In the front row of the stalls, close to the orchestra, a young man lounges, with his opera-glass in his hand. He is handsome and very elegant, and is dressed in the most perfect taste and the highest fashion. Dark curling hair clusters round his delicately white forehead; his eyes are of a bright blue, shaded by auburn lashes, which contrast rather strangely with his dark hair. A very dark and thick moustache only reveals now and then his thin lower lip and a set of dazzling white teeth. His nose is a delicate aquiline, and his features altogether bear the stamp of aristocracy. He is quite alone, this elegant lounger, and of the crowd of people of rank and fashion around him not one turns to speak to him. His listless white hand is thrown on the cushion of the stall on which he leans, as he glances round the house with one indifferent sweep of his opera-glass. Presently his attention is arrested by the conversation of two gentlemen close to him, and without seeming to listen, he hears what they are saying.
“Is the Spanish princess here to-night?” asks one.
“What, the marquis’s niece, the girl who has that immense property in Spanish America? Yes, she is in the box next to the king’s; don’t you see her diamonds? They and her eyes are brilliant enough to set the curtains of the box on fire.”
“She is immensely rich, then?”
“She is an Eldorado. The Marquis de Cevennes has no children, and all his property will go to her; her Spanish American property comes from her mother. She is an orphan, as you know, and the marquis is her guardian.”
“She is handsome; but there’s just a little too much of the demon in those great almond-shaped black eyes and that small determined mouth. What a fortune she would be to some intriguing adventurer!”
“An adventurer! Valerie de Cevennes the prize of an adventurer! Show me the man capable of winning her, without rank and fortune equal to hers; and I will say you have found the eighth wonder of the world.”
The listener’s eyes light up with a strange flash, and lifting his glass, he looks for a few moments carelessly round the house, and then fixes his gaze upon the box next to that occupied by the royal party.
The Spanish beauty is indeed a glorious creature; of a loveliness rich alike in form and colour, but with hauteur and determination expressed in every feature of her face. A man of some fifty years of age is seated by her side, and behind her chair two or three gentlemen stand, the breasts of whose coats glitter with stars and orders. They are speaking to her; but she pays very little attention to them. If she answers, it is only by a word, or a bend of her proud head, which she does not turn towards them. She never takes her eyes from the curtain, which presently rises. The opera is La Sonnambula.10 The Elvino is the great singer of the day—a young man whose glorious voice and handsome face have made him the rage of the musical world. Of his origin different stories are told. Some say he was originally a shoemaker, others declare him to be the son of a prince. He has, however, made his fortune at seven-and-twenty, and can afford to laugh at these stories. The opera proceeds, and the powerful glass of the lounger in the stalls records the minutest change in the face of Valerie de Cevennes. It records one faint quiver, and then a firmer compression of the thin lips, when the Elvino appears; and the eyes of the lounger fasten more intently, if possible, than before upon the face of the Spanish beauty.
Presently Elvino sings the grand burst of passionate reproach, in which he upbraids Amina’s fancied falsehood. As the house applauds at the close of the scene, Valerie’s bouquet falls at the feet of the Amina. Elvino, taking it in his hand, presents it to the lady, and as he does so, the lounger’s glass—which, more rapidly than the bouquet has fallen, has turned to the stage—records a movement so quick as to be almost a feat of legerdemain. The great tenor has taken a note from the bouquet. The lounger sees the triumphant glance towards the box next the king’s, though it is rapid as lightning. He sees the tiny morsel of glistening paper crumpled in the singer’s hand; and after one last contemplative look at the proud brow and set lips of Valerie de Cevennes, he lowers the glass.
“My glass is well worth the fifteen guineas I paid for it,” he whispers to himself. “That girl can command her eyes; they have not one traitorous flash. But those thin lips cannot keep a secret from a man with a decent amount of brains.”
When the opera is over, the lounger of the stalls leaves his place by the orchestra, and loiters in the winter night outside the stage-door. Perhaps he is enamoured of some lovely coryphée11—lovely in all the gorgeousness of flake white and liquid rouge; and yet that can scarcely be, or he would be still in the stalls, or hovering about the side-scenes, for the ballet is not over. Two or three carriages, belonging to the principal singers, are waiting at the stage-door. Presently a tall, stylish-looking man, in a loose over-coat, emerges; a groom opens the door of a well-appointed little brougham, but the gentleman says—
“No, Farée, you can go home. I shall walk.”
“But, monsieur,” remonstrates the man, “monsieur is not aware that it rains.”
Monsieur says he is quite aware of the rain; but that he has an umbrella, and prefers walking. So the brougham drives off with the distressed Farée, who consoles himself at a café high up on the boulevard, where he plays écarté with a limp little pack of cards, and drinks effervescing lemonade.
The lounger of the stalls, standing in the shadow, hears this little dialogue, and sees also, by the light of the carriage-lamps, that the gentleman in the loose coat is no less a personage than the hero of the opera. The lounger also seems to be indifferent to the rain, and to have a fancy for walking; for when Elvino crosses the road and turns into an opposite street, the lounger follows. It is a dark night, with a little drizzling rain—a night by no means calculated to tempt an elegantly-dressed young man to brave all the disagreeables and perils of dirty pavements and overflowing gutters; but neither Elvino nor the lounger seem to care for mud or rain, for they walk at a rapid pace through several streets—the lounger always a good way behind and always in the shadow. He has a light step, which wakes no echo on the wet pavement; and the fashionable tenor has no idea that he is followed. He walks through long narrow streets to the Rue Rivoli, thence across one of the bridges. Presently he enters a very aristocratic but retired street, in a lonely quarter of the city. The distant roll of carriages and the tramp of a passing gendarmes are the only sounds that break the silence. There is not a creature to be seen in the wide street but the two men. Elvino turns to look about him, sees no one, and walks on till he comes to a mansion at the corner, screened from the street by a high wall, with great gates and a porter’s lodge. Detached from the house, and sheltered by an angle of the wall, is a little pavilion, the windows of which look into the courtyard or garden within. Close to this pavilion is a narrow low door of carved oak, studded with great iron nails, and almost hidden in the heavy masonry of the wall which frames it. The house in early times has been a convent, and is now the property of the Marquis de Cevennes. Elvino, with one more glance up and down the dimly-lighted street, approaches this doorway, and stooping down to the key-hole whistles softly three bars of a melody from Don Giovanni—La ci darem la mano.12
“So!” says the lounger, standing in the shadow of a house opposite, “we are getting deeper into the mystery; the curtain is up, and the play is going to begin.”
As the clocks of Paris chime the half-hour after eleven the little door turns on its hinges, and a faint light in the courtyard within falls upon the figure of the fashionable tenor. This light comes from a lamp in the hand of a pretty-looking, smartly-dressed girl, who has opened the door.
“She is not the woman I took her for, this Valerie,” says the lounger, “or she would have opened that door herself. She makes her waiting-maid her confidante—a false step, which proves her either stupid or inexperienced. Not stupid; her face gives the lie to that. Inexperienced then. So much the better.”
As the spy meditates thus, Elvino passes through the doorway, stooping as he crosses the threshold, and the light disappears.<
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“This is either a private marriage, or something worse,” mutters the lounger. “Scarcely the last. Hers is the face of a woman capable of a madness, but not of degradation—the face of a Phædra13 rather than a Messalina.14 I have seen enough of the play for to-night.”
CHAPTER II
WORKING IN THE DARK
Early the next morning a gentleman rings the bell of the porter’s lodge belonging to the mansion of the Marquis de Cevennes, and on seeing the porter addresses him thus—
“The lady’s-maid of Mademoiselle Valerie de Cevennes is perhaps visible at this early hour?”
The porter thinks not; it is very early, only eight o’clock; Mademoiselle Finette never appears till nine. The toilette of her mistress is generally concluded by twelve; after twelve, the porter thinks monsieur may succeed in seeing Mademoiselle Finette—before twelve, he thinks not.
The stranger rewards the porter with a five-franc piece for this valuable information; it is very valuable to the stranger, who is the lounger of the last night, to discover that the name of the girl who held the lamp is Finette.
The lounger seems to have as little to do this morning as he had last night; for he leans against the gateway, his cane in his hand, and a half-smoked cigar in his mouth, looking up at the house of the marquis with lazy indifference.
The porter, conciliated by the five-franc piece, is inclined to gossip.
“A fine old building,” says the lounger, still looking up at the house, every window of which is shrouded by ponderous Venetian shutters.
“Yes, a fine old building. It has been in the family of the marquis for two hundred years, but was sadly mutilated in the first revolution; monsieur may see the work of the cannon amongst the stone decorations.”
“And that pavilion to the left, with the painted windows and Gothic decorations—a most extraordinary little edifice,” says the lounger.
Yes, monsieur has observed it? It is a great deal more modern than the house; was built so lately as the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, by a dissipated old marquis who gave supper-parties at which the guests used to pour champagne out of the windows, and pelt the servants in the courtyard with the empty bottles. It is certainly a curious little place; but would monsieur believe something more curious?
Monsieur declares that he is quite willing to believe anything the porter may be good enough to tell him. He says this with a well-bred indifference, as he lights a fresh cigar, which is quite aristocratic, and which might stamp him a scion of the noble house of De Cevennes itself.
“Then,” replies the porter, “monsieur must know that Mademoiselle Valerie, the proud, the high-born, the beautiful, has lately taken it into her aristocratic head to occupy that pavilion, attended only by her maid Finette, in preference to her magnificent apartments, which monsieur may see yonder on the first floor of the mansion—a range of ten windows. Does not monsieur think this very extraordinary?”
Scarcely. Young ladies have strange whims. Monsieur never allows himself to be surprised by a woman’s conduct, or he might pass his life in a state of continual astonishment.
The porter perfectly agrees with monsieur. The porter is a married man, “and, monsieur——?” the porter ventures to ask with a shrug of interrogation.
Monsieur says he is not married yet.
Something in monsieur’s manner emboldens the porter to say—
“But monsieur is perhaps contemplating a marriage?”
Monsieur takes his cigar from his mouth, raises his blue eyes to the level of the range of ten windows, indicated just now by the porter, takes one long and meditative survey of the magnificent mansion opposite him, and then replies, with aristocratic indifference—
“Perhaps. These Cevennes are immensely rich?”
“Immensely! To the amount of millions.” The porter is prone to extravagant gesticulation, but he cannot lift either his eyebrows or his shoulders high enough to express the extent of the wealth of the De Cevennes.
The lounger takes out his pocket-book, writes a few lines, and, tearing the leaf out, gives it to the porter, saying—
“You will favour me, my good friend, by giving this to Mademoiselle Finette at your earliest convenience. You were not always a married man; and can therefore understand that it will be as well to deliver my little note secretly.”
Nothing can exceed the intense significance of the porter’s wink as he takes charge of the note. The lounger nods an indifferent good-day, and strolls away.
“A marquis at the least,” says the porter. “O, Mademoiselle Finette, you do not wear black satin gowns and a gold watch and chain for nothing.”
The lounger is ubiquitous, this winter’s day. At three o’clock in the afternoon he is seated on a bench in the gardens of the Luxembourg, smoking a cigar. He is dressed as before, in the last Parisian fashion; but his greatcoat is a little open at the throat, displaying a loosely-tied cravat of a peculiarly bright blue.
A young person of the genus lady’s-maid, tripping daintily by, is apparently attracted by this blue cravat, for she hovers about the bench for a few moments and then seats herself at the extreme end of it, as far as possible from the indifferent lounger, who has not once noticed her by so much as one glance of his cold blue eyes.
His cigar is nearly finished, so he waits till it is quite done; then, throwing away the stump, he says, scarcely looking at his neighbour—
“Mademoiselle Finette, I presume?”
“The same, monsieur.”
“Then perhaps, mademoiselle, as you have condescended to favour me with an interview, and as the business on which I have to address you is of a strictly private nature, you will also condescend to come a little nearer to me?”
He says this without appearing to look at her, while he lights another cigar. He is evidently a desperate smoker, and caresses his cigar, looking at the red light and blue smoke almost as if it were his familiar spirit, by whose aid he could work out wonderful calculations in the black art, and without which he would perhaps be powerless. Mademoiselle Finette looks at him with a great deal of surprise and not a little indignation, but obeys him, nevertheless, and seats herself close by his side.
“I trust monsieur will believe that I should never have consented to afford him this interview, had I not been assured—”
“Monsieur will spare you, mademoiselle, the trouble of telling him why you come here, since it is enough for him that you are here. I have nothing to do, mademoiselle, either with your motives or your scruples. I told you in my note that I required you to do me a service, for which I could afford to pay you handsomely; that, on the other hand, if you were unwilling to do me this service, I had it in my power to cause your dismissal from your situation. Your coming here is a tacit declaration of your willingness to serve me. So much and no more preface is needed. And now to business.”
He seems to sweep this curt preface away, as he waves off a cloud of the blue smoke from his cigar with one motion of his small hand. The lady’s-maid, thoroughly subdued by a manner which is quite new to her, awaits his pleasure to speak, and stares at him with surprised black eyes.
He is not in a hurry. He seems to be consulting the blue smoke prior to committing himself by any further remark. He takes his cigar from his mouth, and looks into the bright red spot at the lighted end, as if it were the lurid eye of his familiar demon. After consulting it for a few seconds he says, with the same indifference with which he would make some observation on the winter’s day—
“So, your mistress, Mademoiselle Valerie de Cevennes, has been so imprudent as to contract a secret marriage with an opera-singer?”
He has determined on hazarding his guess. If he is right, it is the best and swiftest way of coming at the truth; if wrong, he is no worse off than before. One glance at the girl’s face tells him he has struck home, and has hit upon the entire truth. He is striking in the dark; but he is a mathematician, and can calculate the effect of every blow.
“Yes, a secret marriage, o
f which you were the witness.” This is his second blow; and again the girl’s face tells him he has struck home.
“Father Pérot has betrayed us, then, monsieur, for he alone could tell you this,” said Finette.
The lounger understands in a moment that Father Pérot is the priest who performed the marriage. Another point in his game. He continues, still stopping now and then to take a puff at his cigar, and speaking with an air of complete indifference—
“You see, then, that this secret marriage, and the part you took with regard to it, have, no matter whether through the worthy priest, Father Pérot——” (he stops at this point to knock the ashes from his cigar, and a sidelong glance at the girl’s face tells him that he is right again, Father Pérot is the priest)—“or some other channel, come to my knowledge. Though a French woman, you may be acquainted with the celebrated aphorism of one of our English neighbours, ‘Knowledge is power.’1 Very well, mademoiselle, how if I use my power?”
“Monsieur means that he can deprive me of my present place, and prevent my getting another.” As she said this, Mademoiselle Finette screwed out of one of her black eyes a small bead of water, which was the best thing she could produce in the way of a tear, but which, coming into immediate contact with a sticky white compound called pearl-powder, used by the lady’s-maid to enhance her personal charms, looked rather more like a digestive pill than anything else.
“But, on the other hand, I may not use my power; and, indeed, I should deeply regret the painful necessity which would compel me to injure a lady.”
Mademoiselle Finette, encouraged by this speech, wiped away the digestive pill.
“Therefore, mademoiselle, the case resolves itself to this: serve me, and I will reward you; refuse to do so, and I can injure you.”
The Trail of the Serpent Page 15
