Checkmate Part 45

"No, no," drawled Mr. Levi, with a slow shake of his head; "I declare to you sholemnly, Mr. Harden, I couldn't. I'm employed by a third party, and though I may make a tolerable near guess who's firsht fiddle in the bishness, I can't shay nothin'."

"Surely you can say this--it is hardly a question, I am so sure of it--is the friend who lends this money a gentleman?"

"I think the pershon as makesh the advanshe is a bit of a shwell. There, now, that'sh enough."

"But I said a _gentleman_," persisted Arden.

"You mean to ask, hashn't a lady got nothing to do with it?"

"Well, suppose I do?"

Mr. Levi shook his head slowly, and all his white teeth showed dimly, as he answered with an unctuous significance that tempted Arden strongly to pitch him into the river.

"We puts the ladiesh first; ladiesh and shentlemen, that's the way it goes at the theaytre; if a good-looking chap's a bit in a fix, there'sh no one like a lady to pull him through."

"I really want to know," said Richard Arden, with difficulty restraining his fury. "I have some relations who are likely enough to give me a lift of this kind; some _are_ ladies, and some gentlemen, and I have a right to know to whom I owe this money."

"To our firm; who elshe? We have took your paper, and you have our cheques on Childs'."

"_Your_ firm lend money at five per cent.!" said Arden with contempt.

"You forget, Mr. Levi, you mentioned in your note, distinctly, that you act for another person. Who _is_ that princ.i.p.al for whom you act?"

"I don't know."

"Come, Mr. Levi! you are no simpleton; you may as well tell me--no one shall be a bit the wiser--for I _will_ know."

"Azh I'm a s.h.i.+nner--as I hope to be shaved----" began Mr. Levi.

"It won't do--you may just as well tell me--out with it!"

"Well, here now; I _don't_ know, but if I did, upon my shoul, I wouldn't tell you."

"It is pleasant to meet with so much sensitive honour, Mr. Levi," said Richard Arden very scornfully. "I have nothing particular to say, only that your firm were mistaken, a little time ago, when they thought that I was without resources; I've friends, you now perceive, who only need to learn that I want money, to volunteer a.s.sistance. Have you anything more to say?"

Richard Arden saw the little Jew's fine fangs again displayed in the faint light, as he thus spoke; but it was only prudent to keep his temper with this lucky intervenient.

"I have nothing to shay, Mr. Harden, only there'sh more where that came from, and I may tell you sho, for that'sh no shecret. But don't you go too fasht, young gentleman--not that you won't get it--but don't you go too fasht."

"If I should ever ask your advice, it will be upon other things. I'm giving the lender as good security as I have given to any one else. I don't see any great wonder in the matter. Good-night," he said haughtily, not taking the trouble to look over his shoulder as he walked away.

"Good-night," responded Mr. Levi, taking one of Dignum's cigars from his waistcoat-pocket, and preparing to light it with a lazy grin, as he watched the retreating figure lessening in the perspective of the street, "and take care of yourshelf for my shake, _do_, and don't you be lettin' all them fine women be throwin' their fortunes like that into your 'at, and bringin' themshelves to the workus, for love of your pretty fashe--poor, dear, love-sick little fools! There you go, right off to Mallet and Turner's, I dareshay, and good luck attend you, for a reglar lady-killin', 'ansome, sweet-spoken, broken-down jacka.s.s!"

At this period of his valediction the vesuvian was applied to his cigar, and Richard Arden, turning the far corner of the street, escaped the remainder of his irony, as the Jew, with his hands in his pockets, sauntered up its quiet pavement, in the direction in which Richard Arden had just disappeared. It seemed to that young gentleman that his supplies, no less than thirteen hundred pounds, would all but command the luck of which, as his spirits rose, he began to feel confident.

"Fellows," he thought, "who have gone in with less than fifty, have come out, to my knowledge, with thousands; and if less than fifty could do that, what might not be expected from thirteen hundred?"

He picked up a cab. Never did lover fly more impatiently to the feet of his mistress than Richard Arden did, that night, to the shrine of the G.o.ddess whom he wors.h.i.+pped.

The muttered scoffs, the dark fiery gaze, the glimmering teeth of this mocking, malicious little Jew, represented an influence that followed Richard Arden that night.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

SUDDEN NEWS.

What is luck? Is there such an influence? What type of mind rejects altogether, and consistently, this law or power? Call it by what name you will, fate or fortune, did not Napoleon, the man of death and of action, and did not Swedenborg, the man of quietude and visions, acknowledge it? Where is the successful gamester who does not "back his luck," when once it has declared itself, and bow before the storms of fortune when they in turn have set in? I take Napoleon and Swedenborg--the man of this visible world, and the man of the invisible world--as the representatives of extreme types of mind. People who have looked into Swedenborg's works will remember curious pa.s.sages on the subject, and find more dogmatical, and less metaphysical admissions in Napoleon's conversations everywhere.

In corroboration of this theory, that luck is an element, with its floods and ebbs, against which it is fatuity to contend, was the result of Richard Arden's play.

Before half-past two, he had lost every guinea of his treasure. He had been drinking champagne. He was flushed, dismal, profoundly angry. Hot and headachy, he was ready to choke with gall. There was a big, red-headed, vulgar fellow beside him, with a broad-brimmed white hat, who was stuffing his pockets and piling the table before him, as though he had found the secret of an "open sesame," and was helping himself from the sacks of the Forty Thieves.

When Richard had lost his last pound, he would have liked to smash the gas-lamps and windows, and the white hat and the red head in it, and roar the blasphemy that rose to his lips. But men can't afford to make themselves ridiculous, and as he turned about to make his unnoticed exit, he saw the little Jew, munching a sandwich, with a gla.s.s of champagne beside him.

"I say," said Richard Arden, walking up to the little man, whose big mouth was full of sandwich, and whose fierce black eyes encountered his instantaneously, "you don't happen to have a little more, on the same terms, about you?"

Mr. Levi waited to bolt his sandwich, and then swallow down his champagne.

"Shave me!" exclaimed he, when this was done. "The thoushand gone! every rag! and" (glancing at his watch) "only two twenty-five! Won't it be rayther young, though, backin' such a run o' bad luck, and throwin' good money after bad, Mr. Harden?"

"That's my affair, I fancy; what I want to know is whether you have got a few hundreds more, on the same terms--I mean, from the same lender.

Hang it, say yes or no--can't you?"

"Well, Mr. Harden, there's five hundred more--but 'twasn't expected you'd a' drew it so soon. How much do you say, Mr. Harden?"

"I'll take it all," said Richard Arden. "I wish I could have it without these blackguards seeing."

"They don't care, blesh ye! if you got it from the old boy himself. That _is_ a rum un!" There were pen and ink on a small table beside the wall, at which Mr. Levi began rapidly to fill in the blanks of a bill of exchange. "Why, there's not one o' them, almost, but takes a hundred now and then from me, when they runs out a bit too fast. You'd better shay one month."

"Say two, like the other, and don't keep me waiting."

"You'd better shay one--your friend will think you're going a bit too quick to the devil. Remember, as your proverb shays, 'taint the thing to kill the gooshe that laysh the golden eggs--shay one month."

Levi's large black eye was fixed on him, and he added, "If you want it pushed on a bit when it comes due, there won't be no great trouble about it, I calculate."

Richard Arden looked at the large fierce eyes that were silently fixed on him: one of those eyes winked solemnly and significantly.

"Well, what way you like, only be quick," said Richard Arden.

His new sheaf of cheques were quickly turned into counters; and, after various fluctuations, these counters followed the rest, and in the grey morning he left that haunt jaded and savage, with just fifteen pounds in his pocket, the wreck of the large sum which he had borrowed to restore his fortunes.

It needs some little time to enable a man, who has sustained such a shock as Richard Arden had, to collect his thoughts and define the magnitude of his calamity. He let himself in by a latch-key: the grey light was streaming through the shutters, and turning the chintz pattern of his window-curtains here and there, in streaks, into transparencies.

He went into his room and swallowed nearly a tumbler of brandy, then threw off his clothes, drank some more, and fell into a flushed stupor, rather than a sleep, and lay for hours as still as any dead man on the field of battle.

Some four hours of this lethargy, and he became conscious, at intervals, of a sound of footsteps in his room. The shutters were still closed. He thought he heard a voice say, "Master Richard!" but he was too drowsy, still, to rouse himself.

At length a hand was laid upon him, and a voice that was familiar to his ear repeated twice over, more urgently, "Master Richard! Master Richard!" He was now awake: very dimly, by his bedside, he saw a figure standing. Again he heard the same words, and wondered, for a few seconds, where he was.