The trail of the serpent
Did he know, or did he guess, that there might be another reason to
render her acceptance of his hand possible? Did he think that even his
obscure name might be a shelter to her in days to come?
O Valerie, Valerie, for ever haunted by the one beloved creature gone
out of this world never to return! For ever pursued by the image of the
love which never was--which at its best and brightest was--but a false
dream. Most treacherous when most tender, most cruel when most kind,
most completely false when it most seemed a holy truth. Weep, Valerie,
for the long years to come, whose dismal burden shall for ever be, “Oh,
never, never more!”
CHAPTER IX.
A MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE.
A MONTH from the time at which this interview took place, everyone
worth speaking of in Paris is busy talking of a singular marriage about
to be celebrated in that smaller and upper circle which forms the apex
of the fashionable pyramid. The niece and heiress of the Marquis de
Cevennes is about to marry a gentleman of whom the Faubourg St. Germain
knows very little. But though the faubourg knows very little, the
faubourg has, notwithstanding, a great deal to say; perhaps all the
more from the very slight foundation it has for its assertions. Thus,
on Tuesday the faubourg affirms that Monsieur Raymond Marolles is a
German, and a political refugee. On Wednesday the faubourg rescinds:
he is not a German, he is a Frenchman, the son of an illegitimate son
of Philip Egalité, and, consequently, nephew to the king, by whose
influence the marriage has been negotiated. The faubourg, in short,
has so many accounts of Monsieur Raymond Marolles, that it is quite
unnecessary for the Marquis de Cevennes to give any account of him
whatever, and he alone, therefore, is silent on the subject. Monsieur
Marolles is a very worthy man--a gentleman, of course--and his niece
is very much attached to him; beyond this, the marquis does not
condescend to enlighten his numerous acquaintance. How much more might
the faubourg have to say if it could for one moment imagine the details
of a stormy scene which took place between the uncle and niece at the
château in Normandy, when, kneeling before the cross, Valerie swore
that there was so dreadful a reason for this strange marriage, that,
did her uncle know it, he would himself kneel at her feet and implore
her to sacrifice herself to save the honour of her noble house. What
might have been suggested to the mind of the marquis by these dark
hints no one knew; but he ceased to oppose the marriage of the only
scion of one of the highest families in France with a man who could
tell nothing of himself, except that he had received the education of a
gentleman, and had a will strong enough to conquer fortune.
The religious solemnization of the marriage was performed with great
magnificence at the Madeleine. Wealth, rank, and fashion were equally
represented at the _dejeûner_ which succeeded the ceremonial,
and Monsieur Marolles found himself the centre of a circle of the
old nobility of France. It would have been very difficult, even for
an attentive observer, to discover one triumphant flash in those
light blue eyes, or one smile playing round the thin lips, by which a
stranger might divine that the bridegroom of to-day was the winner of a
deep-laid and villanous scheme. He bore his good fortune, in fact, with
such well-bred indifference, that the faubourg immediately set him down
as a great man, even if not one of the set which was the seventh heaven
in that Parisian paradise. And it would have been equally difficult for
any observer to read the secret of the pale but beautiful face of the
bride. Cold, serene, and haughty, she smiled a stereotyped smile upon
all, and showed no more agitation during the ceremony than she might
have done had she been personating a bride in an acted charade.
It may be, that the hour when any event, however startling, however
painful, could move her from this cold serenity, had for ever passed
away. It may be, that having outlived all the happiness of her life,
she had almost outlived the faculty of feeling or of suffering, and
must henceforth exist only for the world--a distinguished actress in
the great comedy of fashionable life.
She is standing in a window filled with exotics, which form a great
screen of dark green leaves and tropical flowers, through which the
blue spring sky looks in, clear, bright, and cold. She is talking to an
elderly duchess, a languid and rather faded personage, dressed in ruby
velvet, and equally distinguished for the magnificence of her lace and
the artful composition of her complexion, which is as near an approach
to nature as can be achieved by pearl-powder. “And you leave France in
a month, to take possession of your estates in South America?” she asks.
“In a month, yes,” says Valerie, playing with the large dark leaf of a
magnolia. “I am anxious to see my mother’s native country. I am tired
of Paris.”
“Really? You surprise me!” The languid duchess cannot conceive the
possibility of any one being tired of a Parisian existence. She is deep
in her thirty-fourth platonic attachment--the object, a celebrated
novelist of the transcendental school; and as at this moment she sees
him entering the room by a distant door, she strolls away from the
window, carrying her perfumed complexion through the delighted crowd.
Perhaps Monsieur Raymond Marolles, standing talking to an old
Buonapartist general, whose breast is one constellation of stars and
crosses, had only been waiting for this opportunity, for he advanced
presently with soft step and graceful carriage towards the ottoman on
which his bride had seated herself. She was trifling with her costly
bridal bouquet as the bridegroom approached her, plucking the perfumed
petals one by one, and scattering them on the ground at her feet in
very wantonness.
“Valerie,” he said, bending over her, and speaking in tones which, by
reason of the softness of their intonation, might have been tender, but
for the want of some diviner melody from within the soul of the man;
not having which, they had the false jingle of a spurious coin.
The spot in which the bride was seated was so sheltered by the flowers
and the satin hangings which shrouded the window, that it formed a
little alcove, shut out from the crowded room.
“Valerie!” he repeated; and finding that she did not answer, he laid
his white ungloved hand upon her jewelled wrist.
She started to her feet, drawing herself up to her fullest height, and
shaking off his hand with a gesture which, had he been the foulest and
most loathsome reptile crawling upon the earth’s wide face, could not
have bespoken a more intense abhorrence.
“There could not be a better time than this,” she said, “to say what
I have to say. You may perhaps imagine that to be compelled to speak
to you at all is so abhorrent to me, that I shall use the fewest words
I can, and use those words in their very fullest sense. You are the
incarnation of misery and crime. As such you can perhaps understand
how deeply I hate you. You are a villain; and so mean and despicable a
villain, that even in the hour of your success you are a creature to
be pitied; since from the very depth of your degradation you lack the
power to know how much you are degraded! As such I scorn and loathe
you, as we loathe those venemous reptiles which, from their noxious
qualities, defy our power to handle and exterminate them.”
“And as your husband, madame?” Her bitter words discomposed him so
little, that he stooped to pick up a costly flower which in her passion
she had thrown down, and placed it carefully in his button-hole. “As
your husband, madame? The state of your feelings towards me in that
character is perhaps a question more to the point.”
“You are right,” she said, casting all assumption of indifference
aside, and trembling with scornful rage. “That is the question. Your
speculation has been a successful one.”
“Entirely successful,” he replied, still arranging the flower in his
coat.
“You have the command of my fortune----”
“A fortune which many princes might be proud to possess,” he
interposed, looking at the blossom, not at her. He may possibly have
been a brave man, but he was not distinguished for looking in people’s
faces, and he did not care about meeting her eyes to-day.
“But if you think the words whose sacred import has been prostituted
by us this day have any meaning for you or me; if you think there is a
lacquey or a groom in this vast city, a ragged mendicant standing at
a church-door whom I would not sooner call my husband than the wretch
who stands beside me now, you neither know me nor my sex. My fortune
you are welcome to. Take it, squander it, scatter it to the winds,
spend it to the last farthing on the low vices that are pleasure to
such men as you. But dare to address me with but one word from your
false lips, dare to approach me so near as to touch but the hem of my
dress, and that moment I proclaim the story of our marriage from first
to last. Believe me when I say--and if you look me in the face you will
believe me--the restraining influence is very slight that holds me back
from standing now in the centre of this assembly to proclaim myself a
vile and cruel murderess, and you my tempter and accomplice. Believe
me when I tell you that it needs but one look of yours to provoke
me to blazon this hideous secret, and cry its details in the very
market-place. Believe this, and rest contented with the wages of your
work.”
Exhausted by her passion, she sank into her seat. Raymond looked at her
with a supercilious sneer. He despised her for this sudden outbreak of
rage and hatred, for he felt how much his calculating brain and icy
temperament made him her superior.
“You are somewhat hasty, madame, in your conclusions. Who said I was
discontented with the wages of my work, when for those wages alone I
have played the game in which, as you say, I am the conqueror? For the
rest, I do not think I am the man to break my heart for love of any
woman breathing, as I never quite understood what this same weakness of
the brain, which men have christened love, really is; and even were the
light of dark eyes necessary to my happiness, I need scarcely tell you,
madame, that beauty is very indulgent to a man with such a fortune as I
am master of to-day. There is nothing on earth to prevent our agreeing
remarkably well; and perhaps this marriage, which you speak of so
bitterly, may be as happy as many other unions, which, were I Asmodeus
and you my pupil, we could look down on to-day through the housetops of
this good city of Paris.”
I wonder whether Monsieur Marolles was right? I wonder whether this
thrice-sacred sacrament, ordained by an Almighty Power for the glory
and the happiness of the earth, is ever, by any chance, profaned
and changed into a bitter mockery or a wicked lie? Whether, by any
hazard, these holy words were ever used in any dark hour of this
world’s history, to join such people as had been happier far asunder,
though they had been parted in their graves; or whether, indeed, this
solemn ceremonial has not so often united such people, with a chain
no time has power to wear or lengthen, that it has at last, unto some
ill-directed minds, sunk to the level of a pitiful and worn-out farce?
CHAPTER X.
ANIMAL MAGNETISM.
NEARLY a month has passed since this strange marriage, and Monsieur
Blurosset is seated at his little green-covered table, the lamp-light
falling full upon the outspread pack of cards, over which the blue
spectacles bend with the same intent and concentrated gaze as on the