The Trail of the Serpent

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  But even the great Argyle finds himself—with the exception of being up to his eyes in a slough of despond, in the way of platonic flirtation with a fat duchess of fifty—comparatively nowhere. The star of the evening is the new tenor, Signor Mosquetti, who has condescended to attend Lady Londersdon’s Wednesday. Argyle, who is the best-natured fellow as well as the most generous, and whose great rich voice wells up from a heart as sound as his lungs, throws himself back into a low easy-chair—it creaks a little under his weight, by the bye—and allows the duchess to flirt with him, while a buzz goes round the room; Mosquetti is going to sing. Argyle looks lazily out of his half-closed dark eyes, with that peculiar expression which seems to say—“Sing your best, old fellow! My g in the bass clef would crush your half-octave or so of falsetto before you knew where you were, or your ‘Pretty Jane’ either. Sing away, my boy! we’ll have ‘Scots wha hae’ by-and-by. I’ve some friends down in Essex who want to hear it, and the wind’s in the right quarter for the voice to travel. They won’t hear you five doors off. Sing your best.”

  Just as Signor Mosquetti is about to take his place at the piano, the Count and Countess de Marolles advance through the crowd about the doorway.

  Valerie, beautiful, pale, calm as ever, is received with considerable empressement by her hostess. She is the heiress of one of the most ancient and aristocratic families in France, and is moreover the wife of one of the richest men in London, so is sure of a welcome throughout Belgravia.

  “Mosquetti is going to sing,” murmurs Lady Londersdon; “you were charmed with him in the Lucia, of course? You have lost Fitz-Bertram’s duet. It was charming; all the chandeliers were shaken by his lower notes; charming, I assure you. He’ll sing again after Mosquetti: the Duchess of C. is éprise, as you see. I believe she is perpetually sending him diamond rings and studs; and the Duke, they do say, has refused to be responsible for her account at Storr’s.”

  Valerie’s interest in Mr. Fitz-Bertram’s conduct is not very intense; she bends her haughty head, just slightly elevating her arched eyebrows with the faintest indication of well-bred surprise; but she is interested in Signor Mosquetti, and avails herself of the seat her hostess offers to her near Erard’s5 grand piano. The song concludes very soon after she is seated; but Mosquetti remains near the piano, talking to an elderly gentleman, who is evidently a connoisseur.

  “I have never heard but one man, Signor Mosquetti,” says this gentleman, “whose voice resembled yours.”

  There is nothing very particular in the words, but Valerie’s attention is apparently arrested by them, for she fixes her eyes intently on Signor Mosquetti, as though awaiting his reply.

  “And he, my lord?” says Mosquetti, interrogatively.

  “He, poor fellow, is dead.” Now indeed Valerie, pale with a pallor greater than usual, listens as though her whole soul hung on the words she heard.

  “He is dead,” continued the gentleman. “He died young, in the zenith of his reputation. His name was—let me see—I heard him in Paris last; his name was——”

  “De Lancy, perhaps, my lord?” says Mosquetti.

  “It was De Lancy; yes. He had some most peculiar and at the same time most beautiful tones in his voice, and you appear to me to have the very same.”

  Mosquetti bowed at the compliment. “It is singular, my lord,” he said; “but I doubt if those tones are quite natural to me. I am a little of a mimic, and at one period of my life I was in the habit of imitating poor De Lancy, whose singing I very much admired.”

  Valerie grasps the delicate fan in her nervous hand so tightly that the group of courtiers and fair ladies, of the time of Louis Quatorze, dancing nothing particular on a blue cloud, are crushed out of all symmetry as she listens to this conversation.

  “I was, at the time I knew De Lancy, merely a chorus-singer at the Italian Opera, Paris.”

  The listeners draw nearer, and form quite a circle round Mosquetti, who is the lion of the night; even Argyle Fitz-Bertram pricks up his ears, and deserts the Duchess in order to hear this conversation.

  “A low chorus-singer,” he mutters to himself. “So help me, Jupiter, I knew he was a nobody.”

  “This passion for mimicry,” said Mosquetti, “was so great that I acquired a sort of celebrity throughout the Opera House, and even beyond its walls. I could imitate De Lancy better, perhaps, than any one else; for in height, figure, and general appearance I was said to resemble him.”

  “You do,” said the gentleman; “you do very much resemble the poor fellow.”

  “This resemblance one day gave rise to quite an adventure, which, if I shall not bore you——” he glanced round.

  There is a general murmur. “Bore us! No! Delighted, enraptured, charmed above all things!” Fitz-Bertram is quite energetic in this omnes business, and says, “No, no!”—muttering to himself afterwards, “So help me, Jupiter, I knew the fellow was a nuisance!”

  “But the adventure! Pray let us hear it!” cried eager voices.

  “Well, ladies and gentlemen, I was a careless reckless fellow; quite content to put on a pair of russet boots which half swallowed me, and a green cotton-velvet tunic short in the sleeves and tight across the chest, and to go on the stage and sing in a chorus with fifty others, as idle as myself, in other russet boots and cotton-velvet tunics, which, as you know, is the court costume of a chorus-singer from the time of Charlemagne6 to the reign of Louis XV.7 I was quite happy, I say, to lounge on to the stage, unknown, unnoticed, badly paid and worse dressed, provided when the chorus was finished I had my cigarette, dominoes, and my glass of cognac in a third-rate café. I was playing one morning at those eternal dominoes—(and never, I think,” said Mosquetti, parenthetically, “had a poor fellow so many double-sixes in his hand)—when I was told a gentleman wanted to see me. This seemed too good a joke—a gentleman for me! It couldn’t be a limb of the law, as I didn’t owe a farthing—no Parisian tradesman being quite so demented as to give me credit. It was a gentleman—a very aristocratic-looking fellow; handsome—but I didn’t like his face; affable—and yet I didn’t like his manner.”

  Ah, Valerie! you may well listen now!

  “He wanted me, he said,” continued Mosquetti, “to decide a little wager. Some foolish girl, who had seen De Lancy on the stage, and who believed him the ideal hero of romance, and was only in too much danger of throwing her heart and fortune at his feet, was to be disenchanted by any stratagem that could be devised. Her parents had intrusted the management of the affair to him, a relation of the lady’s. Would I assist him? Would I represent De Lancy, and play a little scene in the Bois de Boulogne, to open the eyes of this silly boarding-school miss—would I, for a consideration? It was only to act a little stage play off the stage, and was for a good cause. I consented; and that evening, at half-past ten o’clock, under the shadow of the winter night and the leafless trees, I——”

  “Stop, stop! Signor Mosquetti!” cry the bystanders. “Madame! Madame de Marolles! Water! Smelling-salts! Your flacon, Lady Emily: she has fainted!”

  No; she has not fainted; this is something worse than fainting, this convulsive agony, in which the proud form writhes, while the white and livid lips murmur strange and dreadful words.

  “Murdered, murdered and innocent! while I, vile dupe, pitiful fool, was only a puppet in the hands of a demon!”

  At this very moment Monsieur de Marolles, who has been summoned from the adjoining apartment, where he has been discussing a financial measure with some members of the lower House,8 enters hurriedly.

  “Valerie, Valerie, what is the matter?” he says, approaching his wife.

  She rises—rises with a terrible effort, and looks him full in the face.

  “I thought, monsieur, that I knew the hideous abyss of your black soul to its lowest depths. I was wrong; I never knew you till to-night.”

  Imagine such strong language as this in a Belgravian drawing-room, and then you can imagine the astonishment of the bystanders.

  “Good
heavens!” exclaimed Signor Mosquetti hurriedly.

  “What?” cried they eagerly.

  “That is the very man I have been speaking of.”

  “That? The Count de Marolles?”

  “The man bending over the lady who has fainted.”

  Petrified Belgravians experience a new sensation—surprise—and rather like it.

  Argyle Fitz-Bertram twists his black moustachios reflectively, and mutters—

  “So help me, Jupiter, I knew there’d be a row! I shan’t have to sing ‘Scots wha hae,’ and shall be just in time for that little supper at the Café de l’Europe.”

  CHAPTER VII

  THE GOLDEN SECRET IS TOLD, AND THE GOLDEN BOWL IS BROKEN1

  The new tiger, or, as he is called in the kitchen, the “tempory tiger,” takes his place, on the morning after Lady Londersdon’s Wednesday, behind the Count de Marolles’s cab, as that gentleman drives into the City.

  There is little augury to be drawn from the pale smooth face of Raymond de Marolles, though Signor Mosquetti’s revelation has made his position rather a critical one. Till now he has ruled Valerie with a high hand; and though never conquering the indomitable spirit of the proud Spanish woman, he has at least forced that spirit to do the will of his. But now, now that she knows the trick put upon her—now that she knows that the man she so deeply adored did not betray her, but died the victim of another’s treachery—that the blood in which she has steeped her soul was the blood of the innocent,—what if now, in her desperation and despair, she dares all, and reveals all; what then?

  “Why, then,” says Raymond de Marolles, cutting his horse over the ears with a delicate touch of the whip, which stings home, though, for all its delicacy; “why then, never shall it be said that Raymond Marolles found himself in a dilemma, without finding within himself the power to extricate himself. We are not conquered yet, and we have seen a good deal of life in thirty years—and not a little danger. Play your best card, Valerie; I’ve a trump in my own hand to play when the time comes. Till then, keep dark. I tell you, my good woman, I have hothouses of my own, and don’t want your Covent-Garden exotics at twopence a bunch!”

  This last sentence is addressed to a woman, who pleads earnestly for the purchase of a wretched bunch of violets, which she holds up to tempt the man of fashion as she runs by the wheels of his cab, driving very slowly through the Strand.

  “Fresh violets, sir. Do, sir, please. Only twopence, just twopence, sir, for the love of charity. I’ve a poor old woman at home, not related to me, sir, but I keep her. She’s dying—starving, sir, and dying of old age.”

  “Bah! I tell you, my good woman, I’m not Lawrence Sterne on a sentimental journey,2 but a practical man of business. I don’t give macaroons to donkeys, or save mythic old women from starvation. You’d better keep out of the way of the wheels—they’ll be over your feet presently, and if you suffer from corns they may probably hurt you,” says the philanthropic banker, in his politest tones.

  “Stop, stop!” suddenly exclaims the woman, with an energy that almost startles even Raymond. “It’s you, is it—Jim? No, not Jim; he’s dead and gone, I know; but you, you, the fine gentleman, the other brother. Stop, stop, I tell you, if you want to know a secret that’s in the keeping of one who may die while I am talking here! Stop, if you want to know who you are and what you are! Stop!”

  Raymond does pull up at this last sentence.

  “My good woman, do not be so energetic. Every eye in the Strand is on us; we shall have a crowd presently. Stay, wait for me in Essex Street; I’ll get out at the corner; that’s a quiet street, and we shall not be observed. Anything you have to tell me you can tell me there.”

  The woman obeys him, and draws back to the pavement, where she keeps pace with the cab.

  “A pretty time this for discoveries!” mutters the Count. “Who I am, and what I am! It’s the secret, I suppose, that the twaddling old maniac in Blind Peter made such a row about. Who I am, and what I am! Oh, I dare say I shall turn out to be somebody great, as the hero does in a lady’s novel. It’s a pity I haven’t the mark of a coronet behind my ear, or a bloody hand on my wrist. Who I am, and what I am! The son of a journeyman tailor perhaps, or a chemist’s apprentice, whose aristocratic connections prevented his acknowledging my mother.”

  He is at the corner of Essex Street by this time, and springs out of the cab, throwing the reins to the temporary tiger, whose sharp face we need scarcely inform the reader discloses the features of the boy Slosh.

  The woman is waiting for him; and after a few moments’ earnest conversation, Raymond emerges from the street, and orders the boy to drive the cab home immediately: he is not going to the City, but is going on particular business elsewhere.

  Whether the “temporary tiger” proves himself worthy of the responsible situation he holds, and does drive the cab home, I cannot say; but I only know that a very small boy, in a ragged coat a great deal too large for him, and a battered hat so slouched over his eyes as quite to conceal his face from the casual observer, creeps cautiously, now a few paces behind, now a hundred yards on the other side of the way, now disappearing in the shadow of a doorway, now reappearing at the corner of the street, but never losing sight of the Count de Marolles and the purveyor of violets, as they bend their steps in the direction of Seven Dials.3

  Heaven forbid that we should follow them through all the turnings and twistings of that odoriferous neighbourhood, where foul scents, foul sights, and fouler language abound; whence May Fair and Belgravia shrink shuddering, as from an ill it is well for them to let alone, and a wrong that he may mend who will: not they who have been born for better things than to set disjointed times aright, or play the revolutionist to the dethronement of the legitimate monarchy of Queen Starvation and King Fever, to say nothing of the princes of the blood—Dirt, Drunkenness, Theft, and Murder. When John Jones, tired of the monotonous pastime of beating his wife’s skull with a poker, comes to Lambeth and murders an Archbishop of Canterbury4 for the sake of the spoons, it will be time, in the eyes of Belgravia, to reform John Jones. In the meanwhile we of the upper ten thousand have Tattersall’s and Her Majesty’s Theatre, and John Jones (who, low republican, says he must have his amusements too) has such little diversions as wife-murder and cholera to break the monotony of his existence.

  The Count and the violet-seller at last come to a pause. They had walked very quickly through the pestiferous streets, Raymond holding his aristocratic breath and shutting his patrician ears to the scents and the sounds around him. They come to a stand at last, in a dark court, before a tall lopsided house, with irresolute chimney-pots, which looked as if the only thing that kept them erect was the want of unanimity as to which way they should fall.

  Raymond, when invited by the woman to enter, looks suspiciously at the dingy staircase, as if wondering whether it would last his time, but at the request of his companion ascends it.

  The boy in the large coat and slouched hat is playing marbles with another boy on the second-floor landing, and has evidently lived there all his life: and yet I’m puzzled as to who drove that cab home to the stables at the back of Park Lane. I fear it was not the “temporary tiger.”

  The Count de Marolles and his guide pass the youthful gamester, who has just lost his second halfpenny, and ascend to the very top of the rickety house, the garrets of which are afflicted with intermittent ague whenever there is a high wind.

  Into one of these garrets the woman conducts Raymond, and on a bed—or its apology, a thing of shreds and patches, straw and dirt, which goes by the name of a bed at this end of the town—lies the old woman we last saw in Blind Peter.

  Eight years, more or less, have not certainly had the effect of enhancing the charms of this lady; and there is something in her face to-day more terrible even than wicked old age or feminine drunkenness. It is death that lends those livid hues to her complexion, which all the cosmetics from Atkinson’s5 or the Burlington Arcade,6 were she minded to use them, would nev
er serve to conceal. Raymond has not come too soon if he is to hear any secret from those ghastly lips. It is some time before the woman, whom she still calls Sillikens, can make the dying hag understand who this fine gentleman is, and what it is he wants with her; and even when she does succeed in making her comprehend all this, the old woman’s speech is very obscure, and calculated to try the patience of a more amiable man than the Count de Marolles.

  “Yes, it was a golden secret—a golden secret, eh, my dear? It was something to have a marquis for a son-in-law, wasn’t it, my dear, eh?” mumbled the dying old hag.

  “A marquis for a son-in-law! What does the jibbering old idiot mean?” muttered Raymond, whose reverence for his grandmother was not one of the strongest points in his composition. “A marquis! I dare say my respected progenitor kept a public-house, or something of that sort. A marquis! The ‘Marquis of Granby,’7 most likely!”

  “Yes, a marquis,” continued the old woman, “eh, dear! And he married your mother—married her at the parish church, one cold dark November morning; and I’ve got the c’tificate. Yes,” she mumbled, in answer to Raymond’s eager gesture, “I’ve got it; but I’m not going to tell you where;—no, not till I’m paid. I must be paid for that secret in gold—yes, in gold. They say that we don’t rest any easier in our coffins for the money that’s buried with us; but I should like to lie up to neck in golden sovereigns new from the Mint, and not one light one amongst ’em.”

  “Well,” said Raymond, impatiently, “your secret! I’m rich, and can pay for it. Your secret—quick!”

  “Well, he hadn’t been married to her long before a change came, in his native country, over the sea yonder,” said the old woman, pointing in the direction of St. Martin’s Lane, as if she thought the British Channel flowed somewhere behind that thoroughfare. “A change came, and he got his rights again. One king was put down and another king was set up, and everybody else was massacred in the streets; it was—a—I don’t know what they call it; but they’re always a-doin’ it. So he got his rights, and he was a rich man again, and a great man; and then his first thought was to keep his marriage with my girl a secret. All very well, you know, my girl for a wife while he was giving lessons at a shilling a-piece, in Parlez-vous Français, and all that; but now he was a marquis, and it was quite another thing.”