THE TRIUMVIRATE.
THAT night Lord Verney waited to hear the debate in the
Commons--waited for the division,--and brought Cleve home with him in
his brougham.
He explained to Cleve on the way how much better the debate might have
been. He sometimes half regretted his seat in the Commons; there were
so many things unsaid that ought to have been said, and so many things
said that had better have been omitted. And at last he remarked--
"Your uncle Arthur, my unfortunate brother, had a great natural talent
for speaking. It's a talent of the Verney's--about it. We all have it;
and _you_ have got it also; it is a gift of very decided importance in
debate; it can hardly be over-estimated in that respect. Poor Arthur
might have done very well, but he didn't, and he's gone--about it; and
I'm very glad, for your own sake, you are cultivating it; and it
would be a very great misfortune, I've been thinking, if our family
were not to marry, and secure a transmission of those hereditary
talents and--and things--and--what's your opinion of Miss Caroline
Oldys? I mean, quite frankly, what sort of wife you think she would
make."
"Why, to begin with, she's been out a long time; but I fancy she's
gentle--and foolish; and I believe her mother bullies her."
"I don't know what you call bullying, my good sir; but she appears to
me to be a very affectionate mother; and as to her being
foolish--about it--I can't perceive it; on the contrary, I've
conversed with her a good deal--and things--and I've found her very
superior indeed to any young woman I can recollect having talked to.
She takes an interest in things which don't interest or--or--interest
other young persons; and she likes to be instructed about
affairs--and, my dear Cleve, I think where a young person of
merit--either rightly or wrongly interpreting what she conceives to be
your attentions--becomes decidedly _epris_ of you, she ought to
be--a--_considered_--her feelings, and things; and I thought I might
as well mention my views, and go--about it--straight to the point; and
I think you will perceive that it is reasonable, and that's the
position--about it; and you know, Cleve, in these circumstances you
may reckon upon me to do anything in reason that may still lie in my
power--about it."
"You have always been too kind to me."
"You shall find me so still. Lady Wimbledon takes an interest in you,
and Miss Caroline Oldys will, I undertake to say, more and more
decidedly as she comes to know you better."
And so saying, Lord Verney leaned back in the brougham as if taking a
doze, and after about five minutes of closed eyes and silence he
suddenly wakened up and said--
"It is, in fact, it strikes me, high time, Cleve, you should
marry--about it--and you must have money, too; you want money, and you
shall have it."
"I'm afraid money is not one of _Caroline's_ strong points."
"You need not trouble yourself upon that point, sir; if _I_'m
satisfied I fancy _you_ may. I've quite enough for both, I presume;
and--and so, we'll let that matter rest."
And the noble lord let himself rest also, leaning stiffly back with
closed eyes, and nodding and swaying silently with the motion of the
carriage.
I believe he was only ruminating after his manner in these periods of
apparent repose. He opened his eyes again, and remarked--
"I have talked over this affair carefully with Mr. Larkin--a most
judicious and worthy person--about it--and you can talk to him, and so
on, when he comes to town, and I should rather wish you to do so."
Lord Verney relapsed into silence and the semblance, at least, of
slumber.
"So Larkin's at the bottom of it; I knew he was," thought Cleve, with
a pang of hatred which augured ill for the future prospects of that
good man. "He has made this alliance for the Oldys and Wimbledon
faction, and I'm Mr. _Larkin's parti_, and am to settle the management
of everything upon him; and what a judicious diplomatist he is--and
how he has put his foot in it. A blundering hypocritical coxcomb--D--n
him."
Then his thoughts wandered away to Larkin, and to his instrument, Mr.
Dingwell, "who looks as if he came from the galleys. We have heard
nothing of him for a year or more. Among the Greek and Malay
scoundrels again, I suppose; the Turks are too good for him."
But Mr. Dingwell had not taken his departure, and was not thinking of
any such step _yet_, at least. He had business still on his hands, and
a mission unaccomplished.
Still in the same queer lodgings, and more jealously shut up during
the daytime than ever, Mr. Dingwell lived his odd life, professing to
hate England--certainly in danger there--he yet lingered on for a set
purpose, over which he brooded and laughed in his hermitage.
To so chatty a person as Mr. Dingwell solitude for a whole day was
irksome. Sarah Rumble was his occasional resource, and when she
brought him his cup of black coffee he would make her sit down by the
wall, like a servant at prayers, and get from her all the news of the
dingy little neighbourhood, with a running commentary of his own
flighty and savage irony, and he would sometimes entertain her,
between the whiffs of his long pipe, with talk of his own, which he
was at no pains to adapt to her comprehension, and delivered rather
for his own sole entertainment.
"The world, the flesh, and the devil, ma'am. The two first we know
pretty well--hey? the other we take for granted. I suppose there _is_
somebody of the sort. We are all pigs, ma'am--unclean animals--and
this is a sty we live in--slime and abomination. Strong delusion is,
unseen, circling in the air. Our ideas of beauty, delights of sense,
vanities of intellect--all a most comical and frightful cheat--egad!
What fun we must be, ma'am, to the spirits who _have_ sight and
intellect! I think, ma'am, we're meant for their pantomime--don't you?
Our airs, and graces, and dignities, and compliments, and beauties,
and dandies--our metal coronets, and lawn sleeves, and whalebone
wigs--fun, ma'am, lots of fun! And here we are, a wonderful work of
God. Eh? Come, ma'am--a word in your ear--all _putrefaction_--pah!
nothing clean but fire, and that makes us roar and vanish--a very odd
position we're placed in; hey, ma'am?"
Mr. Dingwell had at first led Sarah Rumble a frightful life, for she
kept the door where the children were peremptorily locked, at which he
took umbrage, and put her on fatigue duty, more than trebling her work
by his caprices, and requiting her with his ironies and sneers,
finding fault with everything, pretending to miss money out of his
desk, and every day threatening to invoke Messrs. Levi and Goldshed,
and invite an incursion of the police, and showing in his face, his
tones--his jeers pointed and envenomed by revenge--that his hatred was
active and fiendish.
But Sarah Rumble was resolute. He was not a desirable companion for
childhood of either sex, and the battle went on for a considerable
time; and poor Sarah in her misery besought Messrs. Levi and Goldshed,
with many tears and prayers, that he might depart from her; and Levi
looked at Goldshed, and Goldshed at Levi, quite gravely, and Levi
winked, and Goldshed nodded, and said, "A bad boy;" and they spoke
comfortably, and told her they would support her, but Mr. Dingwell
must remain her inmate, but they'd take care he should do her no harm.
Mr. Dingwell had a latch-key, which he at first used sparingly and
timidly; with time, however, his courage grew, and he was out more or
less every night. She used to hear him go out after the little
household was in bed, and sometimes she heard him lock the hall-door,
and his step on the stairs when the sky was already gray with the
dawn.
And gradually finding company such as he affected out of doors, I
suppose, he did not care so much for the seclusion of his
fellow-lodgers, and ceased to resent it almost, and made it up with
Sarah Rumble.
And one night, having to go up between one and two for a match-box to
the lobby, she encountered Mr. Dingwell coming down. She was dumb with
terror, for she did not know him, and took him for a burglar, he being
somehow totally changed--she was too confused to recollect exactly,
only that he had red hair and whiskers, and looked stouter.
She did not know him in the least till he laughed. She was near
fainting, and leaned with her shoulder to the corner of the wall; and
he said--
"I've to put on these; you keep my secret, mind; you may lose me my
life, else."
And he took her by the chin, and gave her a kiss, and then a slap on
the cheek that seemed to her harder than play, for her ear tingled
with it for an hour after, and she uttered a little cry of fright, and
he laughed, and glided out of the hall-door, and listened for the
tread of a policeman, and peeped slily up and down the court; and
then, with his cotton umbrella in his hand, walked quietly down the
passage and disappeared.
Sarah Rumble feared him all the more for this little rencontre and the
shock she had received, for there was a suggestion of something
felonious in his disguise. She was, however, a saturnine and silent
woman, with few acquaintances, and no fancy for collecting or
communicating news. There was a spice of danger, too, in talking of
this matter; so she took counsel of the son of Sirach, who says, "If
thou hast heard a word, let it die with thee, and, behold, it will not
burst thee."
Sarah Rumble kept his secret, and henceforward, at such hours kept
close, when in the deep silence of the night she heard the faint creak
of his stealthy shoe upon the stair, and avoided him as she would a
meeting with a ghost.
Whatever were his amusements, Messrs. Goldshed and Levi grumbled
savagely at the cost of them. They grumbled because grumbling was a
principle of theirs in carrying on their business.
"No matter how it turns out, keep always grumbling to the man who led
you into the venture, especially if he has a claim to a share of the
profits at the close."
So whenever Mr. Larkin saw Messrs. Goldshed and Levi, he heard
mourning and imprecation. The Hebrews shook their heads at the
Christian, and chaunted a Jeremiad, in duet, together, and each
appealed to the other for the confirmation of the dolorous and bitter
truths he uttered. And the iron safe opened its jaws and disgorged the
private ledger of the firm, which ponderous and greasy tome was laid
on the desk with a pound, and opened at this transaction--the matter
of Dingwell, Verney, &c.; and Mr. Levi would run his black nail along
the awful items of expenditure that filled column after column.
"Look at that--look here--look, will you?--look, I say: you never
sawed an account like that--never--all this here--look--down--and
down--and down--and down--"
"Enough to frighten the Bank of England!" boomed Mr. Goldshed.
"Look down thish column," resumed Levi, "and thish, and thish, and
thish--there's nine o' them--and not one stiver on th' other side.
Look, look, look, look, _look_! Daam, it'sh all a quaag, and a
quickshand--nothing but shink and shwallow, and give ush more"--and as
he spoke Levi was knocking the knuckles of his long lean fingers
fiercely upon the empty columns, and eyeing Larkin with a rueful
ferocity, as if he had plundered and half-murdered him and his
partner, who sat there innocent as the babes in the wood.
Mr. Larkin knew quite well, however, that so far from regretting their
investment, they would not have sold their ventures under a very high
figure indeed.
"And that beast Dingwell, talking as if he had us all in quod, by ----,
and always whimperin', and whinin', and swearin' for more--why you'd
say, to listen to his rot, 'twas _him_ had _us_ under his knuckle--you
would--the lunatic!"
"And may I ask what he wants just at present?" inquired Mr. Larkin.
"What he always wants, and won't be easy never till he gets it--a walk
up the mill, sir, and his head cropped, and six months' solitary, and
a touch of corporal now and again. I never saw'd a cove as wanted a
teazin' more; that's what he wants. What he's looking for, of course,
is different, only he shan't get it, nohow. And I think, looking at
that book there, as I showed you this account in--considering what me
and the gov'nor here has done--'twould only be fair you should come
down with summut, if you goes in for the lottery, with other gentlemen
as pays their pool like bricks, and never does modest, by no chance."
"He has pushed that game a little too far," said Mr. Larkin; "I have
considered his feelings a great deal too much."
"Yesh, but _we_ have feelinsh. The _Gov'nor_ has feelinsh; I have
_feelinsh_. Think what state our feelinsh is in, lookin' at that there
account," said Mr. Levi, with much pathos.
Mr. Larkin glanced toward the door, and then toward the window.
"We are quite _alone_?" said he, mildly.
"Yesh, without you have the devil in your pocket, as old Dingwell
saysh," answered Levi, sulkily.
"For there are subjects of a painful nature, as you know, gentlemen,
connected with this particular case," continued Mr. Larkin.
"Awful painful; but we'll sta-an' it," said Goldshed, with unctuous
humour; "we'll sta-an' it, but wishes it over quick;" and he winked
at Levi.
"Yesh, he wishes it over quick," echoed Levi; "the gov'nor and me, we
wishes it over quick."
"And so do I, _most_ assuredly; but we must have a little patience. If
deception does lurk here--and you know I warned you I suspected it--we
must not prematurely trouble Lord Verney."
"He might throw up the sponge, he might, I _know_," said Levi, with a
nod.
"I don't know what course Lord Verney might think it right in such a
case to adopt; I only know that until I am in a position to reduce
suspicion to certainty, it would hardly consist with right feeling
to torture his mind upon the subject. In the meantime he
is--a--growing"----
"Growing warm in his berth," said Goldshed.
"Establishing himself, I should say, in his position. He has been
incurring, I need hardly tell you, enormous expense in restoring (I
might say _re-building_) the princely mansions of Ware, and of Verney
House. He applied much ready money to that object, and has charged the
estates with nearly sixty thousand pounds besides." Mr. Larkin lowered
his tones reverentially at the mention of so considerable a sum.
"I know Sirachs, did nigh thirty thoushand o' that," said Mr.
Goldshed.
"And that tends to--to--as I may say, _steady_ him in his position;
and I may mention, in confidence, gentlemen, that there are other
measures on the _tapis_" (he pronounced taypis) "which will further
and still more decidedly fix him in his position. It would pain us all
deeply, gentlemen, that a premature disclosure of my uneasiness should
inspire his lordship with a panic in which he might deal ruinously
with his own interests, and, in fact, as you say, Mr. Levi, throw up
the--the"----
"Sponge," said Levi, reflectively.
"But I may add," said Mr. Larkin, "that I am impatiently watching the
moment when it may become my duty to open my suspicions fully to Lord
Verney; and that I have reason to know that that moment cannot now be
distant."
"Here's Tomlinshon comin' up, gov'nor," said Mr. Levi, jumping off the
table on which he had been sitting, and sweeping the great ledger into
his arms, he pitched it into its berth in the safe, and locked it into
that awful prison-house.
"I said he would," said Goldshed, with a lazy smile, as he unlocked a
door in the lumbering office table at which he sat. "Don't bring out
them overdue renewals; we'll not want them till next week."
Mr. Tomlinson, a tall, thin man, in faded drab trousers, with a cotton
umbrella swinging in his hand, and a long careworn face, came striding
up the court.
"You won't do _that_ for him?" asked Levi.
"No, not to-day," murmured Mr. Goldshed, with a wink. And Mr.
Tomlinson's timid knock and feeble ring at the door were heard.
And Mr. Larkin put on his well-brushed hat, and pulled on his big
lavender gloves, and stood up at his full length, in his black glossy
coat, and waistcoat and trowsers of the accustomed hue, and presents
the usual lavender-tinted effect, and a bland simper rests on his lank
cheeks, and his small pink eyes look their adieux upon Messrs.
Goldshed and Levi, on whom his airs and graces are quite lost; and
with his slim silk umbrella between his great finger and thumb, he
passes loftily by the cotton umbrella of Mr. Tomlinson, and fancies,
with a pardonable egotism, that that poor gentleman, whose head is
full of his bill-book and renewals, and possible executions, and
preparing to deceive a villanous omniscience, and to move the
compassion of Pandemonium--is thinking of _him_, and mistaking him,
possibly, for a peer, or for some other type of British aristocracy.
The sight of that unfortunate fellow, Tomlinson, with a wife, and a
seedy hat, and children, and a cotton umbrella, whose little business
was possibly about to be knocked about his ears, moved a lordly pity
in Mr. Larkin's breast, and suggested contrasts, also, of many kinds,
that were calculated to elate his good humour; and as he stepped into
the cab, and the driver waited to know "where," he thought he might as
well look in upon the recluse of Rosemary Court, and give him, of
course with the exquisite tact that was peculiar to him, a hint or two
in favour of reason and moderation; for really it _was quite_ true
what Mr. Levi had said about the preposterous presumption of a person
in Mr. Dingwell's position affecting the airs of a dictator.
So being in the mood to deliver a lecture, to the residence of that
uncomfortable old gentleman he drove, and walked up the flagged
passage to the flagged court-yard, and knocked at the door, and looked
up at the square ceiling of sickly sky, and strode up the narrow
stairs after Mrs. Rumble.
"How d'ye do, sir? Your _soul_, particularly, quite well, I trust.
Your spiritual concerns flourishing to-day?" was the greeting of Mr.
Dingwell's mocking voice.
"Thanks, Mr. Dingwell; I'm very well," answered Mr. Larkin, with a bow
which was meant to sober Mr. Dingwell's mad humour.
Sarah Rumble, as we know, had a defined fear of Mr. Dingwell, but also
a vague terror; for there was a great deal about him ill-omened and
mysterious. There was a curiosity, too, active within her, intense and
rather ghastly, about all that concerned him. She did not care,
therefore, to get up and go away from the small hole in the carpet
which she was darning on the lobby, and through the door she heard
faintly some talk she didn't understand, and Mr. Dingwell's voice, at
a high pitch, said--
"D---- you, sir, do you think I'm a fool? Don't you think I've _your
letter_, and a copy of my own? If we draw swords, egad, sir, mine's
the longer and sharper, as you'll feel. Ha, ha, ha!"
"Oh, lawk!" gasped Sarah Rumble, standing up, and expecting the clash
of rapiers.
"Your face, sir, is as white and yellow--you'll excuse me--as an old
turban. I beg your pardon; but I want you to understand that I see
you're frightened, and that I won't be bullied _by_ you."
"I don't suppose, sir, you meditate totally ruining yourself," said
Mr. Larkin, with dignity.
"I tell you, sir, if anything goes wrong with me, I'll make a clean
breast of it--_everything_--ha, ha, ha!--upon my honour--and we two
shall grill together."
Larkin had no idea he was going in for so hazardous and huge a game
when he sat down to play. His vision was circumscribed, his prescience
small. He looked at the beast he had imported, and wished him in a
deep grave in Scutari, with a turbaned-stone over his head, the scheme
quashed, and the stakes drawn.
But wishing would not do. The spirit was evoked--in nothing more
manageable than at first; on the contrary, rather more insane. Nerve
was needed, subtlety, patience, and he must manage him.
"Why the devil did you bring me here, sir, if you were not prepared to
treat me properly? You know my circumstances, and you want to practise
on my misfortunes, you vile rogue, to mix me up in your fraudulent
machinations."
"Pray, sir, not so loud. Do--_do_ command yourself," remonstrated
Larkin, almost affectionately.
"Do you think I'm come all this way, at the risk of my life, to be
_your_ slave, you shabby, canting attorney? I'd better be where I was,
or in kingdom come. By Allah! sir, you _have_ me, and I'm your
_master_, and you shan't buy my soul for a piastre."
There came a loud knock at the hall-door, and if it had been a shot
and killed them both, the debaters in the drawing-room could not have
been more instantaneously breathless.
Down glided Sarah Rumble, who had been expecting this visit, to pay
the taxman.
And she had hardly taken his receipt, when Mr. Larkin, very pink,
endeavouring to smile in his discomfiture, and observing with a balmy
condescension, "A sweet day, Mrs. Rumble," appeared in the hall, shook
his ears a little, and adjusted his hat, and went forth, and Rosemary
Court saw him no more for some time.