Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  From three to five, from five to nine, from nine to seven, from seven to nine: the groups of cards form a circle: three times round the circle, as the sun goes; back again, and three times round the circle in a contrary direction: across the circle from three to seven, from seven to five, from five to nine, and the blue spectacles come to a dead stop at nine.

  “Before twelve o’clock to-morrow night the king of spades will be dead!” says the monotonous voice of Monsieur Blurosset. The voices of the clocks of Paris seem to take up Monsieur Blurosset’s voice as they strike the hour of midnight.

  Twenty-four hours for the king of spades!

  Monsieur Blurosset gathers up his cards and drops them into his pocket. Malicious people say that he sleeps with them under his pillow; that he plays écarté by himself in his sleep; and that he has played piquet with a very tall dark gentleman, whom the porter never let either in or out, and who left a sulphureous and suffocating atmosphere behind him in Monsieur Blurosset’s little apartment.

  “Good!” says Monsieur Raymond Marolles. “So much for the pasteboard. Now for the crucible.”

  For the first time since the discovery of the treachery of her husband Valerie de Lancy smiles. She has a beautiful smile, which cures the delicate lips without distorting them, and which brightens in her large dark eyes with a glorious fire of the sunny south. But for all that, Heaven save the man who has injured her from the light of such a smile as hers of to-night.

  “You want my assistance in some matters of chemistry?” asks Blurosset.

  “Yes! I forgot to tell you, madame, that my friend Laurent Blurosset — though he chooses to hide himself in one of the most obscure streets of Paris — is perhaps one of the greatest men in this mighty city. He is a chemist who will one day work a revolution in the chemical science; but he is a fanatic, madame, or, let me rather say, he is a lover, and his crucible is his mistress. This blind devotion to a science is surely only another form of the world’s great madness — love! Who knows what bright eyes a problem in Euclid may have replaced? Who can tell what fair hair may not have been forgotten in the search after a Greek root?”

  Valerie shivers. Heaven help that shattered heart! Every word that touches on the master-passion of her life is a wound that pierces it to the core.

  “You do not smoke, Blurosset. Foolish man, you do not know how to live. Pardon, madame.” He lights his cigar at the green-shaded gas-lamp, seats himself close to the stove, and smokes for a few minutes in silence.

  Valerie, still seated before the little table, watches him with fixed eyes, waiting for him to speak.

  In the utter shipwreck of her every hope this adventurer is the only anchor to which she can cling. Presently he says, in his most easy and indifferent manner, —

  “It was the fashion at the close of the fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth century for the ladies of Italy to acquire a certain knowledge of some of the principles of chemistry. Of course, at the head of these ladies we must place Lucretia Borgia.”

  Monsieur Blurosset nods an assent. Valerie looks from Raymond to the blue spectacles; but the face of the chemist testifies no shade of surprise at the singularity of Raymond’s observation.

  “Then,” continued Monsieur Marolles, “if a lady was deeply injured or cruelly insulted by the man she loved; if her pride was trampled in the dust, or her name and her weakness held up to ridicule and contempt — then she knew how to avenge herself and to defy the world. A tender pressure of the traitor’s hand; a flower or a ribbon given as a pledge of love; the leaves of a book hastily turned over with the tips of moistened fingers — people had such vulgar habits in those days — and behold the gentleman died, and no one was any the wiser but the worms, with whose constitutions aqua tofana at second hand may possibly have disagreed.”

  “Vultures have died from the effects of poisoned carrion,” muttered Monsieur Blurosset.

  “But in this degenerate age,” continued Raymond, “what can our Parisian ladies do when they have reason to be revenged on a traitor? The poor blunderers can only give him half a pint of laudanum, or an ounce or so of arsenic, and run the risk of detection half an hour after his death! I think that time is a circle, and that we retreat as we advance, in spite of our talk of progress.”

  His horrible words, thrice horrible when contrasted with the coolness of his easy manner, freeze Valerie to the very heart; but she does not make one effort to interrupt him.

  “Now, my good Blurosset,” he resumes, “what I want of you is this. Something which will change a glass of wine into a death-warrant, but which will defy the scrutiny of a college of physicians. This lady wishes to take a lesson in chemistry. She will, of course, only experimentalise on rabbits, and she is so tender-hearted that, as you see, she shudders even at the thought of that little cruelty. For the rest, to repay you for your trouble, if you will give her pen and ink, she will write you an order on her banker for five thousand francs.”

  Monsieur Blurosset appears no more surprised at this request than if he had been asked for a glass of water. He goes to a cabinet, which he opens, and after a little search selects a small tin box, from which he takes a few grains of white powder, which he screws carelessly in a scrap of newspaper. He is so much accustomed to handling these compounds that he treats them with very small ceremony.

  “It is a slow poison,” he says. “For a full-grown rabbit use the eighth part of what you have there; the whole of it would poison a man; but death in either case would not be immediate. The operation of the poison occupies some hours before it terminates fatally.”

  “Madame will use it with discretion,” says Raymond; “do not fear.”

  Monsieur Blurosset holds out the little packet as if expecting Valerie to take it; she recoils with a ghastly face, and shudders as she looks from the chemist to Raymond Marolles.

  “In this degenerate age,” says Raymond, looking her steadily in the face, “our women cannot redress their own wrongs, however deadly those wrongs may be; they must have fathers, brothers, or uncles to fight for them, and the world to witness the struggle. Bah! There is not a woman in France who is an better than a sentimental schoolgirl.”

  Valerie stretches out her small hand to receive the packet.

  “Give me the pen, monsieur,” says she; and the chemist presents her a half-sheet of paper, on which she writes hurriedly an order on her bankers, which she signs in full with her maiden name.

  Monsieur Blurosset looked over the paper as she wrote.

  “Valerie de Cevennes!” he exclaimed. “I did not know I was honoured by so aristocratic a visitor.”

  Valerie put her hand to her head as if bewildered. “My name!” she muttered, “I forgot, I forgot.”

  “What do you fear, madame?” asked Raymond, with a smile. “Are you not among friends?”

  “For pity’s sake, monsieur,” she said, “give me your arm, and take me back to the carriage! I shall drop down dead if I stay longer in this room.”

  The blue spectacles contemplated her gravely for a moment. Monsieur Blurosset laid one cold hand upon her pulse, and with the other took a little bottle from the cabinet, out of which he gave his visitor a few drops of a transparent liquid.

  “She will do now,” he said to Raymond, “till you get her home; then see that she takes this,” he added, handing Monsieur Marolles another phial; “it is an opiate which will procure her six hours’ sleep. Without that she would go mad.”

  Raymond led Valerie from the room; but, once outside, her head fell heavily on his shoulder, and he was obliged to carry her down the steep stairs.

  “I think,” he muttered to himself as he went out into the courtyard with his unconscious burden, “I think we have sealed the doom of the king of spades!”

  CHAPTER VI. A GLASS OF WINE.

  UPON a little table in the boudoir of the pavilion lay a letter. It was the first thing Valerie De Lancy beheld on entering the room, with Raymond Marolles by her side, half an hour after she had left the apartmen
t of Monsieur Blurosset. This letter was in the handwriting of her husband, and it bore the postmark of Rouen. Valerie’s face told her companion whom the letter came from before she took it in her hand.

  “Read it,” he said, coolly. “It contains his excuses, no doubt. Let us see what pretty story he has invented. In his early professional career his companions surnamed him Baron Munchausen.”

  Valerie’s hand shook as she broke the seal; but she read the letter carefully through, and then turning to Raymond she said—”You are right; his excuse is excellent, only a little too transparent: listen.”

  “‘The reason of my absence from Paris’ — (absence from Paris, and to-night in the Bois de Boulogne) ‘is most extraordinary. At the conclusion of the opera last night, I was summoned to the stage-door, where I found a messenger waiting for me, who told me he had come post-haste from Rouen, where my mother was lying dangerously ill, and to implore me, if I wished to see her before her death, to start for that place immediately. Even my love for you, which you well know, Valerie, is the absorbing passion of my life, was forgotten in such a moment. I had no means of communicating with you without endangering our secret. Imagine, then, my surprise on my arrival here, to find that my mother is in perfect health, and had of course sent no messenger to me. I fear in this mystery some conspiracy which threatens the safety of our secret. I shall be in Paris to-night, but too late to see you. To-morrow at dusk, I shall be at the dear little pavilion, once more to be blest by a smile from the only eyes I love. — GASTON DE LANCY.”’

  “Rather a blundering epistle,” muttered Raymond. “I should really have given him credit for something better. You will receive him to-morrow evening, madame?”

  She knew so well the purport of this question that her hand almost involuntarily tightened on the little packet given her by Monsieur Blurosset, which she had held all this time, but she did not answer him.

  “You will receive him to-morrow; or by to-morrow night all Paris will know of this romantic but rather ridiculous marriage. It will be in all the newspapers — caricatured in all the printshops; Charivari will have a word or two about it, and little boys will cry it in the streets, a full, true, and particular account for only one sous. But then, as I said before, you are superior to your sex, and perhaps you will not mind this kind of thing.”

  “I shall see him to-morrow evening at dusk,” she said, in a hoarse whisper not pleasant to hear; “and I shall never see him again after to-morrow.”

  “Once more, then, good night,” says Raymond. “But stay, Monsieur begs you will take this opiate. Nay,” he muttered with a laugh as she looked at him strangely, “you may be perfectly assured of its harmlessness. Remember, I have not been paid yet.”

  He bowed, and left the room. She did not lift her eyes to look at him as he bade her adieu. Those hollow tearless eyes were fixed on the letter she held in her left hand. She was thinking of the first time she saw this handwriting, when every letter seemed a character inscribed in fire, because his hand had shaped it; when the tiniest scrap of paper covered with the most ordinary words was a precious talisman, a jewel of more price than the diamonds of all the Cevennes.

  The short winter’s day died out, and through the dusk a young man, in a thick greatcoat, walked rapidly along the road quiet street in which the pavilion stood. Once or twice he looked round to assure himself that he was unobserved. He tried the handle of the little wooden door, found it unfastened, opened it softly, and went in. In a few minutes he was in the boudoir, and by the side of Valerie. The girl’s proud face was paler than when he had last seen it; and when he tenderly asked the reason of this change, she said, —

  “I have been anxious about you, Gaston. You can scarcely wonder.”

  “The voice too, even your voice is changed,” he said anxiously. “Stay, surely I am the victim of no juggling snare. It is — it is Valerie.”

  The little boudoir was only lighted by the wood fire burning on the low hearth. He drew her towards the blaze, and looked her full in the face.

  “You would scarcely believe me,” he said; “but for the moment I half doubted if it were really you. The false alarm, the hurried journey, one thing and another have upset me so completely, that you seemed changed — altered; I can scarcely tell you how, but altered very much.”

  She seated herself in the easy-chair by the hearth. There was an embroidered velvet footstool at her feet, and he placed himself on this, and sat looking up in her face. She laid her slender hands on his dark hair, and looked straight into his eyes. Who shall read her thoughts at this moment? She had learnt to despise him, but she had never ceased to love him. She had cause to hate him; but she could scarcely have told whether the bitter anguish which rent her heart were nearer akin to love or hate.

  “Pshaw, Gaston!” she exclaimed, “you are full of silly fancies to-night. And I, you see, do not offer to reproach you once for the uneasiness you have caused me. See how readily I accept your excuse for your absence, and never breathe one doubt of its truth. Now, were I a jealous or suspicious woman, I might have a hundred doubts. I might think you did not love me, and fancy that your absence was a voluntary one. I might even be so foolish as to picture you with another whom you loved better than me.”

  “Valerie!” he said, reproachfully, raising her small hand to his lips.

  “Nay,” she cried, with a light laugh, “this might be the thought of a jealous woman. But could I think so of you, Gaston?”

  “Hark!” he said, starting and rising hastily; “did you not hear something?”

  “What?”

  “A rustling sound by that door — the door of your dressing-room. Finette is not there, is she? I left her in the anteroom below.”

  “No, no, Gaston; there is no one there; this is another of your silly fancies.”

  He glanced uneasily towards the door, but re-seated himself at her feet, and looked once more upward to the proudly beautiful face. Valerie did not look at her companion, but at the fire. Her dark eyes were fixed upon the blaze, and she seemed almost unconscious of Gaston de Lancy’s presence. What did she see in the red light? Her shipwrecked soul? The ruins of her hopes? The ghost of her dead happiness? The image of a long and dreary future, in which a love on whose foundation she had built a bright and peaceful life to come could have no part? What did she see? A warning arm stretched out to save her from the commission of a dreadful deed, which, once committed, must shut her out from all earthly sympathy, though not perhaps from heavenly forgiveness; or a stern finger pointing to the dark end to which she hastens with a purpose in her heart so strange and fearful to her she scarcely can believe it is her own, or that she is herself?

  With her left hand still upon the dark hair — which even now she could not touch without a tenderness, that, having no part in her nature of to-day, seemed like some relic of the wreck of the past — she stretched out her right arm towards a table near her, on which there were some decanters and glasses that clashed with a silvery sound under her touch.

  “I must try and cure you of your fancies, Gaston. My physician insists on my taking every day at luncheon a glass of that old Madeira of which my uncle is so fond. They have not removed the wine — you shall take some; pour it out yourself. See, here is the decanter. I will hold the glass for you.”

  She held the antique diamond-cut glass with a steady hand while Gaston poured the wine into it. The light from the wood fire flickered, and he spilt some of the Madeira over her dress. They both laughed at this, and her laugh rang out the clearer of the two.

  There was a third person who laughed; but his was a silent laugh. This third person was Monsieur Marolles, who stood within the half-open door that led into Valerie’s dressing-room.

  “So,” he says to himself, “this is even better than I had hoped. I feared his handsome face would shake her resolution. The light in those dark eyes is very beautiful, no doubt, but it has not long to burn.”

  As the firelight flashed upon the glass, Gaston held it for a
moment between his eyes and the blaze.

  “Your uncle’s wine is not very clear,” he said; “but I would drink the vilest vinegar from the worst tavern in Paris, if your poured it out for me, Valerie.”

  As he emptied the lass the little time-piece struck six.

  “I must go, Valerie. I play Gennaro in Lucretia Borgia, and the King is to be at the theatre to-night. You will come? I shall not sing well if you are not there.”

  “Yes, yes, Gaston.” She laid her hand upon her head as she spoke.

  “Are you ill?” he asked. anxiously.

  “No, no, it is nothing. Go, Gaston; you must not keep his Majesty waiting,” she said.

  I wonder whether as she spoke there rose the image in her mind of a King who reigns in undisputed power over the earth’s wide face; whose throne no revolution ever shook; whose edict no creature ever yet set aside, and to whom all terrible things give place, owning in him the King of Terrors!

  The young man took his wife in his arms and pressed his lips to her forehead. It was damp with a deadly cold perspiration.

  “I am sure you are ill, Valerie,” he said.

  She shivered violently, but pushing him towards the door, said, “No, no, Gaston; go, I implore you; you will be late; at the theatre you will see me. Till then, adieu.”

  He was gone. She closed the door upon him rapidly, and with one long shudder fell to the ground, striking her head against the gilded moulding of the door. Monsieur Marolles emerged from the shadow, and lifting her from the floor, placed her in the chair by the hearth. Her head fell heavily back upon the velvet cushions, but her large black eyes were open. I have said before, this woman was not subject to fainting-fits.

  She caught Raymond’s hand in hers with a convulsive grasp.

  “Madame,” he said, “you have shown yourself indeed a daughter of the haughty line of the De Cevennes. You have avenged yourself most nobly.”

  The large black eyes did not look at him. They were fixed on vacancy. Vacancy? No! there could be no such thing as vacancy for this woman. Henceforth for her the whole earth must be filled with one hideous phantom.