As Alice ran down, Vivian Darnley awaited her outside the drawing-room door, and ran down with her, and put her into the carriage. He leaned for a moment on the window, and said —

“I hope you didn't mind that nonsense Lady May was talking just now about Miss Grace Maubray. I assure you it is utter folly. I was awfully vexed; but you didn't believe it?”

“I didn't hear her say anything, at least seriously. Wasn't she laughing? I'm in such trouble about that message! I am so longing to be at my journey's end!”