Checkmate

CHAPTER LXXVI

PHŒBE CHIFFINCH

Mr. Longcluse passed into the inner room, as he heard a step approaching from the hall. It was Louisa Diaper, in whose care, with the simple remedy of cold water, the young lady recovered. She was conveyed to her room, and Richard Arden followed, at Longcluse's command, to “keep things quiet.”

In an agony of remorse, he remained with his sister's hand in his, sitting by the bed on which she lay. Longcluse had spoken with the resolution that a few sharp and short words should accomplish the crisis, and show her plainly that her brother was, in the most literal and terrible sense, in his power, and thus, indirectly, she also. Perhaps, if she must know the fact, it was as well she should know it now.

Longcluse, I suppose, had reckoned upon Richard's throwing himself upon his sister's mercy. He thought he had done so before, and moved her as he would have wished. Longcluse, no doubt, had spoken to her, expecting to find her in a different mood. Had she yielded, what sort of husband would he have made her? Not cruel, I daresay. Proud of her, he would have been. She should have had the best diamonds in England. Jealous, violent when crossed, but with all his malice and severity, easily by Alice to have been won, had she cared to win him, to tenderness.

Was Sir Richard now seconding his scheme?

Sir Richard had no plan – none for escape, none for a catastrophe, none for acting upon Alice's feelings.

“I am so agitated – in such despair, so stunned! If I had but one clear hour! Oh, God! if I had but one clear hour to think in!”

He was now trying to persuade Alice that Longcluse had, in his rage, used exaggerated language – that it was true he was in his power, but it was for a large sum of money, for which he was his debtor.

“Yes, darling,” he whispered, “only be firm. I shall get away, and take you with me – only be secret, and don't mind one word he says when he is angry – he is literally a madman; there is no limit to the violence and absurdity of what he says.”

“Is he still in the house?” she whispered.

“Not he.”

“Are you certain?”

“Perfectly; with all his rant, he dares not stay: it would be a police-office affair. He's gone long ago.”

“Thank God!” she said, with a shudder.

Their agitated talk continued for some time longer. At last, darkly and suddenly, as usual, he took his leave.

When her brother had gone, she touched the bell for Louisa Diaper. A stranger appeared.

The stranger had a great deal of pink ribbon in her cap, she looked shrewd enough, and with a pair of rather good eyes; she looked curiously and steadily on the young lady.

“Who are you?” said Alice, sitting up. “I rang for my maid, Louisa Diaper.”

“Please, my lady,” she answers, with a short curtsey, “she went into town to fetch some things here from Sir Richard's house.”

“How long ago?”

“Just when you was getting better, please, my lady.”

“When she returns send her to me. What is your name?”

“Phœbe Chiffinch, please 'm.”

“And you are here – ”

“In her place, please my lady.”

“Well, when she comes back you can assist. We shall have a great deal to do, and I like your face, Phœbe, and I'm so lonely, I think I'll get you to sit here in the window near me.”

And on a sudden the young lady burst into tears, and sobbed and wept bitterly.

The new maid was at her side, pouring all sorts of consolation into her ear, with odd phrases – quite intelligible, I daresay, over the bar of the “Guy of Warwick” – dropping h's in all directions, and bowling down grammatic rules like nine-pins.

She was wonderfully taken by the kind looks and tones of the pretty lady whom she saw in this distress, and with the silk curtains drawn back in the fading flush of evening.

Hard work, hard fare, and harder words had been her portion from her orphaned childhood upward, at the old “Guy of Warwick,” with its dubious customers, failing business, and bitter and grumbling old hostess. Shrewd, hard, and not over-nice had Miss Phœbe grown up in that godless school.

But she had taken a fancy, as the phrase is, to the looks of the young lady, and still more to her voice and words, that in her ears sounded so new and strange. There was not an unpleasant sense, too, of the superiority of rank and refinement which inspires an admiring awe in her kind; and so, in a voice that was rather sweet and very cheery, she offered, when the young lady was better, to sit by the bed and tell her a story, or sing her a song.

Everyone knows how his view of his own case may vary within an hour. Alice was now of opinion that there was no reason to reject her brother's version of the terrifying situation. A man who could act like Mr. Longcluse, could, of course, say anything. She had begun to grow more cheerful, and in a little while she accepted the offer of her companion, and heard, first a story, and then a song; and, after all, she talked with her for some time.

“Tell me, now, what servants there are in the house,” asked Alice.

“Only two women and myself, please, Miss.”

“Is there anyone else in the house, besides ourselves?”

The girl looked down, and up again, in Alice's eyes, and then away to the floor at the other end of the room.

“I was told, Ma'am, not to talk of nothing here, Miss, except my own business, please, my lady.”

“My God! This girl mayn't speak truth to me,” exclaimed Alice, clasping her hands aghast.

The girl looked up uneasily.

“I should be sent away, Ma'am, if I do.”

“Look – listen: in this strait you must be for or against me; you can't be divided. For God's sake be a friend to me now. I may yet be the best friend you ever had. Come, Phœbe, trust me, and I'll never betray you.”

She took the girl's hand. Phœbe did not speak. She looked in her face earnestly for some moments, and then down, and up again.

“I don't mind. I'll do what I can for you, Ma'am; I'll tell you what I know. But if you tell them, Ma'am, it will be awful bad for me, my lady.”

She looked again, very much frightened, in her face, and was silent.

“No one shall ever know but I. Trust me entirely, and I'll never forget it to you.”

“Well, Ma'am, there is two men.”

“Who are they?”

“Two men, please 'm. I knows one on 'em – he was keeper on the ‘Guy o' Warwick,’ please, my lady, when there was a hexecution in the 'ouse. They're both sheriff's men.”

“And what are they doing here?”

“A hexecution, my lady.”

“That is, to sell the furniture and everything for a debt, isn't that it?” inquired the lady, bewildered.

“Well, that was it below at the ‘Guy o' Warwick,’ Miss; but Mr. Vargers, he was courting me down there at the ‘Guy o' Warwick,’ and offered marriage if I would 'av 'ad him, and he tells me heverything, and he says that there's a paper to take you, please, my lady.”

“Take me?”

“Yes, my lady; he read it to me in the room by the hall-door. Halice Harden, spinster, and something about the old guv'nor's will, please; and his horder is to take you, please, Miss, if you should offer to go out of the door; and there's two on 'em, and they watches turn about, so you can't leave the 'ouse, please, my lady; and if you try they'll only lock you up a prisoner in one room a-top o' the 'ouse; and, for your life, my lady, don't tell no one I said a word.”

“Oh! Phœbe. What can they mean? What's to become of me? Somehow or other you must get me out of this house. Help me, for God's sake! I'll throw myself from the window – I'll kill myself rather than remain in their power.”

“Hush! My lady, please, I may think of something yet. But don't you do nothing 'and hover 'ead. You must have patience. They won't be so sharp, maybe, in a day or two. I'll get you out if I can; and, if I can't, then God's will be done. And I'll make out what I can from Mr. Vargers; and don't you let no one think you likes me, and I'll be sly enough, you may count on me, my lady.”

Trembling all over, Alice kissed her.

CHAPTER LXXVII

MORE NEWS OF PAUL DAVIES

Louisa Diaper did not appear that night, nor next morning. She had been spirited away like the rest. Sir Richard had told her that his sister desired that she should go into town, and stay till next day, under the care of the housekeeper in town, and that he would bring her a list of commissions which she was to do for her mistress preparatory to starting for Yorkshire. I daresay this young lady liked her excursion to town well enough. It was not till the night after that she started for the North.

Alice Arden, for a time, lost heart altogether. It was no wonder she should.

That her only brother should be an accomplice against her, in a plot so appalling, was enough to overpower her; her horror of Longcluse, the effectual nature of her imprisonment, and the strange and, as she feared, unscrupulous people by whom she had been so artfully surrounded, heightened her terrors to the pitch of distraction.

At times she was almost wild; at others stupefied in despair; at others, again, soothed by the kindly intrepidity of Phœbe, she became more collected. Sometimes she would throw herself on her bed, and sob for an hour in helpless agony; and then, exhausted and overpowered, she would fall for a time into a deep sleep, from which she would start, for several minutes, without the power of collecting her thoughts, and with only the stifled cry, “What is it? – Where am I?” and a terrified look round.

One day, in a calmer mood, as she sat in her room after a long talk with Phœbe, the girl came beside her chair with an oddly made key, with a little strap of white leather to the handle, in her hands.

“Here's a latch-key, Miss; maybe you know what it opens?”

“Where did you find it?”

“In the old china vase over the chimney, please 'm.”

“Let me see – oh! dear, yes, this opens the door in the wall of the grounds, in that direction,” and she pointed. “Poor papa lent it to my drawing-master. He lived somewhere beyond that, and used to let himself in by it when he came to give me my lessons.”

“I remember that door well, Miss,” said Phœbe, looking earnestly on the key – “Mr. Crozier let me out that way, one day. Mr. Longcluse has put strangers, you know, in the gatehouse. That's shut against us. I'll tell you what, Miss – wait – well, I'll think. I'll keep this key safe, anyhow; and – the more the merrier,” she added with a sudden alacrity, and lifting her finger, by way of signal, for everything now was done with caution here, she left the room, and passed through the suite to the landing, and quietly took out the door-keys, one by one, and returned with her spoil to Alice's room.

“You thought they might lock us up?” whispered Alice.

The girl nodded. “No harm to have 'em, Miss – it won't hurt us.” She folded them tightly in a handkerchief, and thrust the parcel as far as her arm could reach between the mattress and the bed. “I'll rip the ticken a bit just now, and stitch them in,” whispered the girl.

“Didn't I hear another key clink as you put your hand in?” asked Alice.

The girl smiled, and drew out a large key, and nodded, still smiling as she replaced it.

“What does that open?” whispered Alice eagerly.

“Nothing, Miss,” said the girl gravely – “it's the key of the old back-door lock; but there's a new one there now, and this won't open nothing. But I have a use for it. I'll tell you all in time, Miss; and, please, you must keep up your heart, mind.”

Sir Richard Arden was not the cold villain you may suppose. He was resolved to make an effort of some kind for the extrication of his sister. He could not bear to open his dreadful situation to his Uncle David, nor to kill himself, nor to defy the vengeance of Longcluse. He would effect her escape and his own simultaneously. In the meantime he must acquiesce, ostensibly at least, in every step determined on by Longcluse.

It was a bright autumnal day as Sir Richard and Mr. Longcluse took the rail to Southampton. Longcluse had his reasons for taking the young baronet with him.

It was near the hour, by the time they got there, when David Arden would arrive from his northern point of departure. Longcluse looked animated – smiling; but a stupendous load lay on his heart. A single clumsy phrase in the letter of that detective scoundrel might be enough to direct the formidable suspicions of that energetic old gentleman upon him. The next hour might throw him altogether upon the defensive, and paralyse his schemes.

Alice Arden, you little dream of the man and the route by which, possibly, deliverance is speeding to you.

Near the steps of the large hotel that looks seaward, Longcluse and Sir Richard lounge, expecting the arrival of David Arden almost momentarily. Up drives a fly, piled with portmanteaus, hat-case, dressing-case, and all the other travelling appurtenances of a comfortable wayfarer. Beside the driver sits a servant. The fly draws up at the door near them.

Mr. Longcluse's seasoned heart throbs once or twice oddly. Out gets Uncle David, looking brown and healthy after his northern excursion. On reaching the top of the steps, he halts, and turns round to look about him. Again Mr. Longcluse feels the same odd sensation.

Uncle David recognises Sir Richard, and smiling greets him. He runs down the steps to meet him. After they have shaken hands, and, a little more coldly, he and Mr. Longcluse, he says, —

“You are not looking yourself, Dick; you ought to have run down to the moors, and got up an appetite. How is Alice?”

“Alice? Oh! Alice is very well, thanks.”

“I should like to run up to Mortlake to see her. She has been complaining, eh?”

“No, no – better,” says Sir Richard.

“And you forget to tell your uncle what you told me,” interposes Mr. Longcluse, “that Miss Arden left Mortlake for Yorkshire yesterday.”

“Oh!” said Uncle David, turning to Richard again.

“And the servants went before – two or three days ago,” said Sir Richard, looking down for a moment, and hastening, under that clear eye, to speak a little truth.

“Well, I wish she had come with us,” said David Arden; “but as she could not be persuaded, I'm glad she is making a little change of air and scene, in any direction. By-the-bye, Mr. Longcluse, you had a letter, had not you, from our friend, Paul Davies?”

“Yes; he seemed to think he had found a clue – from Paris it was – and I wrote to tell him to spare no expense in pushing his inquiries and to draw upon me.”

“Well, I have some news to tell you. His exploring voyage will come to nothing; you did not hear?”

“No.”

“Why, the poor fellow's dead. I got a letter – it reached me, forwarded from my house in town, yesterday, from the person who hires the lodgings – to say he had died of scarlatina very suddenly, and sending an inventory of the things he left. It is a pity, for he seemed a smart fellow, and sanguine about getting to the bottom of it.”

“An awful pity!” exclaimed Longcluse, who felt as if a mountain were lifted from his heart, and the entire firmament had lighted up; “an awful pity! Are you quite sure?”

“There can't be a doubt, I'm sorry to say. Then, as Alice has taken wing, I'll pursue my first plan, and cross by the next mail.”

“For Paris?” inquired Mr. Longcluse, carelessly.

“Yes, Sir, for Paris,” answered Uncle David deliberately, looking at him; “yes, for Paris.”

And then followed a little chat on indifferent subjects. Then Uncle David mentioned that he had an appointment, and must dine with the dull but honest fellow who had asked him to meet him here on a matter of business, which would have done just as well next year, but he wished it now. Uncle David nodded, and waved his hand, as on entering the door he gave them a farewell smile over his shoulder.

CHAPTER LXXVIII

THE CATACOMBS

At his disappearance, for Sir Richard the air darkened as when, in the tropics, the sun sets without a twilight, and the silence of an awful night descended.

It seemed that safety had been so near. He had laid his hand upon it, and had let it glide ungrasped between his fingers; and now the sky was black above him, and an unfathomable sea beneath.

Mr. Longcluse was in great spirits. He had grown for a time like the Walter Longcluse of a year before.

They two dined together, and after dinner Mr. Longcluse grew happy, and as he sat with his glass by him, he sang, looking over the waves, a sweet little sentimental song, about ships that pass at sea, and smiles and tears, and “true, boys, true,” and “heaven shows a glimpse of its blue.” And he walks with Sir Richard to the station, and he says, low, as he leans and looks into the carriage window, of which young Arden was the only occupant —

“Be true to me now, and we may make it up yet.”

And so saying, he gives his hand a single pressure as he looks hard in his eyes.

The bell had rung. He was remaining there, he said, for another train. The clapping of the doors had ceased. He stood back. The whistle blew its long piercing yell, and as the train began to glide towards London, the young man saw the white face of Walter Longcluse in deep shadow, as he stood with his back to the lamp, still turned towards him.

The train was now thundering on its course; the solitary lamp glimmered in the roof. He threw himself back, with his foot against the opposite seat.

“Good God! what is one to resolve! All men are cruel when they are exasperated. Might not good yet be made of Longcluse? What creatures women are! – what fools! How easy all might have been made, with the least temper and reflection! What d – d selfishness!”

Uncle David was now in Paris. The moon was shining over that beautiful city. In a lonely street, in a quarter which fashion had long forsaken – over whose pavement, as yet unconscious of the Revolution, had passed, in the glare of torchlight, the carved and emblazoned carriages of an aristocracy, as shadowy now as the courts of the Cæsars – his footsteps are echoing.

A huge house presents its front. He stops and examines it carefully for a few seconds. It is the house of which he is in search.

At one time the Baron Vanboeren had received patients from the country, to reside in this house. For the last year, during which he had been gathering together his wealth, and detaching himself from business, he had discontinued this, and had gradually got rid of his establishment.

When David Arden rang the bell at the hall-door, which he had to do repeatedly, it was answered at last by an old woman, high-shouldered, skin and bone, with a great nose, and big jaw-bones, and a high-cauled cap. This lean creature looks at him with a vexed and hollow eye. Her bony arm rests on the lock of the hall-door, and she blocks the narrow aperture between its edge and the massive door-case. She inquires in very nasal French what Monsieur desires.

“I wish to see Monsieur the Baron, if he will permit me an interview,” answered Mr. Arden in very fair French.

“Monsieur the Baron is not visible; but if Monsieur will, notwithstanding, leave any message he pleases for Monsieur the Baron, I will take care he receives it punctually.”

“But Monsieur the Baron appointed me to call to-night at ten o'clock.”

“Is Monsieur sure of that?”

“Perfectly.”

“Eh, very well; but, if he pleases, I must first learn Monsieur's name.”

“My name is Arden.”

“I believe Monsieur is right.” She took a bit of notepaper from her capacious pocket, and peering at it, spelled aloud, “D-a-v-i-d – ”

“A-r-d-e-n,” interrupted and continued the visitor, spelling his name, with a smile.

“A-r-d-e-n,” she followed, reading slowly from her paper; “yes, Monsieur is right. You see, this paper says, ‘Admit Monsieur David Arden to an interview.’ Enter, if you please Monsieur, and follow me.”

It was a decayed house of superb proportions, but of a fashion long passed away. The gaunt old woman, with a bunch of large keys clinking at her side, stalked up the broad stairs and into a gallery, and through several rooms opening en suite. The rooms were hung with cobwebs, dusty, empty, and the shutters closed, except here and there where the moonlight gleamed through chinks and seams.

David Arden, before he had seen the Baron Vanboeren in London, had pictured him in imagination a tall old man with classic features, and manners courteous and somewhat stately.

We do not fabricate such images; they rise like exhalations from a few scattered data, and present themselves spontaneously. It is this self-creation that invests them with so much reality in our imaginations, and subjects us to so odd a surprise when the original turns out quite unlike the portrait with which we have been amusing ourselves.

She now pushed open a door, and said, “Monsieur the Baron here is arrived Monsieur David d'Ardennes.”

The room in which he now stood was spacious, but very nearly dark. The shutters were closed outside, and the moonlight that entered came through the circular hole cut in each. A large candle on a bracket burned at the further end of the room. There the baron stood. A reflector which interposed between the candle and the door at which David Arden entered directed its light strongly upon something which the baron held, and laid upon the table, in his hand; and now that he turned toward his visitor, it was concentrated upon his large face, revealing, with the force of a Rembrandt, all its furrows and finer wrinkles. He stood out against a background of darkness with remarkable force.

The baron stood before him – a short man in a red waistcoat. He looked more broad-shouldered and short-necked than ever in his shirt-sleeves. He had an instrument in his hand resembling a small bit and brace, and some chips and sawdust on his flannel waistcoat, which he brushed off with two or three sweeps of his short fat fingers. He looked now like a grim old mechanic. There was no vivacity in his putty-coloured features, but there were promptitude and decision in every abrupt gesture. It was his towering, bald forehead, and something of command and savage energy in his lowering face, that redeemed the tout ensemble from an almost brutal vulgarity.

The baron was not in the slightest degree “put out,” as the phrase is, at being detected in his present occupation and deshabille.

He bowed twice to David Arden, and said, in English, with a little foreign accent —

“Here is a chair, Monsieur Arden; but you can hardly see it until your eyes have grown a little accustomed to our crépuscula.”

This was true enough, for David Arden, though he saw him advance a step or two, could not have known what he held in the hand that was in shadow. The sound, indeed, of the legs of the chair, as he set it down upon the floor, he heard.

“I should make you an apology, Mr. Arden, if I were any longer in my own home, which I am not, although this is still my house; for I have dismissed my servants, sold my furniture, and sent what things I cared to retain over the frontier to my new habitation, whither I shall soon follow; and this house too, I shall sell. I have already two or three gudgeons nibbling, Monsieur.”