MR. LONGCLUSE SEES A FRIEND.
Sir Reginald Arden, then, is actually dead and buried, and is quite done
with the pomps and vanities, the business and the miseries of life--dead
as King Duncan, and cannot come out of his grave to trouble any one with
protest or interference; and his son, Sir Richard, is in possession of
the title, and seized of the acres, and uses them, without caring to
trouble himself with conjectures as to what his father would have liked
or abhorred.
A week has passed since the funeral. Lady May has spent two days at
Mortlake, and then gone down to Brighton. Alice does not leave Mortlake;
her spirits do not rise. Kind Lady May has done her best to persuade her
to come down with her to Brighton, but the perversity or the indolence
of grief has prevailed, and Alice has grown more melancholy and
self-upbraiding about her quarrel with her father, and will not be
persuaded to leave Mortlake, the very worst place she could have chosen,
as Lady May protests, for a residence during her mourning. Perhaps in a
little while she may feel equal to the effort, but now she can't. She
has quite lost her energy, and the idea of a place like Brighton, or
even the chance of meeting people, is odious to her.
"So, my dear, do what I may, there she will remain, in that _triste_
place," says Lady May Penrose; "and her brother, Sir Richard, has so
much business just now on his hands, that he is often away two or three
days at a time, and then she stays moping there quite alone; and only
that she likes gardening and flowers, and that kind of thing, I really
think she would go melancholy mad. But you know that kind of folly can't
go on always, and I am determined to take her away in a month or so.
People at first are so morbid, and make recluses of themselves."
Lady May stayed away at Brighton for about a week. On her return, Mr.
Longcluse called to see her.
"It was so kind of you, Mr. Longcluse, to take all the trouble you did
about that terrible business! and it was perfectly successful. There was
not the slightest unpleasantness."
"Yes, I knew I had made anything of that kind all but impossible, but
you are not to thank me. It made me only too happy to have an
opportunity of being of any use--of relieving any anxiety."
Longcluse sighed.
"You have placed me, I know, under a great obligation, and if every one
felt it as I do, you would have been thanked as you deserved before
now."
A little silence followed.
"How is Miss Arden?" asked he in a low tone, and hardly raising his
eyes.
"Pretty well," she answered, a little dryly. "She's not very wise, I
think, in planning to shut herself up so entirely in that melancholy
place, Mortlake. You have seen it?"
"Yes, more than once," he answered.
Lady May appeared more embarrassed as Mr. Longcluse grew less so. They
became silent again. Mr. Longcluse was the first to speak, which he did
a little hesitatingly.
"I was going to say that I hoped Miss Arden was not vexed at my having
ventured to interfere as I did."
"Oh! about that, of course there ought to be, as I said, but one
opinion; but you know she is not herself just now, and I shall have,
perhaps, something to tell by-and-by; and, to say truth--you won't be
vexed, but I'm sorry I undertook to speak to her, for on that point I
really don't quite understand her; and I am a little vexed--and--I'll
talk to you more another time. I'm obliged to keep an appointment just
now, and the carriage," she added, glancing at the _pendule_ on the
bracket close by, "will be at the door in two or three minutes; so I
must do a very ungracious thing, and say good-bye; and you must come
again very soon--come to luncheon to-morrow--you must, really; I won't
let you off, I assure you; there are two or three people coming to see
me, whom I think you would like to meet."
And, looking very good-natured, and a little flushed, and rather
avoiding Mr. Longcluse's dark eyes, she departed.
He had been thinking of paying Miss Maubray a visit, but he had not
avowed, even to himself, how high his hopes had mounted; and here was,
in Lady May's ominous manner and determined evasion, matter to disturb
and even shock him. Instead, therefore, of pursuing the route he had
originally designed, he strolled into the park, and under the shade of
green boughs he walked, amid the twitter of birds and the prattle of
children and nursery-maids, with despair at his heart, and a brain in
chaos.
As he sauntered, with downcast looks, under the trees, he came upon a
humble Hebrew friend, Mr. Goldshed, a magnate in his own circle, but
dwarfed into nothing beside the paragon of Mammon who walked on the
grass, so unpretentiously, and with a face as anxious as that of the
greengrocer who had just been supplicating the Jew for a renewal of his
twenty-five pound bill.
Mr. Goldshed came to a full stop a little way in advance of Mr.
Longcluse, anxious to attract his attention. Mr. Longcluse did see him,
as he sauntered on; and the fat old Jew, with the seedy velvet
waistcoat, crossed with gold chains, and with an old-fashioned gold
eye-glass dangling at his breast, first smiled engagingly, then looked
reverential and solemn, and then smiled again with his great moist lips,
and raised his hat. Longcluse gave him a sharp, short nod, and intended
to pass him.
"Will you shpare me one word, Mr. Lonclushe?"
"Not to-day, Sir."
"But I've been to your chambers, Sir, and to your houshe, Mr.
Lonclushe."
"You've wasted time--waste no more."
"I do assure you, Shir, it'sh very urgent."
"I don't care."
"It'sh about that East Indian thing," and he lowered his voice as he
concluded the sentence.
"I don't care a pin, Sir."
The amiable Mr. Goldshed hesitated; Mr. Longcluse passed him as if he
had been a post. He turned, however, and walked a few steps by Mr.
Longcluse's side.
"And everything elshe is going sho vell; and it would look fishy, don't
you think, to let thish thing go that way?"
"Let them go--and go you with them. I wish the earth would swallow you
all--scrip, bonds, children, and beldames." And if a stamp could have
made the earth open at his bidding, it would have yawned wide enough at
that instant. "If you follow me another step, by Heaven, I'll make it
unpleasant to you."
Mr. Longcluse looked so angry, that the Jew made him an unctuous bow,
and remained fixed for a while to the earth, gazing after his patron
with his hands in his pockets; and, with a gloomy countenance, he took
forth a big cigar from his case, lighted a vesuvian, and began to smoke,
still looking after Mr. Longcluse.
That gentleman sauntered on, striking his stick now and then to the
ground, or waving it over the grass in as many odd flourishes as a
magician in a pantomime traces with his wand.
If men are prone to teaze themselves with imaginations, they are equally
disposed to comfort themselves with the same shadowy influences.
"I'm so nervous about this thing, and so anxious, that I exaggerate
everything that seems to tell against me. How did I ever come to love
her so? And yet, would I kill that love if I could? Should I not kill
myself first? I'll go and see Miss Maubray--I may hear something from
her. Lady May _was_ embarrassed: what then? Were I a simple observer of
such a scene in the case of another, I should say there was nothing in
it more than this--that she had quite forgotten all about her promise.
She never mentioned my name, and when the moment came, and I had come to
ask for an account, she did not know what to say. It was well done, to
see old Mrs. Tansey as I did. Lady May is so good-natured, and would
feel her little neglect so much, and she will be sure to make it up.
Fifty things may have prevented her. Yes, I'll go and hear what Miss
Maubray has to say, and I'll lunch with Lady May to-morrow. I suspect
that her visit to-day was to Mortlake."
With these reflections, Mr. Longcluse's pace became brisker, and his
countenance brightened.