Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Winter lingered late that year. Though the green banks of every country lane and every hollow of the leafless woodland were starred with primroses and spangled with dog-violets, wintry winds were still wracking the forest trees, and whistling shrill among the London chimney-pots.

  March had come in like a lion, and continued to roar and bluster in leonine fashion to the very verge of April. A dry, dusty, bitter March, dealing largely in death and shipwreck. A villanous March, better calculated to inspire thoughts of suicide than even the fogs and creeping mists of November.

  But even this miserable March came to an end at last. The London season had begun. La Chicot was attracting not only medical students and lawyers’ clerks, the Stock Exchange, and the War Office, but the fine flower of the aristocracy — the topmost strawberries in the basket — the brobdignagian guardsmen, whose gloves were numbered nine and a half at the little hosier’s in Piccadilly, the dainty foplings who wore a lady’s six and three quarters, with four buttons, and who were beings of so frail and effeminate a type that a whisper through the telephone might blow them to the utmost ends of the earth. These opposite species, the athletics and the æsthetics, the hammer throwers, bicycle riders, boating men, hunting men, and pugilists, and the china collectors, art lunatics, and tame cat section of society, met and mingled in the stalls at the Prince Frederick, and resembled each other in nothing except their appreciation of La Chicot.

  Mr. Smolendo produced a new ballet early in April, a ballet which was as ridiculous and generally imbecile in plot and purpose as most of its kind, but which for scenery, dresses, and effects was supposed to surpass anything that had ever been accomplished at his theatre. Everything in this ballet tended to the glorification of La Chicot. She was the central figure, the cynosure: every crest was lowered to give prominence to hers, principal dancers were her handmaidens, a hundred ballet girls prostrated themselves before her throne, a hundred and fifty auxiliaries, specially engaged for this great spectacle, licked the dust beneath her feet. The final tableau, which was to cost Mr. Smolendo more money than he could calculate, was an apotheosis of La Chicot, a beautiful, bold, half-tipsy peasant, going to heaven on a telescopic arrangement of iron. It was a wonderful sight. The athletics called it ‘no end of jolly.’ The aesthetics described it as ‘unspeakably touching.’

  This final tableau was supposed to represent the coral caves of the Indian Ocean. Chicot was a mermaid who lured mariners to their doom beneath the wave. She lived in a jewelled cavern, a hall sparkling and shining with sapphires and emeralds and lapis-lazuli, all flooded with rainbow light, where she and her sister mermaidens, golden, glittering, and scaly, danced perpetually. Then came the end, and she floated upward through an ocean of blue gauze, in a moving frame of rosiest coral.

  The ironwork upon which she mounted was a somewhat complicated piece of machinery, a telescope in three parts, requiring nice adjustment on the part of the stage carpenter. It was perfectly safe if properly worked; but a hitch, the slightest carelessness in the working, would be perilous, and might be fatal.

  ‘I don’t like that business by any means,’ said Jack Chicot, when he saw his wife ascending to the sky borders, in the dust and gloom of rehearsal, clad in her practising petticoats, and with a lace-bordered handkerchief tied under her chin, like a coquettish nightcap. ‘It looks dangerous. Can’t you dispense with it, Smolendo?’

  ‘Impossible; it’s the great feature of the scene. Perfectly safe, I assure you. Roberts is the best carpenter in London.’

  Mr. Smolendo’s people were always the best. He had a knack of getting first-rate talent in every line, from his prima donna to his gasman.

  ‘He seems clever, but rather a queer-tempered man, I hear.’

  ‘Talent is always queer-tempered,’ answered Smolendo, lightly.’ ‘Amiability is the redeeming virtue of fools.’

  Mr. Chicot was not convinced. He took his wife aside presently in a grove of dingy wings and side-pieces, and entreated her to refuse that ascent in the coral bower.

  ‘Pas si bête,’ she answered, curtly. ‘I know what suits me. I shall look lovely in that coral frame with my hair down. You needn’t be frightened, my friend. Pas de danger. Or, if I should be killed — come, I don’t think that would break your heart. It’s a long time since you’ve left off caring for me as much as that.’

  She snapped her fingers under his nose, with one of those little audacious movements of hers which were infinitely fascinating — to strangers. Jack Chicot shuddered visibly. Yes, it was horribly true. Her death would be his release from bondage. Her death? Would he know himself, believe in his own identity, if she were gone, and he was free to walk the world again, his own master, with hopes and ambitions of his own, bearing his own name, not ashamed to look mankind in the face, no longer known as the husband of La Chicot?

  He persuaded her, earnestly, to have nothing to do with the ironwork that had been made to bear her to the theatrical skies. Why should she run such a risk? Any ballet girl would do as well, he argued.

  ‘Yes, and the ballet girl would show off her good looks, and get all the applause. I am not such a fool as to give her the chance. Don’t waste your breath in talking about it, Jack. I mean to do it.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, bitterly, ‘when did you ever renounce a caprice to please me?’

  ‘Perhaps never. I am a creature of caprices. It was a caprice that made me marry you — a caprice that made you marry me, and now we are both honestly tired. That’s a pity, isn’t it?’

  ‘I try to do my duty to you, my dear,’ he answered gravely, with a sigh.

  La Chicot had her own way, naturally, being one of those women who once having taken their bent are no more to be diverted than a mountain torrent which the rains have swollen. The new ballet was a success, the final tableau was a triumph for La Chicot. She looked lovely, in an attitude more perfect than anything that was ever done in marble — her round white arms lifted above her head, flinging back the loose branches of coral, her black hair covering her like a mantle. That long rich hair was one of her chief beauties — something to be remembered where all was beautiful.

  The machinery worked splendidly. Jack was at the wings the first night, anxious and watchful. A fragment of conversation which he heard just behind him while the coral bower was rising, did not tend to reassure him.

  ‘It’s all very well to-night,’ said one of the scene shifters to his mate, ‘they’re both sober; but when she’s drunk, and he’s drunk, God help her.’

  Jack went to Mr. Smolendo directly the curtain was down.

  ‘Well,’ cried the manager, radiant,’ a screaming success. There’s money in it. I shall run tins three hundred nights.’

  ‘I don’t like that ascent of my wife’s. I hear that the man who works the machinery is a drunkard.’

  ‘My dear fellow, these men all drink,’ answered Smolendo, cheerfully. ‘But Roberts is a treasure. He’s always sober in business.’

  Again Jack tried the effect of remonstrance with his wife, just as vainly as before.

  ‘If you weren’t a fool you would make Smolendo give me an extra five pounds a week on account of the danger, instead of worrying me about it,’ she said.

  ‘I am not going to make the safety of your life a question of money,’ he answered; and after this there was no more said between them on the subject of the coral bower, but that speech of the scene shifter’s haunted Jack Chicot.

  ‘When she is drunk.’ The memory of that speech was bitter. Though his wife’s habits had long been patent to him, it was not the less galling to think that every one — the lowest servant in the theatre even — knew her vices.

  Towards the end of April, Chicot and his wife had a serious quarrel. It arose out of a packet which had been left at the stage door for the dancer — a packet containing a gold bracelet, in a morocco case, bearing the name of one of the most fashionable and expensive jewellers at the West End. There was nothing to show whence the offering came; but on a narrow
strip of paper, nestling under the massive gold band, there was scrawled in a mean little foreign-looking hand, —

  ‘Homage to genius.’

  La Chicot carried the gift home in triumph and exhibited it to her husband, clasped upon her round white arm, a solid belt of gold, flat, wide, and thick, like a fetter, severely simple, an ornament for the arm of a Greek dancing girl.

  ‘You will send it back, of course,’ said Jack, frowning at the thing.

  ‘But, my friend, where should I send it?’

  ‘To the jeweller. He must know his customer.’

  ‘I am not so stupid. There can be no harm in accepting an anonymous gift. I shall keep it, of course.’

  ‘I did not think you had fallen so low.

  Upon this La Chicot retorted insolently, and there were very hard words spoken on both sides. The lady kept the bracelet, and the; gentleman went next day to the jeweller who had supplied it, and tried to discover the inane of the purchaser.

  The jeweller was studiously polite, but he bad no memory. Jack Chicot minutely described the bracelet, but the jeweller assured him that lie Bold a dozen such in a week.

  ‘I think you must be mistaken, ‘ said Chicot, ‘this is a bracelet of very uncommon form. I never saw one like it,’ and then he repeated his description.

  The jeweller shook his head with a gentle smile.

  ‘The style is new,’ he said, ‘but I assure you we have sold several exactly corresponding to your description. It would be quite impossible to recall — —’

  ‘I see,’ said Chicot, ‘you would not like to disoblige a good customer. I dare say you know what the bracelet was meant for. Such shops as yours could hardly thrive unless they were indulgent to the vices of their patrons.’

  And after launching that shaft Mr. Chicot left the shop.

  He returned to his lodgings to pack a small portmanteau, and then went off to take his own pleasure. What need had such a wife as his of a husband’s care? She would not accept his advice, or be ruled by him. She had chosen her road in life, and would follow it to the fatal end. Of what avail was his weak arm to bar the path? To this daughter of the people, with her deadened conscience and indomitable will, that interposing arm was no more than a straw in her way.

  ‘Henceforth I have done with her,’ he said to himself. ‘The law could desire no stronger divorce between us than this which she has made. And if she does me wrong the law shall part us. I will have no mercy.’

  While he was packing his portmanteau an idea flashed into his mind. It was a horrible notion, and his cheek paled at the first aspect of it, but lie took it to his heart nevertheless.

  He was going away, fur an indefinite time, perhaps. He would set a watch upon his wile. Her audacity, her insolence, had aroused the darkest suspicions. A woman who thus openly defied him must be capable of anything.

  ‘Whom can I trust?’ he asked himself, pausing in his preparations, on his knees before the portmanteau. ‘The Landlady, Mrs. Evitt? No, she is sly enough, but she has too Long a tongue. A glass of grog would loosen that tongue of hers at any time, and she would betray to my wife. It must be a man. Yes, the very man.

  He has all the qualities of the trade.’

  Chicot locked his portmanteau, strapped it, and carried it out on to the landing. Then he ran up to the second floor, and knocked at the door of the front room.

  Come in,’ said a languid voice, and Jack Chicot went in.

  The room smelt of brandy and stale cigars. It was shabbier and tawdrier than the sitting-room on the first floor — a sordid copy of that sordid original. There was the same attempt at finery, tarnished ormolu, gaudy chintz curtains and chair covers, where roses and lilies were almost effaced by dirt. The cheap tapestry carpet was threadbare, a desert of arid canvas, with here and there an oasis of faded colour, which hinted at the former richness of the soil. The windows were clouded with London grime and London smoke, and lent an additional gloom to the chilly sky and the dingy street upon which they looked. The cracked and bulging ceiling was brown with the smoke of ages. Dirt was the pervading impression which the room left upon the stranger’s mind.

  On a rickety old sofa lay the present proprietor of the apartment, dozing gently at noontide, with the Daily Telegraph slipping from his loosened grasp. The remains of a bachelor breakfast, a half-empty egg-shell, a fragment of toast, and a cracked coffee-cup, indicated that he had but lately taken his morning meal.

  He lifted himself lazily from the crumpled pillow, and confronted his visitor with a prolonged and audible yawn.

  ‘Dear boy!’ he exclaimed, ‘what an untimely hour! What has happened that you are astir so early?’

  He was not a common-looking man. He was tall, broad and deep of chest, with lean, muscular arms, an aquiline nose, large and somewhat prominent eyes, bloodshot and tarnished by long years of evil experience, thin iron-gray hair, worn unduly long, to conceal its scantiness, a complexion of a dull leaden hue, stained with patches of bistre, the complexion of a man to whom fresh air was an unusual luxury, thin lips, a high narrow forehead. He wore a threadbare frock coat, closely buttoned, a frayed black satin stock, gray trousers, tightly strapped over well-worn boots, boots that had begun their career as dress boots.

  Despite the shabbiness of his attire the man looked every inch a gentleman. That he was a gentleman who had fallen about as low as gentle breeding can fall, outside the Old Bailey, there was no doubt. Vice had set its mark upon him so deeply that the brand of crime itself could scarcely have done more to separate him from respectability. A man must have been very young indeed, and utterly unlearned in the experience of life, who would have trusted Mr. Desrolles in any virtuous enterprise. But Jack Chicot showed himself by no means wanting in penetration when he pitched upon Mr. Desrolles as a likely instrument for doing dirty work. He was the material of which the French mouchard is made.

  ‘I’ve been worried, Desrolles,’ answered Jack, dropping wearily into a chair.

  ‘My dear fellow, the normal condition of life is worry,’ replied Desrolles, languidly. ‘The wisest of Jews knew all about it. Man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. The most that philosophy can suggest is to take trouble easily, as I do. All the Juggernaut cars of life have gone over me, but I am not crushed.’

  The tone was at once friendly and familiar. Jack Chicot and the second-floor lodger had become acquainted very soon after the Chicots’ advent in Cibber Street. They met each other on the stairs, first smiled, then nodded, then loitered to discuss, and generally to anathematise the weather; then went a little further, and talked about the events of the day — the shocking murder recorded in the morning paper — the fire down Millwall way — the chances of war, or disturbances in the political atmosphere. By-and-bye Jack Chicot asked Desrolles into his room, and they played a hand or two at ecarté, first-rate players both, for threepenny points. Soon the ecarté became an institution, and they played two or three times a week, while La Chicot was standing on the tips of her satin-shod toes, and enchanting the gilded youth of the capital. Jack found his acquaintance a man of infinite resources and wide experience. He had begun life in a good social position, had — according to his own account — distinguished himself as a soldier under such men as Gough and Hardinge; and had descended slowly, step by step, to be the thing he was. That gradual descent had carried him through scenes so strange and varied that his experiences of all that is oddest and worst in life would have made a book as big as ‘Les Miserables.’ And the creature knew how to talk. He never told the same story twice. Jack sometimes fancied this must be because he invented his stories upon the spot, and forgot them immediately afterwards. The man was no pretender to virtues which he did not possess, but rather advertised his vices. The only redeeming qualities he affected were a recklessness in money matters, which he appeared to consider generosity, and a rough and ready notion of honour, such as is supposed to obtain among thieves. Jack tolerated, despised, and allowed himself to be amused by the man. If he had been
a king he would have liked such a fellow to lounge beside his throne, dressed in motley, flinging Rabelaisian witticisms in the smug faces of the courtiers.

  ‘What’s the particular trouble to-day, Jack?’ asked Desrolles, selecting a meerschaum from the litter on the mantelpiece, and lazily filling the blackened bowl. ‘Financial, I conclude.’

  ‘No. I am anxious about my wife.’

  ‘The natural penalty for marrying the handsomest woman in Paris. What’s the mischief you’re afraid of?’

  ‘She has received a present from an anonymous admirer; and because it is anonymous, she imagines she is justified in receiving it.’

  ‘Where’s the harm?’

  ‘You ought to see it. The anonymous gift is the thin end of the wedge. The giver will see my wife dancing with his bracelet on her arm, and will believe her as venal as the girl who sold Rome for the same kind of gewgaw. He will follow up his first offering with a second, and then will come letters, anonymous at first, perhaps, like the bracelet, but when by insidious flattery he has smoothed the way to dishonour, he will declare himself — and then — —’

  ‘Unless your wife is a better woman than you believe her, there will be danger. Is that what you mean?’ asked Desrolles, calmly, slowly puffing at his meerschaum.