The trail of the serpent
Mathematical charts, inscribed with figures such as perhaps neither
Newton or Leplace ever dreamed of. Volumes in old worm-eaten bindings,
and written in strange languages long since dead and forgotten upon
this earth; but they all seem familiar to this pale student, whose blue
spectacles bend over pages of crabbed Arabic as intently as the eyes
of a boarding-school miss who devours the last volume of the last new
novel. Now and then he scratches a few figures, or a sign in algebra,
or a sentence in Arabic, on the paper before him, and then goes back
to the book again, never looking up towards the smoker or his Hindoo
attendant. Presently the soldier, as he relinquishes his pipe to the
Indian to be replenished breaks the silence.
“So the great people of London, as well as of Paris, are beginning to
believe in you, Laurent?” he says.
The student lifts his head from his work, and turning the blue
spectacles towards the smoker, says in his old unimpassioned manner--
“How can they do otherwise, when I tell them the truth? These,” he
points to the pile of books and papers at his side, “do not err:
they only want to be interpreted rightly. I may have been sometimes
mistaken--I have never been deceived.”
“You draw nice distinctions, Blurosset.”
“Not at all. If I have made mistakes in the course of my career, it has
been from my own ignorance, my own powerlessness to read these aright;
not from any shortcoming in the things themselves. I tell you, they do
not deceive.”
“But will you ever read them aright? Will you ever fathom to the very
bottom this dark gulf of forgotten science?”
“Yes, I am on the right road. I only pray to live long enough to reach
the end.”
“And then----?”
“Then it will be within the compass of my own will to live forever.”
“Pshaw! The old story--the old delusion. How strange that the wisest on
this earth should have been fooled by it!”
“Make sure that it is a delusion, before you say they were fooled by
it, Captain.”
“Well, my dear Blurosset, Heaven forbid that I should dispute with one
so learned as you upon so obscure a subject. I am more at home holding
a fort against the Indians than holding an argument against Albertus
Magnus. You still, however, persist that this faithful Mujeebez here is
in some manner or other linked with my destiny?”
“I do”
“And yet it is very singular! What can connect two men whose
experiences in every way are so dissimilar?”
“I tell you again that he will be instrumental in confounding your
enemies.”
“You know who they are--or rather, who he is. I have but one.”
“Not two, Captain?”
“Not two. No, Blurosset. There is but one on whom I would wreak a deep
and deadly vengeance.”
“And for the other?”
“Pity and forgiveness. Do not speak of that. There are some things
which even now I am not strong enough to hear spoken of. That is one of
them.”
“The history of your faithful Mujeebez there is a singular one, is it
not?” asks the student, rising from his books, and advancing to the
window.
“A very singular one. His master, an Englishman, with whom he came from
Calcutta, and to whom he was devotedly attached----”
“I was indeed, sahib,” said the Indian, in very good English, but with
a strong foreign accent.
“This master, a rich nabob, was murdered, in the house of his sister,
by his own nephew.”
“Very horrible, and very unnatural! Was the nephew hung?”
“No. The jury brought in a verdict of insanity: he was sent to a
madhouse, where no doubt he still remains confined. Mujeebez was not
present at the trial; he had escaped by a miracle with his own life;
for the murderer, coming into the little room in which he slept, and
finding him stirring, gave him a blow on the head, which placed him for
some time in a very precarious state.”
“And did you see the murderer’s face, Mujeebez?” asks Monsieur
Blurosset.
“No, sahib. It was dark, I could see nothing. The blow stunned me: when
I recovered my senses, I was in the hospital, where I lay for months.
The shock had brought on what the doctors called a nervous fever. For
a long time I was utterly incapable of work; when I left the hospital
I had not a friend in the world; but the good lady, the sister of my
poor murdered master, gave me money to return to India, where I was
kitmutghar for some time to an English colonel, in whose household
I learned the language, and whom I did not leave till I entered the
service of the good Captain.”
The “good Captain” laid his hand affectionately on his follower’s
white-turbaned head, something with the protecting gesture with which
he might caress a favourite and faithful dog.
“After you had saved my life, Mujeebez,” he said.
“I would have died to save it, sahib,” answered the Hindoo. “A kind
word sinks deep in the heart of the Indian.”
“And there was no doubt of the guilt of this nephew?” asks Blurosset.
“I cannot say, sahib. I did not know the English language then; I could
understand nothing told me, except my poor master’s nephew was not
hung, but put in a madhouse.”
“Did you see him--this nephew?”
“Yes, sahib, the night before the murder. He came into the room with my
master when he retired to rest. I saw him only for a minute, for I left
the room as they entered.”
“Should you know him again?” inquired the student.
“Anywhere, sahib. He was a handsome young man, with dark hazel eyes and
a bright smile. He did not look like a murderer.”
“That is scarcely a sure rule to go by, is it, Laurent?” asks the
Captain, with a bitter smile.
“I don’t know. A black heart will make strange lines in the handsomest
face, which are translatable to the close observer.”
“Now,” says the officer, rising, and surrendering his pipe to the hands
of his watchful attendant--“now for my morning’s ride, and you will
have the place to yourself for your scientific visitors, Laurent.”
“You will not go where you are likely to meet----”
“Anyone I know? No, Blurosset. The lonelier the road the better I like
it. I miss the deep jungle and the tiger-hunt, eh, Mujeebez?--we miss
them, do we not?”
The Hindoo’s eyes brightened, as he answered eagerly, “Yes, indeed,
sahib.”
Captain Lansdown (that is the name of the officer) is of French
extraction; he speaks English perfectly, but still with a slightly
foreign accent. He has distinguished himself by his marvellous courage
and military genius in the Punjab, and is over in England on leave
of absence. It is singular that so great a friendship should exist
between this impetuous, danger-loving soldier, and the studious French
chemist and pseudo-magician, Laurent Blurosset; but that a very firm
friendship does exist between them is evident. They live in the same
house; are both waited upon by Egerton Lansdown’s Indian servant, and
are constantly together.
Laurent Blurosset, after becoming the fashion in Paris, is now the rage
in London. But he rarely stirs beyond the threshold of his own door,
though his presence is eagerly sought for in scientific coteries, where
opinion is still, however, divided as to whether he is a charlatan
or a great man. The materialists sneer--the spiritualists believe.
His disinterestedness, at any rate, speaks in favour of his truth. He
will receive no money from any of his numerous visitors. He will serve
them, he says, if he can, but he will not sell the wisdom of the mighty
dead; for that is something too grand and solemn to be made a thing of
barter. His discoveries in chemistry have made him sufficiently rich;
and he can afford to devote himself to science, in the hope of finding
truth for his reward. He asks no better recompense than the glory of
the light he seeks. We leave him, then, to his eager and inquisitive
visitors, while the Captain rides slowly through Oxford Street, on his
way to the Edgware Road, through which he emerges into the country.
CHAPTER V.
THE NEW MILKMAN IN PARK LANE.
THE post of kitchenmaid in the household of the Count de Marolles
is no unimportant one, and Mrs. Moper is accounted a person of some
consequence in the servants’ hall. The French _chef_, who has
his private sitting-room, wherein he works elaborate and scientific
culinary combinations, which, when he condescends to talk English, he
designates “plates,” has of course very little communication with the
household. Mrs. Moper is his prime minister; he gives his orders to her
for execution, and throws himself back in his easy-chair to _think
out_ a dish, while his handmaiden collects for him the vulgar
elements of his noble art. Mrs. Moper is a very good cook herself; and
when she leaves the Count de Marolles she will go into a family where
there is no foreigner kept, and will have forty pounds per annum and
a still-room of her own. She is in the caterpillar stage now, Mrs.
Sarah Moper, and is content to write herself down kitchenmaid _ad
interim_.
The servants’-hall dinner and the housekeeper’s repast are both over;
but the preparations for _the_ dinner have not yet begun, and Mrs.
Moper and Liza, the scullerymaid, snatch half an hour’s calm before the
coming storm, and sit down to darn stockings,--
“Which,” Mrs. Moper says, “my toes is through and my heels is out, and
never can I get the time to set a stitch. For time there isn’t any in
this house for a under-servant, which under-servant I will be no more
than one year longer; or say my name’s not Sarah Moper.”
Liza, who is mending a black stocking with white thread (and a very
fanciful effect it has too), evidently has no wish to dispute such a
proposition.
“Indeed, Mrs. Moper,” she said, “that’s the truest word as ever you’ve
spoke. It’s well for them as takes their wages for wearin’ silk
gowns, and oilin’ of their hair, and lookin’ out of winder to watch
the carriages go in at Grosvenor Gate; which, don’t tell me as Life
Guardsmen would look up imperdent, if they hadn’t been looked down to
likewise.” Eliza gets rather obscure here. “This ’ouse, Mrs. M., for
upper-servants may be ’eaven, but for unders it’s more like the place
as is pronounced like a letter of the alphabet, and isn’t to be named
by me.”
There is no knowing how far this rather revolutionary style of
conversation might have gone, for at this moment there came that
familiar sound of the clink of milk-pails on the pavement above, and
the London cry of milk.
“It’s Bugden with the milk, Liza; there was a pint of cream wrong
in the last bill, Mrs. Moper says. Ask him to come down and
correctify it, will you, Liza?”
Liza ascends the area steps and parleys with the milkman; presently he
comes jingling down, with his pails swinging against the railings; he
is rather awkward with his pails, this milkman, and I’m afraid he must
spill more milk than he sells, as the Park Lane pavements testify.
“It isn’t Bugden,” says Liza, explanatory, as she ushers him into the
kitchen. “Bugden ’as ’urt his leg, a-milkin’ a cow wot kicks when the
flies worrits, and ’as sent this young man, as is rather new to the
business, but is anxious to do his best.”
The new milkman enters the kitchen as she concludes her speech, and
releasing himself from the pails, expresses his readiness to settle any
mistake in the weekly bill.
He is rather a good-looking fellow, this milkman, and he has a very
curly head of flaxen hair, preposterously light eyebrows, and dark
hazel eyes, which form rather a piquant contrast. I don’t suppose Mrs.
Moper and Liza think him bad-looking, for they beg him to sit down,
and the scullerymaid thrusts the black stocking, on which she was
heretofore engaged, into a table-drawer, and gives her hair a rapid
extemporary smoothing with the palms of her hands. Mr. Bugden’s man
seems by no means disinclined for a little friendly chat: he tells them