Checkmate Part 27

Longcluse meant again to have turned the current of their talk into the channel he liked best, and here was interruption. But was not Richard Arden his sworn brother, and was he not sure to make an excuse of some sort, and take his leave, and thus restore him to his _tete-a-tete_.

But was there--or was it fancy--a change scarcely perceptible, but unpleasant, in the manner of this sworn brother? Was it not very provoking, and a little odd, that he did not go away, but stayed on and on, till at length a servant came in with a message from Sir Reginald to Mr. Longcluse, to say that he would be very happy to see him whenever he chose to come to his room? Mr. Longcluse was profoundly vexed. Richard Arden, however, had resumed his old manner pretty nearly. Was the interruption he had persisted in designed, or only accidental? Could he suppose Richard Arden so stupid? He took his leave smiling, but with an uncomfortable misgiving at his heart.

Richard Arden now proceeded in his own way, with some colouring and enormous suppression at discretion, to give his sister such an account as he thought would best answer of the interview he had just had with his father. Honestly related, what occurred between them was as follows:--

Richard Arden had come on summons from his father. Without a special call, he never appeared at Mortlake while his father was there, and never in his absence but with an understanding that Sir Reginald was to hear nothing of it. He sat for a considerable time in the apartment that opened from his father's dressing-room. He heard the baronet's peevish voice ordering Crozier about. Something was dropped and broken, and the same voice was heard in angrier alto. Richard Arden looked out of the window and waited uncomfortably. He hated his father's pleadings with him, and he did not know for what purpose he had appointed this interview.

The door opened, and Sir Reginald entered, limping a little, for his gout had returned slightly. He was leaning on a stick. His thin, dark face and prominent eyes looked angry, and he turned about and poked his dressing-room door shut with the point of his stick, before taking any notice of his son.

"Sit down, if you please, in that chair," he said, pointing to the particular seat he meant him to occupy with two vicious little pokes, as if he were running a small-sword through it. "I wrote to ask you to come, Sir, merely to say a word respecting your sister, for whom, if not for other members of your family, you still retain, I suppose, some consideration and natural affection."

Here was a pause which Richard Arden did not very well know what to do with. However, as his father's fierce eyes were interrogating him, he murmured--

"Certainly, Sir."

"Yes, and under that impression I showed you Lord Wynderbroke's letter.

He is to dine here to-morrow at a quarter to eight--please to recollect--precisely. Do you hear?"

"I do, Sir, everything."

"You must meet him. Let us not appear more divided than we are. You know Wynderbroke--he's peculiar. Why the devil shouldn't we appear united? I don't say _be_ united, for you won't. But there is something owed to decency. I suppose you admit that? And before people, confound you, Sir, can't we appear affectionate? He's a quiet man, Wynderbroke, and makes a great deal of these domestic sentiments. So you'll please to show some respect and affection while he's present, and I mean to show some affection for you; and after that, Sir, you may go to the devil for me!

I hope you understand?"

"Perfectly, Sir."

"As to Wynderbroke, the thing is settled--it is _there_." He pointed to his desk. "What I told you before, I tell you now--you must see that your sister doesn't make a fool of herself. I have nothing more to say to you at present--unless you have something to say to me?"

This latter part of the sentence had something sharp and interrogative in it. There was just a chance, it seemed to imply, that his son might have something to say upon the one point that lay near the old man's heart.

"Nothing, Sir," said Richard, rising.

"No, no; so I supposed. You may go, Sir--nothing."

Of this interview, one word of the real purport of which he could not tell to his sister, he gave her an account very slight indeed, but rather pleasant.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE GARDEN AT MORTLAKE.

Alice leaned back in her chair, smiling, and very much pleased.

"So my father seems disposed to relent ever so little--and ever so little, you know, is better than nothing," said Richard Arden.

"I'm so glad, d.i.c.k, that he wishes you to take your dinner with us to-morrow; it is a very good sign. It would be so delightful if you could be at home with us, as you used to be."

"You are a good little soul, Alice--a dear little thing! This is very pretty," he said, looking at her drawing. "What is it?"

"The ruined castle near the northern end of the lake at Golden Friars.

Mr. Longcluse says it is pretty good. Is he to dine here, do you know?"

"No--I don't know--I hope not," said Richard shortly.

"Hope not! why?" said she. "I thought you liked him extremely."

"I thought he was very well for a sort of outdoor acquaintance for _men_; but I don't even know _that_, now. There's no use in speaking to Lady May, but I warn you--you had better drop him. There is very little known about him, but there is a great deal that is not pleasant _said_."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"But you used to speak so highly of him. I'm so surprised!"

"I did not know half what people said of him. I've heard a great deal since."

"But is it true?" asked Alice.

"It is nothing to me whether it is true or not. It is enough if a man is talked about uncomfortably, to make it unpleasant to know him. We owe nothing to Mr. Longcluse; there is no reason why you should have an acquaintance that is not desirable. _I_ mean to drop him quietly, and you _can't_ know him, really you _mustn't_, Alice."

"I don't know. It seems to me very hard," said Miss Alice spiritedly.

"It is not many days since you spoke of him so highly; and I was quite pained when you came in just now. I don't know whether he perceived it, but I think he must. I only know that I thought you were so cold and strange to him, your manner so unlike what it always was before. I thought you had been quarrelling. I fancied he was vexed, and I felt quite sorry; and I don't think what you say, Richard, is manly, or like yourself. You used to praise him so, and fight his battles; and he is, though very distinguished in some ways, rather a stranger in London; and people, you told me, envy him, and try in a cowardly way to injure him; and what more easy than to hint discreditable things of people? and you did not believe a word of those reports when last you spoke of him; and considering that he had no people to stand by him in London, or to take his part, and that he may never even hear the things that are said by low people about him, don't you think it would be cowardly of us, and positively base to treat him so?"

"Upon my word, Miss Alice, that is very good oratory indeed! I don't think I ever heard you so eloquent before, at least upon the wrongs of one of my s.e.x."

"Now, d.i.c.k, that sneer won't do. There may possibly be reasons why it would have been wiser never to have made Mr. Longcluse's acquaintance; I can't say. Those reasons, however, you treated very lightly indeed a little time ago--you know you did--and now, upon no better, you say you are going to cut him. _I_ can't bring myself to do any such thing. He is always looking in at Lady May's, and I can't help meeting him unless I am to cut her also. Now don't you see how odious I should appear, and how impossible it is?"

"I won't argue it now, dear Alice; there is quite time enough. I shall come an hour before dinner, to-morrow, and we can have a quiet talk; and I am quite sure I shall convince you. Mind, I don't say we should insult him," he laughed. "I only say this, and I'll maintain it--and I'll show you why--that he is not a desirable acquaintance. We have taken him up very foolishly, and we _must_ drop him. And now, darling, good-bye."

He kissed her--she kissed him. She looked grave for a moment after, after he had run down the stairs. He has quarrelled with Mr. Longcluse about something, she thought, as she stood at the window with the tip of her finger to her lip, looking at her brother as he mounted the showy horse which had cantered with him up and down Rotten Row for two hours or more, before he had ridden out to Mortlake. She saw him now ride away.

It was near eight o'clock, and all this time Mr. Longcluse had been in confidence with Sir Reginald about his miserable mortgage. Mr. Longcluse was cautious; but there floated in his mind certain possible contingencies, under which he might perhaps make the financial adjustment, which Sir Reginald desired, very easy indeed to the worthy baronet.

It was the tempting hour of evening when the birds begin to sing, and the level beams from the west glorify all objects. Alice put on her hat and ran out to the old gardens of Mortlake. They are enclosed in a grey wall, and lie one above the other in three terraces, with tall standard fruit trees, so old that their fruit was now dwarfed in size to half its earlier bearings, standing high with a dark and sylvan luxuriance, and at this moment, sheltering among their sunlit leaves, nestle and flutter the small birds whose whistlings cheer and sadden the evening air. Every tree and bush that bore fruit, in this old garden, had grown quite beyond the common stature of its kind, and a good gardener would have cut them all down fifty years ago. But there was a kind of sylvan and stately beauty in those wonderful lofty pear-trees, with their dense dark foliage, and in the standard cherries so tall and prim, and something homely and comfortable in the great straggling apples and plums, dappled with grey lichens and tufted with moss. There were flowers as well as fruits, of all sorts, in this garden. All its arrangements were out of date. There was an air, not actually of neglect--for it was weeded, and the walks were trim and gravelled--but of carelessness and rusticity, not unpleasant, in the place. Trees were allowed to straggle and spread, and rise aloft in the air, just as they pleased. Tall roses climbed the walls about the door, and cl.u.s.tered in nodding ma.s.ses overhead; and no end of pretty annuals and other flowers, quite out of fas.h.i.+on, crowded the dishevelled currant bushes, and the forest of raspberries. Here and there were very tall myrtles, and the quince, and obsolete medlars, were discoverable among the other fruit-trees. The summits of the walls were in some places crowned, to the scandal of all decent gardening, with ivy, and a carved shaft in the centre of each garden supported a sun-dial as old as the Hall itself.

There are fancies, as well as likings and lovings. Where there is a real wors.h.i.+p, however cautiously masked--and Mr. Longcluse was by no means so--it is never a mystery to a clever girl. And such adoration, although it be not at all reciprocated, is sometimes hard to part with. There is something of the nature of compa.s.sion, with a little grat.i.tude, perhaps, mingling in the pang which a gentle lady feels at having to discharge for ever an honest love and a true servant, and send him away to solitary suffering for her sake. Some little pang of reproach of this sensitive kind had, perhaps, armed her against her brother's sudden sentence of exclusion p.r.o.nounced against Mr. Longcluse.

The evening sunlight travelled over the ivy on the discoloured wall, and glittered on the leaves of the tall fruit-trees, in whose thick foliage the birds were still singing their vespers. Walking down the broad walk towards the garden-door, she felt the saddening influence of the hour returning; and as she reached the door, overcl.u.s.tered with roses, it opened, and Mr. Longcluse stood in the shadow before her.

Miss Arden, thus surprised in the midst of thoughts which at that moment happened to be employed about him, showed for a second, as she suddenly stopped, something in her beautiful face almost amounting to embarra.s.sment.

"I was called away so suddenly to see Sir Reginald, that I went without saying good-bye; so I ran up to the drawing-room, and the servant told me I should probably find you here; and, really without reflecting--I act, I'm afraid, so much from impulse that I might appear very impertinent--I ventured to follow. What a beautiful evening! How charming the light! You, who are such an artist, and understand the poetry of colour so, must admire this cloister-like garden, so beautifully illuminated."

Was Mr. Longcluse also a very little embarra.s.sed as he descanted thus on light and colour?

"It is a very old garden and does very little credit, I'm afraid, to our care; but I greatly prefer it to our formal gardens and all their finery, in Yorks.h.i.+re."