The trail of the serpent
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.
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 Canterbury 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 chimneypots,
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 half-penny, 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’s or the Burlington Arcade, were she
minded to use them, would never 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,’ 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.”
Raymond by this time gets quite interested; so does the boy in the
big coat and the slouched hat, who has transferred the field of his
gambling operations in the marble line to the landing outside the
garret door.
“He wanted the secret kept, and I kept it for gold. I kept it even from
her, your mother, my own ill-used girl, for gold. She never knew who he
was; she thought he’d deserted her, and she took to drinking; she and
I threw you into the river when we were mad drunk, and couldn’t stand
your squalling. She died--don’t you ask me how. I told you before not
to ask me how my girl died--I’m mad enough without that question; she
died, and I kept the secret. For a long time it was gold to me, and
he used to send me money regular to keep it dark; but by-and-by the
money stopped from coming. I got savage, but still I kept the secret;
because, you see, it was nothing when it was told, and there was no
one rich enough to pay me to tell it. I didn’t know where to find the
marquis; I only knew he was somewhere in France.”
“France?” exclaims Raymond.
“Yes; didn’t I tell you France? He was a French marquis--a refugee they
called him when he first made acquaintance with my girl--a teacher of
French and mathematics.”
“And his name--his name?” asks Raymond, eagerly. “His name, woman, if
you don’t want to drive me mad.”
“He called himself Smith, when he was a-teachin’, my dear,” said the
old woman with a ghastly leer; “what are you going to pay me for the
secret?”
“Whatever you like, only tell me--tell me before you----”
“Die. Yes, deary; there ain’t any time to waste, is there? I don’t want
to make a hard bargain. Will you bury me up to my neck in gold?”
“Yes, yes; speak!” He is almost beside himself, and raises a
threatening hand. The old woman grins.
“I told you before _that_ wasn’t the way, deary. Wait a bit.
Sillikens, give me that ’ere old shoe, will you? Look you here! It’s a
double sole, and the marriage certificate is between the two leathers.
I’ve walked on it this thirty years and more.”
“And the name--the name?”
“The name of the Marquis was De--de----”
“She’s dying! Give me some water!” cried Raymond.
“De Ce--Ce----” the syllables come in fitful gasps. Raymond throws some
water over her face.
“De Cevennes, my deary!--and the golden secret is told.”
And the golden bowl is broken!
Lay the ragged sheet over the ghastly face, Sillikens, and kneel down
and pray for help in your utter loneliness; for the guilty being whose
soul has gone forth to meet its Maker was your only companion and stay,
however frail that stay might be.
Go out into the sunshine, Monsieur de Marolles; that which you leave
behind in the tottering garret, shaken by an ague-paroxysm with the
fitful autumn wind, is nothing so terrible to your eyes.
You have accustomed yourself to the face of Death before now; you have
met that grim potentate on his own ground, and done with him what it is
your policy to do with everything on earth--you have made him useful to
you.
CHAPTER VIII.
ONE STEP FURTHER ON THE RIGHT TRACK.
IT is not a very romantic locality to which we must now conduct the
reader, being neither more nor less than the shop and surgery of
Mr. Augustus Darley; which temple of the healing god is scented,
this autumn afternoon, with the mingled perfumes of Cavendish and
bird’s-eye tobacco, Turkey rhubarb, whiskey-punch, otto of roses, and
muffins; conflicting odours, which form, or rather object to form, an
amalgamation, each particular effluvium asserting its individuality.
In the surgery Gus is seated, playing the intellectual and intensely
exciting game of dominoes with our acquaintance of the Cheerful
Cherokee Society, Mr. Percy Cordonner. A small jug, without either
of those earthenware conventionalities, spout or handle, and with
Mr. Cordonner’s bandanna stuffed into the top to imprison the subtle
essences of the mixture within, stands between the two gentlemen; while
Percy, as a guest, is accommodated with a real tumbler, having only
three triangular bits chipped out of the edge. Gus imbibes the exciting
fluid from a cracked custard-cup, with paper wafered round it to keep
the parts from separating, two of which cups are supposed to be equal
(by just measurement) to Mr. P. C.’s tumbler. Before the small fire
kneels the juvenile domestic of the young surgeon, toasting muffins,
and presenting to the two gentlemen a pleasing study in anatomical
perspective and the mysteries of foreshortening; to which, however,
they are singularly inattentive, devoting their entire energies to
the pieces of spotted ivory in their hands, and the consumption, by
equitable division, of the whiskey-punch.
“I say, Gus,” said Mr. Cordonner, stopping in the middle of a gulp of
his favourite liquid, at the risk of strangulation, with as much alarm
in his face as his placid features were capable of exhibiting--“I say,
this isn’t the professional tumbler, is it?”
“Why, of course it is,” said his friend. “We have only had that one
since midsummer. The patients don’t like it because it’s chipped; but
I always tell them, that after having gone through having a tooth
out--particularly,” he added parenthetically, “as I take ’em out
(plenty of lancet, forceps, and key, for their eighteenpence)--they
needn’t grumble about having to rinse their mouths out of a cracked
tumbler.”
Mr. Cordonner turned pale.
“Do they do that?” he said, and deliberately shot his last sip of the