Читать книгу: «Checkmate», страница 26
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 drawing-room,” 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 good-bye 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?’”
“I didn't, I swear.”
“Oh! you did; I heard every syllable; ‘false’ was the word.”
“Well, if I said ‘false,’ I must have been thinking of her hair; for she is really a very honest old woman.”
At this moment a female voice in distress is heard, and poor Lady May comes pushing out of the pretty little room, in which Grace Maubray had placed her, sobbing and shedding floods of tears.
“I can't stay there any longer, for I hear everything; I can't help hearing every word – honest old woman, and all – opprobrious. Oh! how can people be so? how can they? Oh! I'm very angry – I'm very angry – I'm very angry!”
If Miss Maubray were easily moved to pity she might have been at sight of the big innocent eyes turned up at her, from which rolled great tears, making visible channels through the paint down her cheeks. She sobbed and wept like a fat, good-natured child, and pitifully she continued sobbing, “Oh, I'm a-a-ho – very angry; wha-at shall I do-o-o, my dear? I-I'm very angry – oh, oh – I'm very a-a-angry!”
“So am I,” said Grace Maubray, with a fiery glance at the young baronet, who stood fixed where he was, like an image of death; “and I had intended, dear Lady May, telling you a thing which Sir Richard Arden may as well hear, as I mean to write to tell Alice to-day; it is that I am to be married – I have accepted Lord Wynderbroke – and – and that's all.”
Sir Richard, I believe, said “Good-bye.” Nobody heard him. I don't think he remembers how he got on his horse. I don't think the ladies saw him leave the room – only, he was gone.
Poor Lady May takes her incoherent leave. She has got her veil over her face, to baffle curiosity. Miss Maubray stands at the window, the tip of her finger to her brilliant lip, contemplating Lady May as she gets in with a great jerk and swing of the carriage, and she hears the footman say “Home,” and sees a fat hand, in a lilac glove, pull up the window hurriedly. Then she sits down on a sofa, and laughs till she quivers again, and tears overflow her eyes; and she says in the intervals, almost breathlessly, —
“Oh, poor old thing! I really am sorry. Who could have thought she cared so much? Poor old soul! what a ridiculous old thing!”
Such broken sentences of a rather contemptuous pity rolled and floated along the even current of her laughter.
CHAPTER LXVII
BOND AND DEED
The summer span of days was gone; it was quite dark, and long troops of withered leaves drifted in rustling trains over the avenue, as Mr. Levi, observant of his appointment, drove up to the grand old front of Mortlake, which in the dark spread before him like a house of white mist.
“I shay,” exclaimed Mr. Levi, softly, arresting the progress of the cabman, who was about running up the steps, “I'll knock myshelf – wait you there.”
Mr. Levi was smoking. Standing at the base of the steps, he looked up, and right and left with some curiosity. It was too dark; he could hardly see the cold glimmer of the windows that reflected the grey horizon. Vaguely, however, he could see that it was a grander place than he had supposed. He looked down the avenue, and between the great trees over the gate he saw the distant lights, and heard through the dim air the chimes, far off, from London steeples, succeeding one another, or mingling faintly, and telling all whom it might concern the solemn lesson of the flight of time.
Mr. Levi thought it might be worth while coming down in the day-time, and looking over the house and place to see what could be made of them; the thing was sure to go a dead bargain. At present he could see nothing but the wide, vague, grey front, and the faint glow through the hall windows, which showed their black outlines sharply enough.
“Well, he'sh come a mucker, anyhow,” murmured Mr. Levi, with one of his smiles that showed so wide his white sharp teeth.
He knocked at the door and rang the bell. It was not a footman, but Crozier who opened it. The old servant of the family did not like the greasy black curls, the fierce jet eyes, the sallow face and the large, moist, sullen mouth, that presented themselves under the brim of Mr. Levi's hat, nor the tawdry glimmer of chains on his waistcoat, nor the cigar still burning in his fingers. Sir Richard had told Crozier, however, that a Mr. Levi, whom he described, was to call at a certain hour, on very particular business, and was to be instantly admitted.
Mr. Levi looks round him, and extinguishes his cigar before following Crozier, whose countenance betrays no small contempt and dislike, as he eyes the little man askance, as if he would like well to be uncivil to him.
Crozier leads him to the right, through a small apartment, to a vast square room, long disused, still called the library, though but few books remain on the shelves, and those in disorder. It is a chilly night, and a little fire burns in the grate, over which Sir Richard is cowering. Very haggard, the baronet starts up as the name of his visitor is announced.
“Come in,” cries Sir Richard, walking to meet him. “Here – here I am, Levi, utterly ruined. There isn't a soul I dare tell how I am beset, or anything to, but you. Do, for God's sake take pity on me, and think of something! my brain's quite gone – you're such a clever fellow” (he is dragging Levi by the arm all this time towards the candles): “do now, you're sure to see some way out. It is a matter of honour; I only want time. If I could only find my Uncle David: think of his selfishness – good heaven! was there ever man so treated? and there's the bank letter —there– on the table; you see it – dunning me, the ungrateful harpies, for the trifle – what is it? – three hundred and something, I overdrew; and that blackguard tallow-chandler has been three times to my house in town, for payment to-day, and it's more than I thought – near four thousand, he says – the scoundrel! It's just the same to him two months hence; he's full of money, the beast – a fellow like that – it's delight to him to get hold of a gentleman, and he won't take a bill – the lying rascal! He is pressed for cash just now – a pug-faced villain with three hundred thousand pounds! Those scoundrels! I mean the people, whatever they are, that lent me the money; it turns out it was all but at sight, and they were with my attorney to-day, and they won't wait. I wish I was shot; I envy the dead dogs rolling in the Thames! By heaven; Levi, I'll say you're the best friend man ever had on earth, I will, if you manage something! I'll never forget it to you; I'll have it in my power, yet! no one ever said I was ungrateful; I swear I'll be the making of you! Do, Levi, think; you're accustomed to – to emergency, and unless you will, I'm utterly ruined – ruined, by heaven, before I have time to think!”
The Jew listened to all this with his hands in his pockets, leaning back in his chair, with his big eyes staring on the wild face of the baronet, and his heavy mouth hanging. He was trying to reduce his countenance to vacancy.
“What about them shettlements, Sir Richard – a nishe young lady with a ha-a-tful o' money?” insinuated Levi.
“I've been thinking over that, but it wouldn't do, with my affairs in this state, it would not be honourable or straight. Put that quite aside.”
Mr. Levi gaped at him for a moment solemnly, and turned suddenly, and, brute as he was, spit on the Turkey carpet. He was not, as you perceive, ceremonious; but he could not allow the baronet to see the laughter that without notice caught him for a moment, and could think of no better way to account for his turning away his head.
“That'sh wery honourable indeed,” said the Jew, more solemn than ever; “and if you can't play in that direction, I'm afraid you're in queer shtreet.”
The baronet was standing before Levi, and at these words from that dirty little oracle, a terrible chill stole up from his feet to the crown of his head. Like a frozen man he stood there, and the Jew saw that his very lips were white. Sir Richard feels, for the first time, actually, that he is ruined.
The young man tries to speak, twice. The big eyes of the Jew are staring up at the contortion. Sir Richard can see nothing but those two big fiery eyes; he turns quickly away and walks to the end of the room.
“There's just one fiddle-string left to play on,” muses the Jew.
“For God's sake!” exclaims Sir Richard, turning about, in a voice you would not have known, and for fully a minute the room was so silent you could scarcely have believed that two men were breathing in it.
“Shir Richard, will you be so good as to come nearer a bit? There, that'sh the cheeshe. I brought thish 'ere thing.”
It is a square parchment with a good deal of printed matter, and blanks, written in, and a law stamp fixed with an awful regularity, at the corner.
“Casht your eye over it,” says Levi, coaxingly, as he pushes it over the table to the young gentleman, who is sitting now at the other side.
The young man looks at it, reads it, but just then, if it had been a page of “Robinson Crusoe,” he could not have understood it.
“I'm not quite myself, I can't follow it; too much to think of. What is it?”
“A bond and warrant to confess judgment.”
“What is it for?”
“Ten thoushand poundsh.”
“Sign it, shall I? Can you do anything with it?”
“Don't raishe your voishe, but lishten. Your friend” – and at the phrase Mr. Levi winked mysteriously – “has enough to do it twishe over; and upon my shoul, I'll shwear on the book, azh I hope to be shaved, it will never shee the light; he'll never raishe a pig on it, sho' 'elp me, nor let it out of hish 'ands, till he givesh it back to you. He can't ma-ake no ushe of it; I knowshe him well, and he'll pay you the ten thoushand to-morrow morning, and he wantsh to shake handsh with you, and make himself known to you, and talk a bit.”
“But – but my signature wouldn't satisfy him,” began Sir Richard bewildered.
“Oh! no– no, no?” murmured Mr. Levi, fiddling with the corner of the bank's reminder which lay on the table.
“Mr. Longcluse won't sign it,” said Sir Richard.
Mr. Levi threw himself back in his chair, and looked with a roguish expression still upon the table, and gave the corner of the note a little fillip.
“Well,” said Levi, after both had been some time silent, “it ain't much, only to write his name on the penshil line, there, you see, and there– he shouldn't make no bonesh about it. Why, it's done every day. Do you think I'd help in a thing of the short if there was any danger? The Sheneral's come to town, is he? What are you afraid of? Don't you be a shild – ba-ah!”
All this Mr. Levi said so low that it was as if he were whispering to the table, and he kept looking down as he put the parchment over to Sir Richard, who took it in his hand, and the bond trembled so much that he set it down again.
“Leave it with me,” he said faintly.
Levi got up with an unusual hectic in each cheek, and his eyes very brilliant.
“I'll meet you what time you shay to-night; you had besht take a little time. It'sh ten now. Three hoursh will do it. I'll go on to my offish by one o'clock, and you come any time from one to two.”
Sir Richard was trembling.
“Between one and two, mind. Hang it! Shir Richard, don't you be a fool about nothing,” whispers the Jew, as black as thunder.
He is fumbling in his breast-pocket, and pulling out a sheaf of letters; he selects one, which he throws upon the parchment that lies open on the table.
“That'sh the note you forgot in my offish yeshterday, with hish name shined to it. There, now you have everything.”
Without any form of valediction, the Jew had left the room. Sir Richard sits with his teeth set, and a strange frown upon his face, scarcely breathing. He hears the cab drive away. Before him on the table lie the papers.
