The trail of the serpent
Something which will change a glass of wine into a death-warrant,
but which will defy the scrutiny of a college of physicians. This
lady wishes to take a lesson in chemistry. She will, of course, only
experimentalise on rabbits, and she is so tender-hearted that, as you
see, she shudders even at the thought of that little cruelty. For the
rest, to repay you for your trouble, if you will give her pen and ink,
she will write you an order on her banker for five thousand francs.”
Monsieur Blurosset appears no more surprised at this request than if
he had been asked for a glass of water. He goes to a cabinet, which he
opens, and after a little search selects a small tin box, from which
he takes a few grains of white powder, which he screws carelessly
in a scrap of newspaper. He is so much accustomed to handling these
compounds that he treats them with very small ceremony.
“It is a slow poison,” he says. “For a full-grown rabbit use the eighth
part of what you have there; the whole of it would poison a man; but
death in either case would not be immediate. The operation of the
poison occupies some hours before it terminates fatally.”
“Madame will use it with discretion,” says Raymond; “do not fear.”
Monsieur Blurosset holds out the little packet as if expecting Valerie
to take it; she recoils with a ghastly face, and shudders as she looks
from the chemist to Raymond Marolles.
“In this degenerate age,” says Raymond, looking her steadily in the
face, “our women cannot redress their own wrongs, however deadly those
wrongs may be; they must have fathers, brothers, or uncles to fight for
them, and the world to witness the struggle. Bah! There is not a woman
in France who is any better than a sentimental schoolgirl.”
Valerie stretches out her small hand to receive the packet.
“Give me the pen, monsieur,” says she; and the chemist presents her
a half-sheet of paper, on which she writes hurriedly an order on her
bankers, which she signs in full with her maiden name.
Monsieur Blurosset looked over the paper as she wrote.
“Valerie de Cevennes!” he exclaimed. “I did not know I was honoured by
so aristocratic a visitor.”
Valerie put her hand to her head as if bewildered. “My name!” she
muttered, “I forgot, I forgot.”
“What do you fear, madame?” asked Raymond, with a smile. “Are you not
among friends?”
“For pity’s sake, monsieur,” she said, “give me your arm, and take me
back to the carriage! I shall drop down dead if I stay longer in this
room.”
The blue spectacles contemplated her gravely for a moment. Monsieur
Blurosset laid one cold hand upon her pulse, and with the other took a
little bottle from the cabinet, out of which he gave his visitor a few
drops of a transparent liquid.
“She will do now,” he said to Raymond, “till you get her home; then
see that she takes this,” he added, handing Monsieur Marolles another
phial; “it is an opiate which will procure her six hours’ sleep.
Without that she would go mad.”
Raymond led Valerie from the room; but, once outside, her head fell
heavily on his shoulder, and he was obliged to carry her down the steep
stairs.
“I think,” he muttered to himself as he went out into the courtyard
with his unconscious burden, “I think we have sealed the doom of the
king of spades!”
CHAPTER VI.
A GLASS OF WINE.
UPON a little table in the boudoir of the pavilion lay a letter. It
was the first thing Valerie de Lancy beheld on entering the room, with
Raymond Marolles by her side, half an hour after she had left the
apartment of Monsieur Blurosset. This letter was in the handwriting of
her husband, and it bore the postmark of Rouen. Valerie’s face told her
companion whom the letter came from before she took it in her hand.
“Read it,” he said, coolly. “It contains his excuses, no doubt. Let us
see what pretty story he has invented. In his early professional career
his companions surnamed him Baron Munchausen.”
Valerie’s hand shook as she broke the seal; but she read the letter
carefully through, and then turning to Raymond she said--
“You are right; his excuse is excellent, only a little too transparent:
listen.
“‘The reason of my absence from Paris’--(absence from Paris, and
to-night in the Bois de Boulogne)--‘is most extraordinary. At the
conclusion of the opera last night, I was summoned to the stage-door,
where I found a messenger waiting for me, who told me he had come
post-haste from Rouen, where my mother was lying dangerously ill, and
to implore me, if I wished to see her before her death, to start for
that place immediately. Even my love for you, which you well know,
Valerie, is the absorbing passion of my life, was forgotten in such a
moment. I had no means of communicating with you without endangering
our secret. Imagine, then, my surprise on my arrival here, to find that
my mother is in perfect health, and had of course sent no messenger
to me. I fear in this mystery some conspiracy which threatens the
safety of our secret. I shall be in Paris to-night, but too late to see
you. To-morrow, at dusk, I shall be at the dear little pavilion, once
more to be blest by a smile from the only eyes I love.--GASTON DE
LANCY.’”
“Rather a blundering epistle,” muttered Raymond. “I should really have
given him credit for something better. You will receive him to-morrow
evening, madame?”
She knew so well the purport of this question that her hand almost
involuntarily tightened on the little packet given her by Monsieur
Blurosset, which she had held all this time, but she did not answer him.
“You will receive him to-morrow; or by to-morrow night all Paris will
know of this romantic but rather ridiculous marriage, it will be in all
the newspapers--caricatured in all the print-shops; Charivari will have
a word or two about it, and little boys will cry it in the streets, a
full, true, and particular account for only one sous. But then, as I
said before, you are superior to your sex, and perhaps you will not
mind this kind of thing.”
“I shall see him to-morrow evening at dusk,” she said, in a hoarse
whisper not pleasant to hear; “and I shall never see him again after
to-morrow.”
“Once more, then, good night,” says Raymond. “But stay, Monsieur begs
you will take this opiate. Nay,” he muttered with a laugh as she looked
at him strangely, “you may be perfectly assured of its harmlessness.
Remember, I have not been paid yet.”
He bowed, and left the room. She did not lift her eyes to look at
him as he bade her adieu. Those hollow tearless eyes were fixed on
the letter she held in her left hand. She was thinking of the first
time she saw this handwriting, when every letter seemed a character
inscribed in fire, because _his_ hand had shaped it; when the
tiniest scrap of paper covered with the most ordinary words was a
precious talisman, a jewel of more price than the diamonds of all the
Cevennes.
The short winter’s day died out, and through the dusk a young man, in a
thick greatcoat, walked rapidly along the broad quiet street in which
the pavilion stood. Once or twice he looked round to assure himself
that he was unobserved. He tried the handle of the little wooden door,
found it unfastened, opened it softly, and went in. In a few minutes he
was in the boudoir, and by the side of Valerie. The girl’s proud face
was paler than when he had last seen it; and when he tenderly asked the
reason of this change, she said,--
“I have been anxious about you, Gaston. You can scarcely wonder.”
“The voice too, even your voice is changed,” he said anxiously. “Stay,
surely I am the victim of no juggling snare. It is--it is Valerie.”
The little boudoir was only lighted by the wood fire burning on the low
hearth. He drew her towards the blaze, and looked her full in the face.
“You would scarcely believe me,” he said; “but for the moment I half
doubted if it were really you. The false alarm, the hurried journey,
one thing and another have upset me so completely, that you seemed
changed--altered; I can scarcely tell you how, but altered very much.”
She seated herself in the easy-chair by the hearth. There was an
embroidered velvet footstool at her feet, and he placed himself on
this, and sat looking up in her face. She laid her slender hands on
his dark hair, and looked straight into his eyes. Who shall read her
thoughts at this moment? She had learnt to despise him, but she had
never ceased to love him. She had cause to hate him; but she could
scarcely have told whether the bitter anguish which rent her heart were
nearer akin to love or hate.
“Pshaw, Gaston!” she exclaimed, “you are full of silly fancies
to-night. And I, you see, do not offer to reproach you once for the
uneasiness you have caused me. See how readily I accept your excuse for
your absence, and never breathe one doubt of its truth. Now, were I a
jealous or suspicious woman, I might have a hundred doubts. I might
think you did not love me, and fancy that your absence was a voluntary
one. I might even be so foolish as to picture you with another whom you
loved better than me.”
“Valerie!” he said, reproachfully, raising her small hand to his lips.
“Nay,” she cried, with a light laugh, “this might be the thought of a
jealous woman. But could I think so of you, Gaston?”
“Hark!” he said, starting and rising hastily; “did you not hear
something?”
“What?”
“A rustling sound by that door--the door of your dressing-room. Finette
is not there, is she? I left her in the anteroom below.”
“No, no, Gaston; there is no one there; this is another of your silly
fancies.”
He glanced uneasily towards the door, but reseated himself at her feet,
and looked once more upward to the proudly beautiful face. Valerie did
not look at her companion, but at the fire. Her dark eyes were fixed
upon the blaze, and she seemed almost unconscious of Gaston de Lancy’s
presence. What did she see in the red light? Her shipwrecked soul? The
ruins of her hopes? The ghost of her dead happiness? The image of a
long and dreary future, in which the love on whose foundation she had
built a bright and peaceful life to come could have no part? What did
she see? A warning arm stretched out to save her from the commission
of a dreadful deed, which, once committed, must shut her out from all
earthly sympathy, though not perhaps from heavenly forgiveness; or
a stern finger pointing to the dark end to which she hastens with a
purpose in her heart so strange and fearful to her she scarcely can
believe it is her own, or that she is herself?
With her left hand still upon the dark hair--which even now she could
not touch without a tenderness, that, having no part in her nature of
to-day, seemed like some relic of the wreck of the past--she stretched
out her right arm towards a table near her, on which there were some
decanters and glasses that clashed with a silvery sound under her touch.
“I must try and cure you of your fancies, Gaston. My physician insists
on my taking every day at luncheon a glass of that old Madeira of which
my uncle is so fond. They have not removed the wine--you shall take
some; pour it out yourself. See, here is the decanter. I will hold the
glass for you.”
She held the antique diamond-cut glass with a steady hand while Gaston
poured the wine into it. The light from the wood fire flickered, and he
spilt some of the Madeira over her dress. They both laughed at this,
and her laugh rang out the clearer of the two.
There was a third person who laughed; but his was a silent laugh. This
third person was Monsieur Marolles, who stood within the half-open door
that led into Valerie’s dressing-room.
“So,” he says to himself, “this is even better than I had hoped. I
feared his handsome face would shake her resolution. The light in those