The trail of the serpent
Valerie de Cevennes is drunk in Clicquot’s finest brand of champagne.
Suppose this, madame, and you may, perhaps, guess whence I got my
information.”
Throughout this speech Valerie has sat facing him, with her eyes fixed
in a strange and ghastly stare. Once she lifts her hand to her throat,
as if to save herself from choking; and when the schemer has finished
speaking she slides heavily from her chair, and falls on her knees upon
the Persian hearth-rug, with her small hands convulsively clasped about
her heart. But she is not insensible, and she never takes her eyes from
his face. She is a woman who neither weeps nor faints--she suffers.
“I am here, madame,” the lounger continues--and now she listens to him
eagerly; “I am here for two purposes. To help myself before all things;
to help you afterwards, if I can. I have had to use a rough scalpel,
madame, but I may not be an unskilful physician. You love this tenor
singer very deeply; you must do so; since for his sake you were willing
to brave the contempt of that which you also love very much--the
world--the great world in which you move.”
“I did love him, monsieur--O God! how deeply, how madly, how blindly!
Nay, it is not to such an eye as yours that I would reveal the secrets
of my heart and mind. Enough, I loved him! But for the man who could
degrade the name of the woman who had sacrificed so much for his
sake, and hold the sacrifice so lightly--for the man who could make
that woman’s name a jest among the companions of a tavern, Valerie de
Cevennes has but one sentiment, and that is--contempt.”
“I admire your spirit, madame; but then, remember, the subject can
scarcely be so easily dismissed. A husband is not to be shaken off so
lightly; and is it likely that Monsieur de Lancy will readily resign
a marriage which, as a speculation, is so brilliantly advantageous?
Perhaps you do not know that it has been, ever since his _début_,
his design to sell his handsome face to the highest bidder; that he
has--pardon me, madame--been for two years on the look-out for an
heiress possessed of more gold than discrimination, whom a few pretty
namby-pamby speeches selected from the librettos of the operas he is
familiar with would captivate and subdue.”
The haughty spirit is bent to the very dust. This girl, truth itself,
never for a moment questions the words which are breaking her heart.
There is something too painfully probable in this bitter humiliation.
“Oh, what have I done,” she cries, “what have I done, that the golden
dream of my life should be broken by such an awakening as this?”
“Madame, I have told you that I wish, if I can, to help you. I pretend
no disinterested or Utopian generosity. You are rich, and can afford
to pay me for my services. There are only three persons who, besides
yourself, were witnesses of or concerned in this marriage--Father
Pérot, Finette, and Monsieur de Lancy. The priest and the maid-servant
may be silenced; and for Don Giovanni--we will talk of him to-morrow.
Stay, has he any letters of yours in his possession?”
“He returns my letters one by one as he receives them,” she mutters.
“Good--it is so easy to retract what one has said; but so difficult to
deny one’s handwriting.”
“The De Cevennes do not lie, monsieur!”
“Do they not? What, madame, have you acted no lies, though you may
not have spoken them? Have you never lied with your face, when you
have worn a look of calm indifference, while the mental effort with
which you stopped the violent beating of your heart produced a dull
physical torture in your breast; when, in the crowded opera-house,
you heard _his_ step upon the stage? Wasted lies, madame; wasted
torture; for your idol was not worth them. Your god laughed at your
worship, because he was a false god, and the attributes for which you
worshipped him--truth, loyalty, and genius, such as man never before
possessed--were not his, but the offspring of your own imagination,
with which you invested him, because you were in love with his handsome
face. Bah! madame, after all, you were only the fool of a chiselled
profile and a melodious voice. You are not the first of your sex so
fooled; Heaven forbid you should be the last!”
“You have shown me why I should hate this man; show me my revenge,
if you wish to serve me. My countrywomen do not forgive. O Gaston de
Lancy, to have been the slave of your every word; the blind idolater of
your every glance; to have given so much; and, as my reward, to reap
only your contempt!”
There are no tears in her eyes as she says this in a hoarse voice.
Perhaps long years hence she may come to weep over this wild
infatuation--now, her despair is too bitter for tears.
The lounger still preserves the charming indifference which stamps him
of her own class. He says, in reply to her entreaty,--
“I can lead you to your revenge, madame, if your noble Spanish blood
does not recoil from the ordeal. Dress yourself to-morrow night
in your servant’s clothes, wearing of course a thick veil; take a
hackney-coach, and at ten o’clock be at the entrance to the Bois de
Boulogne. I will join you there. You shall have your revenge, madame,
and I will show you how to turn that revenge (which is in itself an
expensive luxury) to practical account. In a few days you may perhaps
be able to say, ‘There is no such person as Gaston de Lancy: the
terrible delusion was only a dream; I have awoke, and I am free!’”
She passes her trembling hand across her brow, and looks at the
speaker, as if she tried in vain to gather the meaning of his words.
“At ten o’clock, at the entrance to the Bois de Boulogne? I will be
there,” she murmurs faintly.
“Good! And now, madame, adieu! I fear I have fatigued you by this long
interview. Stay! You should know the name of the man to whom you allow
the honour of serving you.”
He takes out his card-case, lays a card on the tiny table at her side,
bows low to her, and leaves her--leaves her stricken to the dust. He
looks back at her as he opens the door, and watches her for a moment,
with a smile upon his face. His blows have had their full effect.
O Valerie, Valerie! loving so wildly, to be so degraded, humiliated,
deceived! Little wonder that you cry to-night. There is no light in the
sky--there is no glory in the world! Earth is weary, heaven is dark,
and death alone is the friend of the broken heart!
CHAPTER IV.
OCULAR DEMONSTRATION.
INSCRIBED on the card which the lounger leaves on the table of
Mademoiselle de Cevennes, or Madame de Lancy, is the name of Raymond
Marolles. The lounger, then, is Raymond Marolles, and it is he whom we
must follow, on the morning after the stormy interview in the pavilion.
He occupies a charming apartment in the Champs Élysées; small,
of course, as befitting a bachelor, but furnished in the best
taste. On entering his rooms there is one thing you could scarcely
fail to notice; and this is the surprising neatness, the almost
mathematical precision, with which everything is arranged. Books,
pictures, desks, pistols, small-swords, boxing-gloves, riding-whips,
canes, and guns--every object is disposed in an order quite unusual
in a bachelor’s apartment. But this habit of neatness is one of
the idiosyncrasies of Monsieur Marolles. It is to be seen in his
exquisitely-appointed dress; in his carefully-trimmed moustache; it is
to be heard even in the inflexions of his voice, which rise and fall
with rather monotonous though melodious regularity, and which are never
broken by anything so vulgar as anger or emotion.
At ten o’clock this morning he is still seated at breakfast. He has
eaten nothing, but he is drinking his second cup of strong coffee, and
it is easy to see that he is thinking very deeply.
“Yes,” he mutters, “I must find a way to convince her; she must be
thoroughly convinced before she will be induced to act. My first blows
have told so well, I must not fail in my masterstroke. But how to
convince her--words alone will not satisfy her long; there must be
ocular demonstration.”
He finishes his cup of coffee, and sits playing with the teaspoon,
clinking it with a low musical sound against the china teacup.
Presently he hits it with one loud ringing stroke. That stroke is
a note of triumph. He has been working a problem and has found the
solution. He takes up his hat and hurries out of the house; but as
soon as he is out of doors he slackens his step, and resumes his usual
lounging gait. He crosses the Place de la Concorde, and makes his way
to the Boulevard, and only turns aside when he reaches the Italian
Opera House. It is to the stage-door he directs his steps. An old man,
the doorkeeper, is busy in the little dark hall, manufacturing a _pot
à feu_, and warming his hands at the same time at a tiny stove in
a corner. He is quite accustomed to the apparition of a stylish young
man; so he scarcely looks up when the shadow of Raymond Marolles
darkens the doorway.
“Good morning, Monsieur Concierge,” says Raymond; “you are very busy, I
see.”
“A little domestic avocation, that is all, monsieur, being a bachelor.”
The doorkeeper is rather elderly, and somewhat snuffy for a bachelor;
but he is very fond of informing the visitors of the stage-door that
he has never sacrificed his liberty at the shrine of Hymen. He thinks,
perhaps, that they might scruple to give their messages to a married
man.
“Not too busy, then, for a little conversation, my friend?” asks the
visitor, slipping a five-franc piece into the porter’s dingy hand.
“Never too busy for that, monsieur;” and the porter abandons the _pot
à feu_ to its fate, and dusts with his coloured handkerchief a
knock-kneed-looking easy-chair, which he presents to monsieur.
Monsieur is very condescending, and the doorkeeper is very
communicative. He gives monsieur a great deal of useful information
about the salaries of the principal dancers; the bouquets and diamond
bracelets thrown to them; the airs and graces indulged in by them;
and divers other interesting facts. Presently monsieur, who has been
graciously though rather languidly interested in all this, says--“Do
you happen to have amongst your supernumeraries or choruses, or any of
your insignificant people, one of those mimics so generally met with in
a theatre?”
“Ah,” says the doorkeeper, chuckling, “I see monsieur knows a theatre.
We have indeed two or three mimics; but one above all--a chorus-singer,
a great man, who can strike off an imitation which is life itself;
a drunken, dissolute fellow, monsieur, or he would have taken to
principal characters and made himself a name. A fellow with a soul for
nothing but dominoes and vulgar wine-shops; but a wonderful mimic.”
“Ah! and he imitates, I suppose, all your great people--your prima
donna, your basso, your tenor--” hazards Monsieur Raymond Marolles.
“Yes, monsieur. You should hear him mimic this new tenor, this Monsieur
Gaston de Lancy, who has made such a sensation this season. He is not a
bad-looking fellow, pretty much the same height as De Lancy, and he can
assume his manner, voice, and walk, so completely that----”
“Perhaps in a dark room you could scarcely tell one from the other, eh?”
“Precisely, monsieur.”
“I have rather a curiosity about these sort of people; and I should
like to see this man, if----” he hesitates, jingling some silver in his
pocket.
“Nay, monsieur,” says the porter; “nothing more easy; this Moucée is
always here about this time. They call the chorus to rehearsal while
the great people are lounging over their breakfasts. We shall find him
either on the stage, or in one of the dressing-rooms playing dominoes.
This way, monsieur.”
Raymond Marolles follows the doorkeeper down dark passages and up