Checkmate. Le Fanu Joseph Sheridan

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СКАЧАТЬ in this house this night, if the miserable tables and chairs were not my brother David's property. Upon my life, Craven, my attorney, had to serve two notices on the sheriff in one term, to caution him not to sell your uncle's furniture for my debts. I shouldn't have had a joint-stool to sit down on, if it hadn't been for that. And I had to get out of the railway-carriage, by heaven! for fear of arrest, and come home – if home I can call this ruin – by posting all the way, except a few miles. I did not dare to tell Craven I was coming back. I wrote from Twyford, where I – I – took a fancy to sleep last night, to no human being but yourself. My comfort is that they and all the world believe that I'm still in France. It is a pleasant state of things!”

      “I am grieved, Sir, to think you suffer so much.”

      “I know it. I knew it. I know you are, Dick,” said the old man eagerly. “And my life is a perfect hell. I can nowhere in England find rest for the sole of my foot. I am suffering perpetually the most miserable mortifications, and the tortures of the damned. I know you are sorry. It can't be pleasant to you to see your father the miserable outcast, and fugitive, and victim he so often is. And I'll say distinctly – I'll say at once – for it was with this one purpose I sent for you – that no son with a particle of human feeling, with a grain of conscience, or an atom of principle, could endure to see it, when he knew that by a stroke of his pen he could undo it all, and restore a miserable parent to life and liberty! Now, Richard, you have my mind. I have concealed nothing, and I'm sure, Dick, I know, I know you won't see your father perish by inches, rather than sign the warrant for his liberation. For God's sake, Dick, my boy speak out! Have you the heart to reject your miserable father's petition? Do you wish me to kneel to you? I love you, Dick, although you don't admit it. I'll kneel to you, Dick – I'll kneel to you. I'll go on my knees to you.”

      His hands were clasped; he made a movement. His great prominent eyes were fixed on Richard Arden's face, which he was reading with a great deal of eagerness, it is true, but also with a dark and narrow shrewdness.

      “Good heaven, Sir, don't stir, I implore! If you do, I must leave the room,” said Richard, embarrassed to a degree that amounted to agitation. “And I must tell you, Sir – it is very painful, but, I could not help it, necessity drove me to it – if I were ever so desirous, it is out of my power now. I have dealt with my reversion. I have executed a deed.”

      “You have been with the Jews!” cried the old man, jumping to his feet. “You have been dealing, by way of post obit, with my estate!”

      Richard Arden looked down. Sir Reginald was as nearly white as his yellow tint would allow; his large eyes were gleaming fire – he looked as if he would have snatched the poker, and brained his son.

      “But what could I do, Sir? I had no other resource. I was forbidden your house; I had no money.”

      “You lie, Sir!” yelled the old man, with a sudden flash, and a hammer of his thin trembling fist on the table. “You had a hundred and fifty pounds a year of your mother's.”

      “But that, Sir, could not possibly support any one. I was compelled to act as I did. You really, Sir, left me no choice.”

      “Now, now, now, now, now! you're not to run away with the thing, you're not to run away with it; you sha'n't run away with it, Sir. You could have made a submission, you know you could. I was open to be reconciled at any time – always too ready. You had only to do as you ought to have done, and I'd have received you with open arms; you know I would – I would– you had only to unite our interests in the estates, and I'd have done everything to make you happy, and you know it. But you have taken the step – you have done it, and it is irrevocable. You have done it, and you've ruined me; and I pray to God you have ruined yourself!”

      With every sinew quivering, the old man was pulling the bell-rope violently with his left hand. Over his shoulder, on his son, he glanced almost maniacally. “Turn him out!” he screamed to Crozier, stamping; “put him out by the collar. Shut the door upon him, and lock it; and if he ever dares to call here again, slam it in his face. I have done with him for ever!”

      Richard Arden had already left the room, and this closing passage was lost on him. But he heard the old man's voice as he walked along the corridor, and it was still in his ears as he passed the hall-door; and, running down the steps, he jumped into his cab. Crozier held the cab-door open, and wished Mr. Richard a kind good-night. He stood on the steps to see the last of the cab as it drove down the shadowy avenue and was lost in gloom. He sighed heavily. What a broken family it was! He was an old servant, born on their northern estate – loyal, and somewhat rustic – and, certainly, had the baronet been less in want of money, not exactly the servant he would have chosen.

      “The old gentleman cannot last long,” he said, as he followed the sound of the retreating wheels with his gaze, “and then Master Richard will take his turn, and what one began the other will finish. It is all up with the Ardens. Sir Reginald ruined, Master Harry murdered, and Master David turned tradesman! There's a curse on the old house.”

      He heard the baronet's tread faintly, pacing the floor in agitation, as he passed his door; and when he reached the housekeeper's room, that old lady, Mrs. Tansey, was alone and all of a tremble, standing at the door. Before her dim staring eyes had risen an oft-remembered scene: the ivy-covered gatehouse at Mortlake Hall; the cold moon glittering down through the leafless branches; the grey horse on its side across the gig-shaft, and the two villains – one rifling and the other murdering poor Henry Arden, the baronet's gay and reckless brother.

      “Lord, Mr. Crozier! what's crossed Sir Reginald?” she said huskily, grasping the servant's wrist with her lean hand. “Master Dick, I do suppose. I thought he was to come no more. They quarrel always. I'm like to faint, Mr. Crozier.”

      “Sit ye down, Mrs. Tansey, Ma'am; you should take just a thimbleful of something. What has frightened you?”

      “There's a scritch in Sir Reginald's voice – mercy on us! – when he raises it so; it is the very cry of poor Master Harry – his last cry, when the knife pierced him. I'll never forget it!”

      The old woman clasped her fingers over her eyes, and shook her head slowly.

      “Well, that's over and ended this many a day, and past cure. We need not fret ourselves no more about it – 'tis thirty years since.”

      “Two-and-twenty the day o' the Longden steeple-chase. I've a right to remember it.” She closed her eyes again. “Why can't they keep apart?” she resumed. “If father and son can't look one another in the face without quarrelling, better they should turn their backs on one another for life. Why need they come under one roof? The world's wide enough.”

      “So it is – and no good meeting and argufying; for Mr. Dick will never open the estate,” remarked Mr. Crozier.

      “And more shame for him!” said Mrs. Tansey. “He's breaking his father's heart. It troubles him more,” she added in a changed tone, “I'm thinking, than ever poor Master Harry's death did. There's none living of his kith or kin cares about it now but Master David. He'll never let it rest while he lives.”

      “He may let it rest, for he'll never make no hand of it,” said Crozier. “Would you object, Ma'am, to my making a glass of something hot? – you're gone very pale.”

      Mrs. Tansey assented, and the conversation grew more comfortable. And so the night closed over the passions and the melancholy of Mortlake Hall.

      CHAPTER XVI

      A MIDNIGHT MEETING

      A couple of days passed; and now I must ask you to suppose yourself placed, at night, in the centre СКАЧАТЬ