AMONG THE TREES.
When the old woman had raised the window, "Thanks," said Mr. Longcluse,
almost in a whisper. "There are people, Lady May Penrose told me this
morning, threatening to interrupt the funeral to-night. Of course you
know--you must know."
"I have heard o' some such matter, but 'tis nout to no one here. We
don't care a snap for them, and if they try any sich lids, by my sang,
we'll fit them. And I think, Sir, if ye've any thing o' consequence to
tell to the family, ye'll not mind my saying 'twould be better ye sud
go, like ither folk, to the hall-door, and leave your message there."
"Your reproof would be better deserved, Mrs. Tansey," he answers
good-humouredly, "if there had not been a difficulty. Mr. Richard Arden
is not on pleasant terms with me, and my business will not afford to
wait. I understand that Miss Arden has suffered much anxiety. It is
entirely on her account that I have interested myself so much in it; and
I don't see, Mrs. Tansey, why you and I should not be better friends,"
he adds, extending his long slender hand gently towards her.
She does not take it, but makes a stiff little curtsey instead, and
draws back about six inches.
Perhaps Mr. Longcluse had meditated making her a present, but her severe
looks daunted him, and he thought that he might as well be a little
better acquainted before he made that venture. He went on--
"You have spoken very wisely, Mrs. Tansey; I am sure if these people do
as they threaten, it will be contrary to law, and so, as you say, you
may snap your fingers at them at last. But in the meantime they may
enter the house and seize the coffin, or possibly cause some disgraceful
interruption on the way. Lady May tells me that Miss Alice has suffered
a great deal in consequence. Will you tell her to set her mind at ease?
Pray assure her that I have seen the people, that I have threatened them
into submission, that I am confident no such attempt will be made, and
that should the slightest annoyance be attempted, Crozier has only to
present the notice enclosed in this to the person offering it, and it
will instantly be discontinued. I have done all this _entirely_ on her
account, and pray lose no time in quieting her alarms. I am sure, Mrs.
Tansey, you and I shall be better friends some day."
Mrs. Tansey curtseyed again.
"Pray take this note."
She took it.
"Give it to Crozier; and pray tell Miss Alice Arden, immediately, that
she need have no fears. Good-night."
And pale Mr. Longcluse, with his smile and his dismally dark gaze, and
the strange suggestion of something undefined in look or tone, or air,
that gradually overcame her more and more till she almost felt faint, as
he smiled and murmured at the open window, in the moonlight, was gone.
Then she stood with the note in her thin fingers, without moving, and
called to Crozier with a shrill and earnest summons as one who has just
had a frightful dream will call up a sleeper in the same room.
Mr. Longcluse walks boldly and listlessly through this forbidden ground.
He does not care who may meet him. Near the house, indeed, he would not
like an encounter with Sir Richard Arden, because he knows that his
being involved in a quarrel at such a moment, so near, especially with
her brother, would not subserve his interests with Alice Arden.
For hours he strode or loitered alone through the solitary woodlands.
The moonlight was beautiful; the old trees stand mournful and black
against the luminous sky; there is for him a fascination in the
solitude, as his noiseless steps lead him alternately into the black
shadow cast on the sward by the towering foliage, and into the clear
moonlight, on dewy grass that shows grey in that cold brightness. He was
in the excitement of hope and suspense. Things had looked very black,
but a door had opened and light came out. Was it a dream?
He leans with folded arms against the trunk of one of the trees that
stand there, and from the slight elevation of the ground he can see the
avenue under the boughs of the trees that flank it, and the chimneys of
Mortlake Hall through the summits of the opening clumps. How melancholy
and still the whole scene looks under that light!
"When I succeed to all this, who will be mistress of it?" he says, with
his strange smile, looking toward the summits of the chimneys, that
indicate the site of the Hall. "No one knows who I am; who can tell my
history? What about that opera-girl? What about my money?--money is
alway exaggerated. How many humbugs! how many collapses! stealing into
society by evasions, on false pretences, in disguise! The man in the
mask, ha! ha! Really perhaps _two_ masks; not a bad fluke, that. The
villain! You would not take a thousand pounds and know me--that is
speaking boldly. A thousand pounds is still something in your book. You
would not take it. The time will come, perhaps, when you'd _give_ a
thousand--_ten_ thousand, if you had them--that I were your friend.
Slanderous villain! To think of his talking so of me! The man in the
mask trying to excite suspicion. My two masks are broken, and I all the
better. By--! you shall meet me yet without a mask. Alice! will you be
my idol? There is no neutrality with one like me in such a case. If I
don't worship, I must _break_ the image. What a speck we stand on
between the illimitable--the eternal past and the eternal future--always
looking for a present that shall be something tangible; always finding
it a mathematical point, _cujus nulla est pars_--the mere stand-point of
a retrospect and a conjecture. Ha! There are the wheels: there goes the
funeral!"
He holds his breath, and watches. How interesting is everything
connected with Alice! Slowly it passes along. Through one opening made
by the havoc of a storm in the line of trees that form the avenue, he
sees it plainly enough. A very scanty procession--the plumed hearse and
three carriages, and a few persons walking beside. It passes. The great
iron gate shrieks its long and dolorous note as it opened, and Longcluse
heard it clang after the last carriage had passed, and with this
farewell the old gate sent forth the dead master of Mortlake.
"Farewell to Mortlake," murmured Longcluse, as he heard these sounds,
with a shrug and his peculiar smile; "farewell, the lights, the
claret-jug, the whist, and all the rest. You 'fear neither justices nor
bailiffs,' as the song says, any longer. Very easy about your interest
and your premiums; very careless who arrests you in your leaden vesture;
and having paid, if nothing else, at least your beloved son's _post
obit_. Courage, Sir Reginald! your earthly troubles are over. Here am I,
erect as this tree, and as like to live my term out, with all that
money, and no will made, and yet as tired as ever you were, and very
willing, if the transaction were feasible, to die, and be bothered no
more, instead of you."
He sighs, and looks toward the house, and sighs again.
"Does she relent? Was it not she who told Lady May to ask this service
of me? If I could only be sure of that, I should stand here, this
moment, the proudest man in England. I think I know myself--a very
simple character; just two principles--love and malice; for the rest,
unscrupulous. Mere cruelty gives me no pleasure: well for some people it
don't. Revenge does make me happy: well for some people if it didn't.
Except for those I love or those I hate, I live for none. The rest live
for me. I owe them no more than I do this rotten stick. Let them rot and
fatten my land; let them burn and bake my bread."
With these words he kicked the fragments of a decayed branch that lay at
his foot, and glided over the short grass, like a ghost, toward the
gate.