Checkmate
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CHECKMATE
rather hot, but he’s a good-natured fellow, and he has commercial ideas about a man’s going into the insolvent court; and, by Jove, you know, I’m ruined, and I don’t think he’d like to see our name disgraced – eh, do you?”
“No, I’m quite sure,” said Van. “I thought so all along.”
“Peers and peeresses are very fine in their way, and people, whenever the peers do anything foolish, and throw out a bill, exclaim ‘Thank Heaven we have still a House of Lords!’ but you and I, Van, may thank Heaven for a better estate, the order of aunts and uncles. Do you remember the man you and I saw in the vaudeville, who exclaims every now and then, ‘Vive mon oncle! Vive ma tante!’?”
So, in better spirits, Arden prepared to visit his uncle.
“Let us get into a cab; people are staring at you,” said Richard Arden, when they had walked a little way towards his uncle’s house. “You look so utterly ruined, one would think you had swallowed poison, and were dying by inches, and expected to be in the other world before you reached your doctor’s door. Here’s a cab.”
They got in, and sitting side by side, said Vandeleur to him, after a minute‘s silence, –
“I’ve been thinking of a thing – why did not you take Mr. Longcluse into council? He gave you a lift before, don’t you remember? and he lost nothing by it, and made everything smooth. Why don’t you look him up?”
“I’ve been an awful fool, Van.” “How so?”
“I’ve had a sort of row with Longcluse, and there are reasons – I could not, at all events, have asked him. It would have been next to impossible, and now it is quite impossible.”
“Why should it be? He seemed to like you; and I venture to say he’d be very glad to shake hands.”
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“So he might, but I shouldn’t,” said Richard imperiously. “No, no, there’s nothing in that. It would take too long to tell; but I should rather go over the precipice than hold by that stay. I don’t know how long my uncle may keep me. Would you mind waiting for me at my lodgings? Thompson will give you cigars and brandy and water; and I’ll come back and tell you what my uncle intends.”
This appointment made, they parted, and he knocked at his uncle’s door. The sound seemed to echo threateningly at his heart, which sank with a sudden misgiving.
CHAPTER XL
AN INTERVIEW IN THE STUDY
“Is my uncle at home?”
“No, Sir; I expect him at five. It wants about five minutes; but he desired me to show you, Sir, into the study.”
He was now alone in that large square room. The books, each in its place, in a vellum uniform, with a military precision and nattiness – seldom disturbed, I fancy, for Uncle David was not much of a book-worm – chilled him with an aspect of inflexible formality; and the busts, in cold white marble, standing at intervals on their pedestals, seemed to have called up looks, like Mrs. Pentweezle, for the occasion. Demosthenes, with his wrenched neck and square brow, had evidently heard of his dealings with Lord Pindledykes, and made up his mind, when the proper time came, to denounce him with a tempest of appropriate eloquence. There was in Cicero’s face, he thought, something satirical and conceited which was new and odious; and under Plato’s external solemnity he detected a pleasurable and roguish anticipation of the coming scene.
His uncle was very punctual. A few minutes would see him in the room, and then two or three sentences would disclose the purpose he meditated. In the midst of the trepidation which had thus
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returned, he heard his uncle’s knock at the hall-door, and in another moment he entered the study.
“How d’ye do, Richard? You’re punctual. I wish our meeting was a pleasanter one. Sit down. You haven’t kept faith with me. It is scarcely a year since, with a large sum of money, such as at your age I should have thought a fortune, I rescued you from bad hands and a great danger. Now, Sir, do you remember a promise you then made me? and have you kept your word?”
“I confess, uncle, I know I can’t excuse myself; but I was tempted, and I am weak – I am a fool, worse than a fool – whatever you please to call me, and I’m sorry. Can I say more?” pleaded the young man.
“That is saying nothing. It simply means that you do the thing that pleases you, and break your word where your inclination prompts; and you are sorry because it has turned out unluckily. I have heard that you are again in danger. I am not going to help you.” His blue eyes looked cold and hard, and the oblique light showed severe lines at his brows and mouth. It was a face which, generally kindly, could yet look, on occasion, stern enough. “Now, observe, I’m not going to help you; I’m not even going to reason with you – you can do that for yourself, if you please – I will simply help you with light. Thus forewarned, you need not, of course, answer any one of the questions I am about to put, and to ask which, I have no other claim than that which rests upon having put you on your feet, and paid five thousand pounds for you, only a year ago.”
“But I entreat that you do put them. I’m ashamed of myself, dear Uncle David; I implore of you to ask me whatever you please: I’ll answer everything.”
“Well, I think I know everything; Lord Pindledykes makes no secret of it. He’s the man, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Sir.”
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“That’s the sallow, dissipated-looking fellow, with the eye that squints outward. I know his appearance very well; I knew his good- for-nothing father. No one likes to have transactions with that fellow – he’s shunned – and you chose him, of all people; and he has pigeoned you. I’ve heard all about it. Everybody knows by this time. And you have really lost fifteen thousand pounds to him?”
“I am afraid, uncle, it is very near that.”
“This, you know,” resumed Uncle David, “is not debt: it is ruin. You chose to mortgage your reversion to some Jews, for fifteen hundred a year, during your father’s lifetime. Three hundred would have been ample, with the hundred a year you had before – ample; but you chose to do it, and the estates, whenever you succeed to them, will come to you with a very heavy debt charged, for those Jews, upon them. I don’t suppose the estates are destined to continue long in our family; but this is a vexation which don’t touch you, nephew. I am, I confess, sorry. They were in our family, some of them, before the Conquest. No matter. What you have to consider is your present position. They will come to you, if ever, saddled with a heavy debt; and, in the meantime, you have fifteen hundred a year for your father’s life; and I don’t think it will sell for anything like the fifteen thousand pounds you have just lost. You are therefore insolvent; there is the story told. I see nothing for it but your becoming formally an insolvent. It is the bourgeoisie who shrink from that sort of thing; titled men, and men of pleasure and fashion, don’t seem to mind it. There are Lord Harry Newgate, and the Honourable Alfred Pentonville, and Sir Aymerick Pigeon, one of the oldest baronets in England, have been in the Gazette within the last twelve months. The money I paid, on the faith of your promise, is worse than wasted. I’ll pay no more into the pockets of rooks and scoundrels; I’ll divide no more of my money among blackguard jockeys and villanous peers, simply to defer for a few months the consequences of a fool’s incorrigible folly.”
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“But, you know, uncle, I was not quite so mad. The thing was a swindle; it can’t stand. The horse was not fairly treated.”
“I daresay: I suppose it was doctored. I don’t care; I only think that unless you meant to go in for drugging horses and bribing jockeys, you had no business among such people, and at that sort of game. All I want is that you clearly understand that in this matter – though I would gladly see you safely out of it – I’ll waste no more money in paying gambling debts.”
“This might have happened to anyone, Sir; it might indeed, uncle. Every second man you meet is more or less on the turf, and they never come to grief by it. No one, of course, can stand against a barefaced swindle, like this thing.”
“I don’t care a farthing about other people; I’ve seen how it tells upon you. I don’t affect to value your promises, Dick; I don’t think that they are worth a shilling. How many have you made me, and broken? To me it seems the vice is incurable, like drunkenness. Tattersall’s, or whatever is your place of business, is no better than the gin-palace; and when once a fellow is fairly on the turf, the sooner he is under it, the better for himself and all who like him. And you have lost money at play besides. I heard that quite accidentally; and I daresay that is a ruinous item in what I may call your schedule.”
“I know what people are saying; but it isn’t so immense a sum, by any means.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. I wish it was enormous; I wish it was a million. I wish your failure could ruin every blackguard in England: the more heavily you have hit them all round, the better I am pleased. They hit you and me, Dick, pretty hard last time; it is our turn now. It is not my fault now, Dick, if you don’t understand me perfectly. If at any future time I should do anything for you – by my will, mind – I shall take care so to tie it up that you can’t make away with a guinea. My advice is not worth much to you, but I venture to give
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it, and I think the best thing you can do is to submit to your misfortune, and file your schedule; and when you are your own master again, I shall see if I can manage some small thing for you. You will have to work for your bread, you know, and you can’t expect very much at first; but there are things – of course, I mean in commercial establishments, and railways, and that kind of thing – where I have an influence, of from a hundred and twenty to two hundred pounds a year, and for some of them you would answer pretty well, and you can tide over the time till you succeed to the title: and after a little while I may be able to get you raised a step; and when once you get accustomed to work, you can’t think how you will come to like it. So that, on the whole, the knock you have got may do you some good, and make you prize your position more when you come to it. Will you go up-stairs, and take a cup of tea with Miss Maubray?”
He used to call her Grace, when speaking to Richard. Perhaps, in the concussion of this earthquake, the fabric of a matrimonial scheme may have fallen to the ground.
Richard Arden was too dejected and too agitated to accept this invitation, I need hardly tell you. He took his leave, chapfallen.
CHAPTER XLI
VAN APPOINTS HIMSELF TO A DIPLOMATIC POST
Mr. Vandeleur had availed himself very freely of Richard Arden’s invitation, to amuse himself during his absence with his cheroots and manillas, as the clouded state of the atmosphere of his drawing-room testified to that luckless gentleman – if indeed he was in a condition to observe anything, on returning from his dreadful interview with his uncle.
Richard’s countenance was full of thunder and disaster. Vandeleur looked in his face, with his cigar in his fingers, and said in a faint and hollow tone –
“Well?”
To which inappropriate form of inquiry, Richard Arden deigned no reply; but in silence stalked to the box of cigars on the table, threw himself into a chair, and smoked violently for awhile.
Some minutes passed. Vandeleur’s eyes were fixed, through the smoke, on Richard’s, who had fixed his on the chimney-piece. Van respected his ruminations. With a delicate and noiseless attention, indeed, he ventured to slide gently to his side the water carafe, and the brandy, and a tumbler.
Still silence prevailed. After a time, Richard Arden poured brandy and water suddenly into his glass.
“Think of that fellow, that uncle of mine – pretty uncle! Kind relation – rolling in money! He sends for me simply to tell me that
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he won’t give me a guinea. He might have waited till he was asked. If he had nothing better to say, he need not have given me the trouble of going to his odious, bleak study, to hear all his vulgar advice and arithmetic, ending in – what do you think? He says that I’m to be had up in the bankrupt court, and when all that is over he’ll get me appointed a ticket-taker on a railway, or a clerk in a pawn-office, or something. By Heaven! when I think of it, I wonder how I kept my temper. I’m not quite driven to those curious expedients, that he seems to think so natural. I’ve some cards still left in my hand, and I’ll play them first, if it is the same to him; and, hang it! my luck can’t always run the same way. I’ll give it another chance before I give up, and to-morrow morning things may be very different with me.”
“It’s an awful pity you quarrelled with Longcluse!” exclaimed Vandeleur.
“That’s done, and can’t be undone,” said Richard Arden, resuming his cigar.
“I wonder why you quarrelled with him. Why, good heavens! that man is made of money, and he got you safe out of that fellow’s clutches – I forget his name – about that bet with Mr. Slanter, don’t you remember – and he was so very kind about it; and I’m sure he’d shake hands if you’d only ask him, and one way or another he’d pull you through.”
“I can’t ask him, and I won’t; he may ask me if he likes. I’m very sure there is nothing he would like better, for fifty reasons, than to be on good terms with me again, and I have no wish to quarrel any more than he has. But if there is to be a reconciliation, I can’t begin it. He must make the overtures, and that’s all.”
“He seemed such an awfully jolly fellow that time. And it is such a frightful state we are both in. I never came such a mucker before in my life. I know him pretty well. I met him at Lady May Penrose’s, and at the Playfairs’, and one night I walked home with
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him from the opera. It is an awful pity you are not on terms with him, and – by Jove! I must go and have something to eat; it is near eight o’clock.”
Away went Van, and out of the wreck of his fortune contrived a modest dinner at Verey’s; and pondering, after dinner, upon the awful plight of himself and his comrade, he came at last to the heroic resolution of braving the dangers of a visit to Mr. Longcluse, on behalf of his friend; and as it was now past nine, he hastily paid the waiter, took his hat, and set out upon his adventure. It was a mere chance, he knew, and a very unlikely one, his finding Mr. Longcluse at home at that hour. He knew that he was doing a very odd thing in calling at past nine o’clock; but the occasion was anomalous, and Mr. Longcluse would understand. He knocked at the door, and learned from the servant that his master was engaged with a gentleman in the study, on business. From this room he heard a voice, faintly discoursing in a deep metallic drawl.
“Who shall I say, Sir?” asked the servant.
If his mission had been less monotonous, and he less excited and sanguine as to his diplomatic success, he would have, as he said, “funked it altogether,” and gone away. He hesitated for a moment, and determined upon the form most likely to procure an interview.
“Say Mr. Vandeleur – a friend of Mr. Richard Arden’s; you’ll remember, please – a friend of Mr. Richard Arden’s.”
In a moment the man returned.
“Will you please to walk up-stairs?” and he showed him into the drawing-room.
In little more than a minute, Mr. Longcluse himself entered. His eyes were fixed on the visitor with a rather stern curiosity. Perhaps he had interpreted the term “friend” a little too technically. He made him a ceremonious bow, in French fashion, and placed a chair for him.
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