Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  And it does seem hard, oh my brethren, that there should be any limit to the magic power of gold! It may exclude bad airs, foul scents, ugly sights, and jarring sounds; it may surround its possessors with beauty, grace, art, luxury, and so-called pleasure; but it cannot shut out death or care; for to these stern visitors Mayfair and St. Giles’s must alike open their reluctant doors whenever the dreaded guests may be pleased to call.

  You do not send cards for your morning concerts, or fêtes champêtres, or thés dansantes, to Sorrow or Sadness, oh noble duchesses and countesses; but have you never seen their faces in the crowd when you least looked to meet them?

  Through the foliage and rich blossoms in the conservatory, and through the white damask curtains of the long French window, the autumn sunshine comes with subdued light into a boudoir on the second floor of a large house in Park Lane. The velvet-pile carpets in this room and the bedchamber and dressing room adjoining, are made in imitation of a mossy ground on which autumn leaves have fallen; so exquisite, indeed, is the design, that it is difficult to think that the light breeze which enters at the open window cannot sweep away the fragile leaf, which seems to flutter in the sun. The walls are of the palest cream-colour, embellished with enamelled portraits of Louis the Sixteenth, Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, and the unfortunate boy prisoner of the Temple, let into the oval panels on the four sides of the room. Everything in this apartment, though perfect in form and colour, is subdued and simple; there are none of the buhl and marqueterie cabinets, the artificial flowers, ormolu clocks, French prints, and musical boxes which might adorn the boudoir of an opera-dancer or the wife of a parvenu. The easy-chairs and luxurious sofas are made of a polished white wood, and are covered with white damask. On the marble mantelpiece there are two or three vases of the purest and most classical forms; and these, with Canovo’s bust of Napoleon, are the only ornaments in the room. Near the fireplace, in which burns a small fire, there is a table loaded with books, French, English, and German, the newest publications of the day; but they are tossed in a great heap, as if they had one by one been looked at and cast aside unread. By this table there is a lady seated, whose beautiful face is rendered still more striking by the simplicity of her black dress.

  This lady is Valerie de Lancy, now Countess de Marolles; for Monsieur Marolles has expended some part of his wife’s fortune upon certain estates in the south of France which give him the title of Count de Marolles.

  A lucky man, this Raymond Marolles. A beautiful wife, a title, and an immense fortune are no such poor prizes in the lottery of life. But this Raymond is a man who likes to extend his possessions; and in South America he has established himself as a banker on a large scale, and he has lately come over to England with his wife and son, for the purpose of establishing a branch of this bank in London. Of course, a man with his aristocratic connections and enormous fortune is respected and trusted throughout the continent of South America.

  Eight years have taken nothing from the beauty of Valerie de Marolles. The dark eyes have the same fire, the proud head the same haughty grace; but alone and in repose the face has a shadow of deep and settled sadness that is painful to look upon, for it is the gloom sadness of despair. The world in which this woman lives, which knows her only as the brilliant, witty, vivacious, and sparkling Parisian, little dreams that she talks because she dare not think; that she is restless and vivacious because she dare not be still; that she hurries from place to place in pursuit of pleasure and excitement because only in excitement, and in a life which is as false and hollow as the mirth she assumes, can she fly from the phantom which pursues her. O shadow that will not be driven away! O pale and pensive ghost, that rises before us in every hour and in eve scene, to mock the noisy and tumultuous revelry which, by the rule of opposites, we call Pleasure! — which of us is free from your haunting presence, O phantom, whose name is The Past?

  Valerie is not alone; a little boy, between seven and eight years of age, is standing at her knee, reading aloud to her from a book of fables.

  “A frog beheld an ox—” he began. But as he read the first words the door of the boudoir opened, and a gentleman entered, whose pale fair face, blue eyes, light eyelashes, and dark hair and eyebrows proclaimed him to be the husband of Valerie.

  “Ah,” he said, glancing with a sneer at the boy, who lifted his dark eyes for a moment, and then dropped them on his book with an indifference that bespoke little love for the new-comer, “you are teaching your child, madame. Teaching him to read? Is not that an innovation? The boy has a fine voice, and the ear of a maestro. Let him learn the solfeggi, and very likely one of these days he will be as great a man as—”

  Valerie looks at him with the old contempt, the old icy coldness in her face. “Do you want anything of me this morning, monsieur?” she asked.

  “No, madame. Having the entire command of your fortune, what can I ask? A smile? Nay, madame; you keep your smiles for your son; and again, they are so cheap in London, the smiles of beauty.”

  “Then, monsieur, since you require nothing at my hands, may I ask why you insult me with your presence?”

  “You teach your son to respect — his father, madame,” said Raymond with a sneer, throwing himself into an easy-chair opposite Valerie. “You set the future Count de Marolles a good example. He will be a model of filial piety, as you are of—”

  “Do not fear, Monsieur de Marolles, but that one day I shall teach my son to respect his father; fear rather lest I teach him to avenge—”

  “Nay, madame, it is for you to fear that.”

  During the whole of this brief dialogue, the little boy has held his mother’s hand, looking with his serious eyes anxiously in her face. Young as he is, there is a courage in his glance and a look of firmness in his determined under-lip that promises well for the future. Valerie turns from the cynical face of her husband, and lays a caressing hand on the boy’s dark ringlets. Do those ringlets remind her of any other dark hair? Do any other eyes look out in the light of those she gazes at now?

  “You were good enough to ask me just now, madame, the purport of my visit; your discrimination naturally suggesting to you that there is nothing so remarkably attractive in the society to be found in these apartments, infantine lectures in words of one syllable included” — he glances towards the boy as he speaks, and the cruel blue eyes are never so cruel as when they look that way—”as to induce me to enter them without some purpose or other.”

  “Perhaps monsieur will be so good as to be brief in stating that purpose? He may imagine, that being entirely devoted to my son, I do not choose to have his studies, or even his amusements, interrupted.”

  “You bring up young Count Almaviva like a prince, madame. It is something to have good blood in one’s veins, even on one side—”

  If she could have killed him with a look of those bright dark eyes, he would have fallen dead as he spoke the words that struck one by one at her broken heart. He knew his power; he knew wherein it lay, and how to use it — and he loved to wound her; because, though he had won wealth and rank from her, he had never conquered her, and he felt that even in her despair she defied him.

  “You are irrelevant, monsieur. Pray be so kind as to say what brought you here, where I would not insult your good sense by saying you are a welcome visitor.”

  “Briefly then, madame. Our domestic arrangements do not please me. We are never known to quarrel, it is true; but we are rarely seen to address each other, and we are not often seen in public together. Very well this in South America, where we were king and queen of our circle — here it will not do. To say the least, it is mysterious. The fashionable world is scandalous. People draw inferences — monsieur does not love madame, and he married her for her money; or, on the other hand, madame does not love monsieur, but married him because she had some motive for so doing. This will not do, countess. A banker must be respectable, or people may be afraid to trust him. I must be, what I am now called, ‘the eminent banker;’ and I must be
universally trusted.”

  “That you may the better betray, monsieur; that is the motive for winning people’s confidence, in your code of moral economy, is it not?”

  “Madame is becoming a logician; her argument by induction does her credit.”

  “But, your business, monsieur?”

  “Was to signify my wish, madame, that we should be seen oftener together in public. The Italian Opera, now, madame, though you have so great a distaste for it — a distaste which, by-the-bye, you did not possess during the early period of your life — is a very popular resort. All the world will be there tonight, to witness the début of a singer of continental celebrity. Perhaps you will do me the honour to accompany me there?”

  “I do not take any interest, monsieur—”

  “In the fortunes of tenor singers. Ah, how completely we outlive the foolish fancies of our youth! But you will occupy the box on the grand tier of her Majesty’s Theatre, which I have taken for the season. It is to your son’s — to Cherubino’s interest, for you to comply with my request.” He glances towards the boy once more, with a sneer on his thin lips, and then turns and bows to Valerie, as he says —

  “Au revoir, madame. I shall order the carriage for eight o’clock.”

  A horse, which at a sale at Tattersall’s had attracted the attention of all the votaries of the Corner, for the perfection of his points and the enormous price which he realized, caracoles before the door, under the skilful horsemanship of a well-trained and exquisitely-appointed groom. Another horse, equally high-bred, waits for his rider, the Count de Marolles. The groom dismounts, and holds the bridle, as the gentleman emerges from the door and springs into the saddle. A consummate horseman the Count de Marolles; a handsome man too, in spite of the restless and shifting blue eyes and the thin nervous lips. His dress is perfect, just keeping pace with the fashion sufficiently to denote high ton in the wearer, without outstripping it, so as to stamp him a parvenu. It has that elegant and studious grace which, to a casual observer, looks like carelessness, but which is in reality the perfection of the highest art of all — the art of concealing art.

  It is only twelve o’clock, and there are not many people of any standing in Piccadilly this September morning; but of the few gentlemen on horseback who pass Monsieur de Marolles, the most aristocratic-looking bow to him. He is well known in the great world as the eminent banker, the owner of a superb house in Park Lane. He possesses a man cook of Parisian renown, who wears the cross of the Legion of Honour, given him by the first Napoleon on the occasion of a dinner at Talleyrand’s. He has estates in South America and in France; a fortune, said to be boundless; and a lovely wife. For the rest, if his own patent of nobility is of rather fresh date, and if, as impertinent people say, he never had a grandfather, or indeed anything in the way of a father to speak of, it must be remembered that great men, since the days of mythic history, have been celebrated for being born in rather an accidental manner.

  But why a banker? Why, possessed of an enormous fortune, try to extend that fortune by speculation? That question lies between Raymond de Marolles and his conscience. Perhaps there are no bounds to the ambition of this man, who entered Paris eight years ago an obscure adventurer, and who, according to some accounts, is now a millionaire.

  CHAPTER II. MR. PETERS SEES A GHOST.

  MR. PETERS, pensioned off by Richard’s mother with an income of a hundred pounds a year, has taken and furnished for himself a small house in a very small square not far from Mr. Darley’s establishment, and rejoicing in the high-sounding address of Wellington Square, Waterloo Road. Having done this, he feels that he has nothing more to do in life than to retire upon his laurels, and enjoy the otium cum dignitate which he has earned so well.

  Of course Mr. Peters, as a single man, cannot by any possibility do for himself; and as — having started an establishment of his own — he is no longer in a position to be taken in and done for, the best thing he can do is to send for Kuppins; accordingly he does send for Kuppins.

  Kuppins is to be cook, housekeeper, laundress, and parlour-maid all in one; and she is to have ten pounds per annum, and her tea, sugar, and beer — wages only known in Slopperton in very high and aristocratic families where footmen are kept and no followers or Sundays out allowed.

  So Kuppins comes to London, bringing the “fondling” with her; and arriving at the Euston Square station at eight o’clock in the evening, is launched into the dazzlingly bewildering gaiety of the New Road.

  Well, it is not paved with gold certainly, this marvellous city and it is, maybe, on the whole, just a little muddy. But oh, the shops — what emporiums of splendour! What delightful excitement in being nearly run over every minute! — to say nothing of that delicious chance of being knocked down by the crowd which is collected round a drunken woman expostulating with a policeman. Of course there must be a general election, or a great fire, or a man hanging, or a mad ox at large, or a murder just committed in the next street, or something wonderful going on, O6 or there never could be such crowds of excited pedestrians, and such tearing and rushing, and smashing of cabs, carts, omnibuses, and parcel-delivery vans, all of them driven by charioteers in the last stage of insanity, and drawn by horses as wild as that time-honoured steed employed in the artistic and poetical punishment of our old friend Mazeppa. Tottenham Court Road! What a magnificent promenade! Occupied, of course, by the houses of the nobility! And is that magnificent establishment with the iron shutters Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London? Kuppins inclines to thinking it must be the Tower of London, because the iron shutters look so warlike, and are evidently intended as a means of defence in case of an attack from the French.

  Kuppins is told by her escort, Mr. Peters, that this is the emporium of Messrs. Shoolbred, haberdashers and linen-drapers. She thinks she must be dreaming, and wants to be pinched and awakened before she proceeds any further. It is rather a trying journey for Mr. Peters; for Kuppins wants to stop the cab every twenty yards or so, to get out and look at something in this wonderful Tottenham Court Road.

  But the worst of Kuppins, perhaps, is, that she has almost an insane desire to see that Tottenham Court whence Tottenham Court Road derives its name; and when told that there is no such place, and never was — leastways, never as Mr. Peters heard of — she begins to think London, in spite of all its glories, rather a take-in. Then, again, Kuppins is very much disappointed at not passing either Westminster Abbey or the Bank of England, which she had made up her mind were both situated at Charing Cross; and it was a little trying for Mr. Peters to be asked whether every moderate-sized church they passed was St. Paul’s Cathedral, or every little bit of dead wall Newgate. To go over a bridge, and for it not to be London Bridge, but Waterloo Bridge, was in itself a mystery; but to be told that the Shot Tower on the Surrey side was not the Monument was too bewildering for endurance. As to the Victoria Theatre, which was illuminated to such a degree that the box-entrance seemed as a pathway to fairyland, Kuppins was so thoroughly assured in her own mind of its being Drury Lane and nothing else, unless, perhaps, the Houses of Parliament or Covent Garden — that no protestations on Mr. Peters’s fingers could root out the fallacy.

  But the journey came to an end at last; and Kuppins, safe with bag and baggage at No. 17, Wellington Square, partook of real London saveloys and real London porter with Mr. Peters and the “fondling,” in an elegant front parlour, furnished with a brilliantly polished but rather rickety Pembroke table, that was covered with a Royal Stuart plaid woollen cloth; half-a-dozen cane-seated chairs, so new and highly polished as to be apt to adhere to the garments of the person who so little understood their nature or properties as to attempt to sit upon them; a Kidderminster carpet, the pattern of which was of the size adapted to the requirements of a town hall, but which looked a little disproportionate to Mr. Peters’s apartment, two patterns and a quarter stretching the entire length of the room; and a mantelpiece ornamented with a looking-glass divided into three compartments by gilded Corinthian
pillars, and further adorned with two black velvet kittens, one at each corner, and a particoloured velvet boy on a brown velvet donkey in the centre.

  The next morning Mr. Peters announced his intention of taking the “fondling” into the city of London, for the purpose of showing him the outside of St. Paul’s, the Monument, Punch and Judy, and other intellectual exhibitions adapted to his tender years. Kuppins was for starting then and there on a visit to the pig-faced lady, than which magnificent creature she could not picture any greater wonder in the whole metropolis; but Kuppins had to stay at home in her post of housekeeper, and to inspect and arrange the domestic machinery of No. 17, Wellington Square. So the “fondling,” being magnificently arrayed in a clean collar and a pair of boots that were too small for him, took hold of his protector’s hand, and they sallied forth.

  If anything, Punch and Judy bore off the palm in this young gentleman’s judgment of the miracles of the big village.

  It was not so sublime a sight, perhaps, as the outside of St. Paul’s; but, on the other hand, it was a great deal cleaner; and the “fondling” would have liked to have seen Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece picked out with a little fresh paint before he was called upon to admire it. The Monument, no doubt, was very charming in the abstract; but unless he could have been perpetually on the top of it, and perpetually within a hair’s breadth of precipitating himself on to the pavement below, it wasn’t very much in his way. But Punch, with his delightfully original style of elocution, his overpoweringly comic domestic passages with Judy, and the dolefully funny dog with a frill round his neck and an evident dislike for his profession — this, indeed, was an exhibition to be seen continually, and to be more admired the more continually seen, as no doubt the “fondling” would have said had he been familiar with Dr. Johnson, which, it is to be hoped, for his own peace of mind, he wasn’t.

  It is rather a trying day for Mr. Peters, and he is not sorry then, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, he has taken the “fondling” all round the Bank of England — (that young gentleman insisting on peering in at the great massive windows, in the fond hope of seeing the money) — and has shown him the road back of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, and the Clearing-house, and they are going out of Lombard Street, of their way to an omnibus which will take them home. But just as they are leaving the street the “fondling” makes a dead stop, and constrains Mr. Peters to do the same.