He handed him the Times.
"Yes, I see. I daresay the police will make him out," said Arden, as he glanced hastily over it. "Did you remark some awfully ill-looking fellows there?"
"I never saw so many together in a place of the kind before," said Longcluse.
"That's a capital account of the match," said Arden, whom it interested more than the tragedy of poor little Lebas did. He read snatches of it aloud as he ate his breakfast: and then, laying the paper down, he said, "By-the-bye, I need not bother you by asking your advice, as I intended. My uncle David has been blowing me up, and I think he'll make everything straight. When he sends for me and gives me an awful lecture, he always makes it up to me afterwards."
"I wish, Arden, I stood as little in need of your advice as you do, it seems, of mine," said Longcluse suddenly, after a short silence. His dark eyes were fixed on Richard Arden's. "I have been fifty times on the point of making a confession to you, and my heart has failed me. The hour is coming. These things won't wait. I must speak, Arden, soon or never--very soon, or never. Never, perhaps, would be wisest."
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"Speak now, on the contrary," said Arden, laying down his knife and fork, and leaning back. "Now is the best time always. If it's a bad thing, why, it's over; and if it's a good one, the sooner we have it the better."
Longcluse rose, looking down in meditation, and in silence walked slowly to the window, where, for a time, without speaking he stood in a reverie. Then, looking up, he said, "No man likes a crisis. 'No good general ever fights a pitched battle if he can help it.' Wasn't that Napoleon's saying? No man who has not lost his head likes to get together all he has on earth, and make one stake of it. I have been on the point of speaking to you often. I have always recoiled."
"Here I am, my dear Longcluse," said Richard Arden, rising and following him to the window, "ready to hear you. I ought to say, only too happy if I can be of the least use."
"Immense! everything?" said Longcluse vehemently. "And yet I don't know how to ask you--how to begin--so much depends.
Don't you conjecture the subject?"
"Well, perhaps I do--perhaps I don't. Give me some clue." "Have you formed no conjecture?" asked Longcluse. "Perhaps."
"Is it anything in any way connected with your sister, Miss Arden?" "It may be, possibly."
"Say what you think, Arden, I beseech you." "Well, I think, perhaps, you admire her."
"Do I? Do I? Is that all? Would to God I could say that is all! Admiration, what is it?--Nothing. Love?--Nothing. Mine is adoration and utter madness. I have told my secret. What do you say? Do you hate me for it?"
"Hate you, my dear fellow! Why on earth should I hate you? On the contrary, I ought, I think, to like you better. I'm only a little surprised that your feelings should so much exceed anything I could have supposed."
"Yesterday, Arden, you spoke as if you liked me. As we drove into that place, I fancied you half understood me; and cheered by what you then said, I have spoken that which might have died with me, but for that."
"Well, what's the matter? My dear Longcluse, you talk as if I had shown signs of wavering friendship. Have I? Quite the contrary." "Quite the contrary, that is true," said Longcluse eagerly. "Yes, you should like me better for it--that is true also. Yours is no waver-
ing friendship, I'm sure of it. Let us shake hands upon it. A treaty, Arden, a treaty!"
With a fierce smile upon his pale face, and a sudden fire in his eyes, he extended his hand energetically, and took that of Arden, who
answered the invitation with a look in which gleamed faintly something of amusement.
"Now, Richard Arden," he continued excitedly, "you have more influence with Miss Arden than falls commonly to the lot of a brother. I have observed it. It results from her having had during her earlier years little society but yours, and from your being some years her senior. It results from her strong affection for you, from her admiration of your talents, and from her having neither brother nor sister to divide those feelings. I never yet saw brother possessed of so evident and powerful an influence with a sister. You must use
it all for me."
He continued to hold Arden's hand in his as he spoke.
"You can withdraw your hand if you decline," said he. "I sha'n't complain. But your hand remains--you don't. It is a treaty, then. Henceforward we live faedere icto. I'm an exacting friend, but a good one."
"My dear fellow, you do me but justice. I am your friend, altogether. But you must not mistake me for a guardian or a father in the
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matter. I wish I could make my sister think exactly as I do upon every subject, and that above all others. All I can say is, in me you
have a fast friend."
Longcluse pressed his hand, which he had not relinquished, at these words, with a firm grasp and a quick shake.
"Now listen. I must speak on this point, the one that is in my mind, my chief difficulty. Personally, there is not, I think, a living being in England who knows my history. I am glad of it, for reasons which you will approve by-and-by. But this is an enormous disadvantage, though only temporary, and the friends of the young lady must weigh my wealth against it for the present. But when the time comes, which can't now be distant, upon my honour! upon my soul!--by Heaven, I'll show you I'm of as good and old a family as any in England! We have been gentlemen up to the time of the Conqueror, here in England, and as far before him as record can be traced in Normandy. If I fail to show you this when the hour comes, stigmatise me as you will."
"I have not a doubt, dear Longcluse. But you are urging a point that really has no weight with us people in England. We have taken off our hats to the gentlemen in casques and tabards, and feudal glories are at a discount everywhere but in Debrett, where they are taken with allowance. Your ideas upon these matters are more Austrian than ours. We expect, perhaps, a little more from the man, but certainly less from his ancestors than our forefathers did. So till a title turns up, and the heralds want them, make your mind easy on matters of pedigree, and then you can furnish them with effect. All I can tell you is this--there are hardly fifty men in England who dare tell all the truth about their families."
"We are friends, then; and in that relation, Arden, if there are privileges, there are also liabilities, remember, and both extend into a possibly distant future."
Longcluse spoke with a gloomy excitement that his companion did not quite understand. "That is quite true, of course," said Arden.
Each was looking in the other's face for a moment, and each face grew suddenly dark, darker--and the whole room darkened as the air was overshadowed by a mass of cloud that eclipsed the sun, threatening thunder.
"By Jove! How awfully dark in a moment!" said Arden, looking from the face thus suddenly overcast through the window towards the sky.
"Dark as the future we were speaking of," said Longcluse, with a sad smile.
"Dark in one sense, I mean unseen, but not darkened in the ill-omened sense," said Richard Arden. "I have great confidence in the
future. I suppose I am sanguine."
"I ought to be sanguine, if having been lucky hitherto should make one so, and yet I'm not. My happiness depends on that which I cannot, in the least, control. Thought, action, energy, contribute nothing, and so I but drift, and--my heart fails me. Tell me, Arden, for Heaven's sake, truth--spare me nothing, conceal nothing. Let me but know it, however bitter. First tell me, does Miss Arden dislike me--has she an antipathy to me?"
"Dislike you! Nonsense. How could that be? She evidently enjoys your society, when you are in spirits and choose to be amusing.
Dislike you? Oh, my dear Longcluse, you can't have fancied such a thing!" said Arden.
"A man placed as I am may fancy anything--things infinitely more unlikely. I sometimes hope she has never perceived my admiration. It seems strange and cruel, but I believe where a man cannot be beloved,