BLIGHT AND CHANGE.
Danger to herself, Alice suspected none. But she was full of dreadful
conjectures about her brother. There was, she was persuaded, no good any
longer in remonstrance or entreaty. She could not upbraid him; but she
was sure that the terrible fascination of the gaming-table had caused
the sudden ruin he vaguely confessed.
"Oh," she often repeated, "that Uncle David were in town, or that I knew
where to find him!"
"But no doubt," she thought, "Richard will hide nothing from him, and
perhaps my hinting his disclosures, even to him, would aggravate poor
Richard's difficulties and misery."
It was not until the next evening that, about the same hour, she again
saw her brother. His good resolutions in the interval had waxed faint.
They were not reversed, but only in the spirit of indecision, and
something of the apathy of despair, postponed to a more convenient
season.
To her he seemed more tranquil. He said vaguely that the reasons for
flight were less urgent and that she had better continue her
preparations, as before, for her journey to Yorkshire.
Even under these circumstances the journey to Yorkshire was pleasant.
There was comfort in the certainty that he would there be beyond the
reach of that fatal temptation which had too plainly all but ruined him.
From the harrassing distractions, also, which in London had of late
beset him, almost without intermission, he might find in the seclusion
of Arden a temporary calm. There, with Uncle David's help, there would
be time, at least, to ascertain the extent of his losses, and what the
old family of Arden might still count upon as their own, and a plan of
life might be arranged for the future.
Full of these more cheery thoughts, Alice took leave of her brother.
"I am going," he said, looking at his watch, "direct to Brighton; I have
just time to get to the station nicely; business, of course--a meeting
to-night with Bexley, who is staying there, and in the morning a long
and, I fear, angry discussion with Charrington, who is also at
Brighton."
He kissed his sister, sighed deeply, and looking in her eyes for a
little, fixedly, he said--
"Alice, darling, you must try to think what sacrifice you can make to
save your wretched brother."
Their eyes met as she looked up, her hands about his neck, his on her
shoulders; he drew his sister to him quickly, and with another kiss,
turned, ran down stairs, got into his cab, and drove down the avenue.
She stood looking after him with a heavy heart. How happy they two might
have been, if it had not been for the one incorrigible insanity!
About an hour later, as the sun was near its setting, she put on her hat
and short grey cloak, and stepped out into its level beams, and looked
round smiling. The golden glow and transparent shadows made that
beautiful face look more than ever lovely. All around the air was
ringing with the farewell songs of the small birds, and, with a heart
almost rejoicing in sympathy with that beautiful hour, she walked
lightly to the old garden, which in that luminous air, looked, she
thought, so sad and pretty.
The well-worn aphorism of the Frenchman, "History repeats itself," was
about to assert itself. Sometimes it comes in literal sobriety,
sometimes in derisive travesti, sometimes in tragic aggravation.
She is in the garden now. The associations of place recall her strange
interview with Mr. Longcluse but a few months before. Since then a
blight has fallen on the scenery, and what a change upon the persons!
The fruit-leaves are yellow now, and drifts of them lie upon the walks.
Mantling ivy, as before, canopies the door, interlaced with climbing
roses; but they have long shed their honours. This thick mass of dark
green foliage and thorny tendrils forms a deep arched porch, in the
shadow of which, suddenly, as on her return she reached it, she sees Mr.
Longcluse standing within a step or two of her.
He raises his hand, it might be in entreaty, it might be in menace; she
could not, in the few alarmed moments in which she gazed at his dark
eyes and pale equivocal face, determine anything.
"Miss Arden, you may hate me; you can't despise me. You _must_ hear me,
because you are in my power. I relent, mind you, thus far, that I give
you one chance more of reconciliation; don't, for God's sake, throw it
from you!" (he was extending his open hand to receive hers). "Why should
you prefer an unequal war with me? I tell you frankly you are in my
power--don't misunderstand me--in _my power_ to this degree, that you
shall _voluntarily_, as the more tolerable of two alternatives, submit
with abject acquiescence to every one of my conditions. Here is my hand;
think of the degradation I submit to in asking you to take it. You gave
me no chance when I asked forgiveness. I tender you a full forgiveness;
here is my hand, beware how you despise it."
Fearful as he appeared in her sight, her fear gave way before her
kindling spirit. She had stood before him pale as death--anger now fired
her eye and cheek.
"How dare you, Sir, hold such language to me! Do you suppose, if I had
told my brother of your cowardice and insolence as I left the abbey the
other day, you would have dared to speak to him, much less to me? Let me
pass, and never while you live presume to address me more."
Mr. Longcluse, with a slow recoil, smiling fixedly, and bowing, drew
back and opened the door for her to pass. He did not any longer look
like a villain whose heart had failed him.
Her heart fluttered violently with fear as she saw that he stepped out
after her, and walked by her side toward the house. She quickened her
pace in great alarm.
"If you had liked me ever so little," said he in that faint and horrible
tone she remembered--"one, the smallest particle, of disinterested
liking--the grain of mustard-seed--I would have had you fast, and made
you happy, made you _adore_ me; _such_ adoration that you could have
heard from my own lips the confession of my crimes, and loved me
still--loved me more desperately. Now that you hate me, and I hate
_you_, and have you in my power, and while I hate still admire
you--still choose you for my wife--you shall hear the same story, and
think me all the more dreadful. You sought to degrade me, and I'll
humble you in the dust. Suppose I tell you I'm a criminal--the kind of
man you have read of in trials, and can't understand, and can scarcely
even believe in--the kind of man that seems to you as unaccountable and
monstrous as a ghost--your terrors and horror will make my triumph
exquisite with an immense delight. I don't want to smooth the way for
you; you do nothing for me. I disdain hypocrisy. Terror drives you on;
fate coerces you; you can't help yourself, and my delight is to make the
plunge terrible. I reveal myself that you may know the sort of person
you are yoked to. Your sacrifice shall be the agony of agonies, the
death of deaths, and yet you'll find yourself unable to resist. I'll
make you submissive as ever patient was to a mad doctor. If it took
years to do it, you shall never stir out of this house till it is done.
Every spark of insolence in your nature shall be trampled out; I'll
break you thoroughly. The sound of my step shall make your heart jump; a
look from me shall make you dumb for an hour. You shall not be able to
take your eyes off me while I'm in sight, or to forget me for a moment
when I am gone. The smallest thing you do, the least word you speak, the
very thoughts of your heart, shall all be shaped under one necessity and
one fear." (She had reached the hall door). "Up the steps! Yes; you wish
to enter? Certainly."
With flashing eyes and head erect, the beautiful girl stepped into the
hall, without looking to the right or to the left, or uttering one word,
and walked quickly to the foot of the great stair.
If she thought that Mr. Longcluse would respect the barrier of the
threshold, she was mistaken. He entered but one step behind her, shut
the heavy hall door with a crash, dropped the key into his coat pocket,
and signing with his finger to the man in the room to the right, that
person stood up briskly, and prepared for action. He closed the door
again, saying simply, "I'll call."
The young lady, hearing his step, turned round and stood on the stair,
confronting him fiercely.
"You must leave this house this moment," she cried, with a stamp, with
gleaming eyes and very pale.
"By-and-by," he replied, standing before her.
Could this be the safe old house in which childish days had passed, in
which all around were always friendly and familiar faces? The window
stood reflected upon the wall beside her in dim sunset light, and the
shadows of the flowers sharp and still that stood there.
"I have friends here who will turn you out, Sir!"
"You have _no_ friends here," he replied, with the same fixed smile.
She hesitated; she stepped down, but stopped in the hall. She remembered
instantly that, as she turned, she had seen him take the key from the
hall door.
"My brother will protect me."
"Is he here?"
"He'll call you to account to-morrow, when he comes."
"Will he say so?"
"Always--brave, true Richard!" she sobbed, with a strange cry in her
words.
"He'll do as I bid him: he's a forger, in my power."
To her wild stare he replied with a low, faint laugh. She clasped her
fingers over her temples.
"Oh! no, no, no, no, no, no!" she screamed, and suddenly she rushed into
the great room at her right. Her brother--was it a phantom?--stood
before her. With one long, shrill scream, she threw herself into his
arms, and cried, "It's a lie, darling, it's a lie!" and she had fainted.
He laid her in the great chair by the fire-place. With white lips, and
with one fist shaking wildly in the air, he said, with a dreadful shiver
in his voice,--
"You villain! you villain! you villain!"
"Don't you be a fool," said Longcluse. "Ring for the maid. There must
have been a crisis some time. I'm giving you a fair chance--trying to
save you; they all faint--it's a trick with women."
Longcluse looked into her lifeless face, with something of pity and
horror mingling in the villany of his countenance.