“Pardon me, Monsieur Moucée,” says the porter, addressing one of the domino players, a good-looking young man, with a pale dark face and black hair—”pardon me that I disturb your pleasant game; but I bring a gentleman who wishes to make your acquaintance.”
The chorus-singer rises, gives a lingering look at a double-six he was just going to play, and advances to where Monsieur Marolles is standing.
“At monsieur’s service,” he says, with an unstudied but graceful bow.
Raymond Marolles, with an ease of manner all his own passes his arm through that of the young man, and leads him out into the passage.
“I have heard, Monsieur Moucée, that you possess a talent for mimicry which is of a very superior order. Are you willing to assist with this talent in a little farce I am preparing for the amusement of a lady? If so you will have a claim (which I shall not forget) on my gratitude and on my purse.”
This last word makes Paul Moucée prick up his ears. Poor fellow! his last coin has gone for the half-ounce of tobacco he has just consumed. He expresses himself only too happy to obey the commands of monsieur.
Monsieur suggests that they shall repair to an adjoining café, at which they can have half-an-hour’s quiet conversation. They do so; and at the end of the half hour, Monsieur Marolles parts with Paul Moucée at the door of this café. As they separate Raymond looks at his watch—”Half-past eleven; all goes better than I could have even hoped. This man will do very well for our friend Elvino, and the lady shall have ocular demonstration. Now for the rest of my work; and to-night, my proud and beautiful heiress, for you.”
As the clocks strike ten that night, a hackney-coach stops close to the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne; and as the coachman checks his horse, a gentleman emerges from the gloom, and goes up to the door of the coach, which he opens before the driver can dismount. This gentleman is Monsieur Raymond Marolles, and Valerie De Lancy is seated in the coach.
“Punctual, madame!” he says. “Ah, in the smallest matters you are superior to your sex. May I request you to step out and walk with me for some little distance?”
The lady, who is thickly veiled, only bows her head in reply; but she is by his side in a moment. He gives the coachman some directions, and the man drives off a few paces; he then offers his arm to Valerie.
“Nay, monsieur,” she says, in a cold, hard voice, “I can follow you, or I can walk by your side. I had rather not take your arm.”
Perhaps it is as well for this man’s schemes that it is too dark for his companion to see the smile that lifts his black moustache, or the glitter in his blue eyes. He is something of a physiologist as well as a mathematician, this man; and he can tell what she has suffered since last night by the change in her voice alone. It has a dull and monotonous sound, and the tone seems to have gone out of it for ever. If the dead could speak, they might speak thus.
“This way, then, madame,” he says. “My first object is to convince you of the treachery of the man for whom you have sacrificed so much. Have you strength to live through the discovery?”
“I lived through last night. Come, monsieur, waste no more time in words, or I shall think you are a charlatan. Let me hear from his lips that I have cause to hate him.”
“Follow me, then, and softly.”
He leads her into the wood. The trees are very young as yet, but all is obscure to-night. There is not a star in the sky; the December night is dark and cold. A slight fall of snow has whitened the ground, and deadens the sound of footsteps. Raymond and Valerie might be two shadows, as they glide amongst the trees. After they have walked about a quarter of a mile, he catches her by the arm, and draws her hurriedly into the shadow of a group of young pine-trees. “Now,” he says, “now listen.”
She hears a voice whose every tone she knows. At first there is a rushing sound in her ears, as if all the blood were surging from her heart up to her brain; but presently she hears distinctly; presently too, her eyes grow somewhat accustomed to the gloom; and she sees a few paces from her the dim outline of a tall figure, familiar to her. It is Gaston de Lancy, who is standing with one arm round the slight waist of a young girl, his head bending down with the graceful droop she knows so well, as he looks in her face.
Marolles’ voice whispers in her ear, “The girl is a dancer from one of the minor theatres, whom he knew before he was a great man. Her name, I think, is Rosette, or something like it. She loves him very much; perhaps almost as much as you do, in spite of the quarterings on your shield.”
He feels the slender hand, which before disdained to lean upon his arm, now clasp his wrist, and tighten, as if each taper finger were an iron vice.
“Listen,” he says again. “Listen to the drama, madame. I am the chorus!”
It is the girl who is speaking. “But, Gaston, this marriage, this marriage, which has almost broken my heart.”
“Was a sacrifice to our love, my Rosette. For your sake alone would I have made such a sacrifice. But this haughty lady’s wealth will make us happy in a distant land. She little thinks, poor fool, for whose sake I endure her patrician airs, her graces of the old régime, her caprices, and her folly. Only be patent, Rosette, and trust me. The day that is to unite us for ever is not far distant, believe me.”
It is the voice of Gaston de Lancy. Who should better know those tones than his wife? Who should better know them than she to whose proud heart they strike death?
The girl speaks again. “And you do not love this fine lady, Gaston? Only tell me that you do not love her!”
Again the familiar voice speaks. “Love her! Bah! We never love these fine ladies who give us such tender glances from opera-boxes. We never admire these great heiresses, who fall in love with a handsome face, and have not enough modesty to keep the sentiment a secret; who think they honour us by a marriage which they are ashamed to confess; and who fancy we must needs be devoted to them, because, after their fashion, they are in love with us.”
“Have you heard enough?” asked Raymond Marolles.
“Give me a pistol or a dagger!” she gasped, in a hoarse whisper; “let me shoot him dead, or stab him to the heart, that I may go away and die in peace!”
“So,” muttered Raymond, “she has heard enough. Come, madame. Yet — stay, one last look. You are sure that is Monsieur de Lancy?”
The man and the girl are standing a few yards from them; his back is turned to Valerie, but she would know him amongst a thousand by the dark hair and the peculiar bend of the head.
“Sure!” she answers. “Am I myself?”
“Come, then; we have another place to visit to-night. You are satisfied, are you not, madame, now that you have had ocular demonstration?”
CHAPTER V. THE KING OF SPADES.
WHEN Monsieur Marolles offers his arm to lead Valerie de Cevennes back to the coach, it is accepted passively enough. Little matter now what new degradation she endures. Her pride can never fall lower than it has fallen. Despised by the man she loved so tenderly, the world’s contempt is nothing to her.
In a few minutes they are both seated in the coach driving through the Champs Elyseès.
“Are you taking me home?” she asks.
“No, madame, we have another errand, as I told you.”
“And that errand?”
“I am going to take you where you will have your fortune told.”
“My fortune!” she exclaims, with a bitter laugh.
“Bah! madame,” says her companion. “Let us understand each other. I hope I have not to deal with a romantic and lovesick girl. I will not gall your pride by recalling to your recollection in what a contemptible position I have found you. I offer my services to rescue you from that contemptible position; but I do so in the firm belief that you are a woman of spirit, courage, and determination, and—”
“And that I can pay you well,” she adds, scornfully.
“And that you can pay me well. I am no Don Quixote, madame; nor have I any great respect for that gentleman. Believe me,
I intend that you shall pay me well for my services, as you will learn by-and-by.”
Again there is the cold glitter in the blue eyes, and the ominous smile which a moustache does well to hide.
“But,” he continues, “if you have a mind to break your heart for an opera-singer’s handsome face, go and break it in your boudoir, madame, with no better confidante than your lady’s-maid; for you are not worthy of the services of Raymond Marolles.”
“You rate your services very high, then, monsieur?”
“Perhaps. Look you madame: you despise me because I am an adventurer. Had I been born in the purple — lord, even in my cradle, of wide lands and a great name, you would respect me. Now, I respect myself because I am an adventurer; because by the force alone of my own mind I have risen from what I was, to be what I am. I will show you my cradle some day. It had no tapestried coverlet or embroidered curtains, I can assure you.”
They are driving now through a dark street, in a neighbourhood utterly unknown to the lady.
“Where are you taking me?” she asks again, with something like fear in her voice.
“As I told you before, to have your fortune told. Nay, madame, unless you trust me, I cannot serve you. Remember, it is to my interest to serve you well: you can therefore have no cause for fear.”
As he speaks they stop before a ponderous gateway in the blank wall of a high dark-looking house. They are somewhere in the neighbourhood of Notre Dame, for the grand old towers loom dimly in the darkness. Monsieur Marolles gets out of the coach and rings a bell, at the sound of which the porter opens the door. Raymond assists Valerie to dismount, and leads her across a courtyard into a little hall, and up a stone staircase to the fifth story of the house. At another time her courage might have failed her in this strange house, at so late an hour, with this man, of whom she knows nothing; but she is reckless to-night.
There is noting very alarming in the aspect of the room into which Raymond leads her. It is a cheerful little apartment lighted with gas. There is a small stove, near a table, before which is seated a gentlemanly-looking man, of some forty years of age. He has a very pale face, a broad forehead, from which the hair is brushed away behind the ears: he wears blue spectacles, which entirely conceal his eyes, and in a manner shade his face. You cannot tell what he is thinking of; for it is a peculiarity of this man that the mouth, which with other people is generally the most expressive feature, has with him no expression whatever. It is a thin, straight line, which opens and shuts as he speaks, but which never curves into a smile, or contracts when he frowns.
He is deeply engaged, bending over a pack of cards spread out on the green cloth which covers the table, as if he were playing écarté without an opponent, when Raymond opens the door; but he rises at the sight of the lady, and bows low to her. He has the air of a student rather than of a man of the world.
“My good Blurosset,” says Raymond, “I have brought a lady to see you, to whom I have been speaking very highly of your talents.”
“With the pasteboard or the crucible?” asks the impassible mouth.
“Both, my dear fellow; we shall want both your talents. Sit down, madame; I must do the honours of the apartment, for my friend Laurent Blurosset is too much a man of science to be a man of gallantry. Sit down, madame; place yourself at this table — there, opposite Monsieur Blurosset, and then to business.”
This Raymond Marolles, of whom she knows absolutely nothing, has a strange influence over Valerie; an influence against which she no longer struggles. She obeys him passively, and seats herself before the little green baize-covered table.
The blue spectacles of Monsieur Laurent Blurosset look at her attentively for two or three minutes. As for the eyes behind the spectacles, she cannot even guess what might be revealed in their light. The man seems to have a strange advantage in looking at every one as from behind a screen. His own face, with hidden eyes and inflexible mouth, is like a blank wall.
“Now then, Blurosset, we will begin with the pasteboard. Madame would like to have her fortune told. She knows of course that this fortune-telling is mere charlatanism, but she wishes to see one of the cleverest charlatans.”
“Charlatanism! Charlatan! Well, it doesn’t matter. I believe in what I read here, because I find it true. The first time I find a false meaning in these bits of pasteboard I shall throw them into that fire, and never touch a card again. They’ve been the hobby of twenty years, but you know I could do it, Englishman!”
“Englishman!” exclaimed Valerie, looking up with astonishment.
“Yes,” answered Raymond, laughing; “a surname which Monsieur Blurosset has bestowed upon me, in ridicule of my politics, which happened once to resemble those of our honest neighbour, John Bull.”
Monsieur Blurosset nods an assent to Raymond’s assertion, as he takes the cards in his thin yellow-white hands and begins shuffling them. He does this with a skill peculiar to himself, and you could almost guess in watching him that these little pieces of pasteboard have been his companions for twenty years. Presently he arranges them in groups of threes, fives, sevens, and nines, on the green baize, reserving a few cards in his hand; then the blue spectacles are lifted and contemplate Valerie for two or three seconds.
“Your friend is the queen of spades,” he says, turning to Raymond.
“Decidedly,” replies Monsieur Marolles. “How the insipid diamond beauties fade beside this gorgeous loveliness of the south!”
Valerie does not hear the compliment, which at another time she would have resented as an insult. She is absorbed in watching the groups of cards over which the blue spectacles are so intently bent.
Monsieur Blurosset seems to be working some abstruse calculations with these groups of cards, assisted by those he has in his hand. The spectacles wander from the threes to the nines; from the sevens to the fives; back again; across again; from five to nine, from three to seven; from five to three, from seven to nine. Presently he says —
“The king of spades is everywhere here.” He does not look up as he speaks — never raising the spectacles from the cards. His manner of speaking is so passionless and mechanical, that he might almost be some calculating automaton.
“The king of spades,” says Raymond, “is a dark and handsome young man.”
“Yes,” says Blurosset, “he’s everywhere beside the queen of spades.”
Valerie in spite of herself is absorbed by this man’s words. She never takes her ayes from the spectacles and the thin pale lips of the fortune-teller.
“I do not like his influence. It is bad. This king of spades is dragging the queen down, down into the very mire.” Valerie’s cheeks can scarcely grow whiter than it has been ever since the revelation of the Bois de Boulogne, but she cannot repress a shudder at these words.
“There is a falsehood,” continues Monsieur Blurosset; “and there is a fair woman here.”
“A fair woman! That girl we saw to-night is fair,” whispers Raymond. “No doubt Monsieur Don Giovanni admires blondes, having himself the southern beauty.”
“The fair woman is always with the king of spades,” says the fortune-teller. “There is here no falsehood — nothing but devotion. The king of spades can be true; he is true to this diamond woman; but for the queen of spades he has nothing but treachery.”
“Is there anything more on the cards?” asks Raymond.
“Yes! A priest — a marriage — money. Ah! this king of spades imagines that he is within reach of a great fortune.”
“Does he deceive himself?”
“Yes! Now the treachery changes sides. The queen of spades is in it now — But stay — the traitor, the real traitor is here; this fair man — the knave of diamonds—”
Raymond Marolles lays his white hand suddenly upon the card to which Blurosset is pointing, and says, hurriedly, —
“Bah! You have told us all about yesterday; now tell us of to-morrow.” And then he adds, in a whisper, in the ear of Monsieur Blurosset, —
“F
ool! have you forgotten your lesson?”
“They will speak the truth,” mutters the fortune-teller. “I was carried away by them. I will be more careful.”
This whispered dialogue is unheard by Valerie, who sits immovable, awaiting the sentence of the oracle, as if the monotonous voice of Monsieur Blurosset were the voice of Nemesis.
“Now then for the future,” says Raymond. “It is possible to tell what has happened. We wish to pass the confines of the possible: tell us, then, what is going to happen.”
Monsieur Blurosset collects the cards, shuffles them, and rearranges them in groups, as before. Again the blue spectacles wander. From three to nine; from nine to seven; from seven to five; Valerie following them with bright and hollow eyes. Presently the fortune-teller says, in his old mechanical way, —
“The queen of spades is very proud.”
“Yes,” mutters Raymond in Valerie’s ear. “Heaven help the king who injures such a queen!”
She does not take her eyes from the blue spectacles of Monsieur Blurosset; but there is a tightening of her determined mouth which seems like an assent to this remark.
“She can hate as well as love. The king of spades is in danger,” says the fortune-teller.
There is, for a few minutes, dead silence, while the blue spectacles shift from group to group of cards; Valerie intently watching them, Raymond intently watching her.
This time there seems to be something difficult in the calculation of the numbers. The spectacles shift hither and thither, and the thin white lips move silently and rapidly, from seven to nine, and back again to seven.
“There is something on the cards that puzzles you,” says Raymond, breaking the deathly silence. “What is it?”
“A death!” answers the passionless voice of Monsieur Blurosset. “A violent death, which bears no outward sign of violence. I said, did I not, that the king of spades was in danger?”
“You did.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 16
