The trail of the serpent
Mephistopheles to a promising Doctor Faustus;--“and having possessed
yourself of this information, may I ask what use you intend making
of it? In this utilitarian age everything is put to a use, sooner or
later. Do you purpose writing my biography? It will not be interesting.
Not as you would have to write it to-day. Alas! we are not so fortunate
as to live under the Regency, and there are not many interesting
biographies nowadays.”
“My dear Marquis, I really have no time to listen to what I have
no doubt, amongst your own particular friends, is considered most
brilliant wit; I have two or three things to say to you that must be
said; and the sort of people who are now waiting outside the door are
apt to be impatient.”
“Ah, you are experienced; you know their manners and customs! And they
are impatient,” murmured the Marquis, thoughtfully; “and they put you
in stone places as if you were coal, and behind bars as if you were
zoological; and then they hang you. They call you up at an absurd hour
in the morning, and they take you out into a high place, and drop you
down through a hole as if you were a penny put into a savings box; and
other people get up at an equally absurd hour of the morning, or stay
up all night, in order to see it done. And yet there are persons who
declare that the age of romance has passed away.”
“Monsieur de Cevennes, that which I have to say to you relates to your
marriage.”
“My marriage. Suppose I say that I never was married, my amiable
friend?”
“I shall then reply, monsieur, that I not only am informed of all the
circumstances of your marriage, but what is more, I am possessed of a
proof of that marriage.”
“Supposing there was such a marriage, which I am prepared to deny,
there could only be two proofs--the witnesses and the certificate.”
“The witnesses, monsieur, are dead,” said Raymond.
“Then that would reduce the possible proofs to one--the certificate.”
“Nay, monsieur, there might be another evidence of the marriage.”
“And that would be----?”
“The issue of it. You had two sons by that marriage, monsieur. One of
those sons died eight years ago.”
“And the other----?” asked the Marquis.
“Still lives. I shall have something to say about him by-and-by.”
“It is a subject in which I take no sort of interest,” said the
Marquis, throwing himself back into his chair, and abandoning himself
once more to Marc Antony. “I may have been married, or I may not have
been married--it is not worth my while to deny that fact to you;
because if I confess it to you, I can of course deny it the moment I
cross the threshold of that door--I may have sons, or I may not have
sons; in either case, I have no wish to hear of them, and anything you
may have to say about them is, it appears to me, quite irrelevant to
the matter in hand; which merely is your going to prison for forgery,
or your _not_ going to prison for forgery. But what I most
earnestly recommend, my very dear young friend, is, that you take the
cab and handcuffs quietly, and go! That will, at least, put an end
to fuss and discussion; and oh, what an inexpressible relief there
is in that! I always envy Noah, floundering about in that big boat
of his: no new books; no houses of parliament; no poor relations; no
_Times_ newspaper; and no taxes--‘universal as you were,’ as Mr.
Carlyle says; plenty to eat, and everything come to an end; and that
foolish Noah must needs send out the dove, and begin it all over again.
Yes, he began it all over again, that preposterous Noah. Whereby, cab,
handcuffs, forgery, long conversation, and police persons outside that
door; all of which might have been prevented if Noah had kept the dove
indoors, and had been unselfish enough to bore a hole in the bottom of
his boat.”
“If you will listen to me, Monsieur le Marquis, and keep your
philosophical reflections for a more convenient season, there will be
some chance of our coming to an understanding. One of these twin sons
still lives.”
“Now, really, that is the old ground again. We are not getting on----”
“Still lives, I say. Whatever he is, Monsieur de Cevennes--whatever his
chequered life may have been, the guilt and the misery of that life
rest alike on your head.”
The Marquis gives the head alluded to an almost imperceptible jerk,
as if he threw this moral burden off, and looks relieved by the
proceeding. “Don’t be melodramatic,” he remarks, mildly, “this is not
the Porte-St.-Martin, and there are no citizens in the gallery to
applaud.”
“That guilt and that misery, I say, rest upon your head. When you
married the woman whom you abandoned to starvation and despair, you
loved her, I suppose?”
“I dare say I did; I have no doubt I told her so, poor little thing!”
“And a few months after your marriage you wearied of her, as you would
have done of any other plaything.”
“As I should have done of any other plaything. Poor dear child, she
was dreadfully wearisome. Her relations too. Heaven and earth, what
relations! They were looked upon in the light of human beings at
Slopperton, but they were wise to keep out of Paris, for they’d have
been most decidedly put into the Jardin des Plantes; and, really,” said
the Marquis, thoughtfully, “behind bars, and aggravated by fallacious
offers of buns from small children, they would have been rather
amusing.”
“You were quite content that this unhappy girl should share your
poverty, Monsieur le Marquis; but in the hour of your good fortune----”
“I left her. Decidedly. Look you, Monsieur de Marolles, when I married
that young person, whom you insist on dragging out of her grave--poor
girl, she is dead, no doubt, by this time--in this remarkably
melodramatic manner, I was a young man, without a penny in the
world, and with very slight expectations of ever becoming possessed
of one. I am figurative, of course. I believe men of my temperament
and complexion are not very subject to that popular epidemic, called
love. But as much as it was in my power to love any one, I loved this
little factory girl. I used to meet her going backwards and forwards
to her work, as I went backwards and forwards to mine; and we became
acquainted. She was gentle, innocent, pretty. I was very young, and,
I need scarcely say, extremely stupid; and I married her. We had not
been married six months before that dreadful Corsican person took it
into his head to abdicate; and I was summoned back to France, to make
my appearance at the Tuileries as Marquis de Cevennes. Now, what I
have to say is this: if you wish to quarrel with any one, quarrel
with the Corsican person; for if he had never signed his abdication
at Fontainebleau (which he did, by the bye, in a most melodramatic
manner--I am acquainted with some weak-minded people who cannot read
the description of that event without shedding tears), I should never
have deserted my poor little English wife.”
“The Marquis de Cevennes could not, then, ratify the marriage of the
obscure teacher of French and mathematics?” asked Raymond.
“If the Marquis de Cevennes had been a rich man, he might have done
so; but the Restoration, which gave me back my title, and the only
château (my ancestors had three) which the Jacobins had not burned to
the ground, did not restore me the fortune which the Revolution had
devoured. I was a poor man. Only one course was open to me--a rich
marriage. The wealthy widow of a Bonapartist general beheld and admired
your humble servant, and the doom of my poor little wife was sealed.
For many years I sent money regularly to her old mother--an awful
woman, who knew my secret. She had, therefore, no occasion to starve,
Monsieur de Marolles. And now, may I be permitted to ask what interest
you have in this affair, that you should insist on recalling these very
disagreeable circumstances at this particular moment?”
“There is one question you do not ask, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“Indeed; and what is that?” asked the Marquis.
“You seem to have very little curiosity about the fate of your
surviving son.”
“I seem to have very little curiosity, my young friend; I have very
little curiosity. I dare say he is a very worthy individual; but I
have no anxiety whatever about his fate; for if he at all resembles
his father, there is very little doubt that he has taken every care of
himself. The De Cevennes have always taken care of themselves; it is a
family trait.”
“He has proved himself worthy of that family, then. He was thrown
into a river, but he did not sink; he was put into a workhouse and
brought up as a pauper, but by the force of his own will and the help
of his own brain he extricated himself, and won his way in the world.
He became, what his father was before him, a teacher in a school. He
grew tired of that, as his father did, and left England for Paris. In
Paris, like his father before him, he married a woman he did not love
for the sake of her fortune. He became master of that fortune, and
till this very day he has surmounted every obstacle and triumphed over
every difficulty. Your only son, Monsieur de Cevennes--the son whose
mother you deserted--the son whom you abandoned to starve, steal,
drown, or hang, to beg in the streets, die in a gutter, a workhouse, or
a prison--has lived through all, to stand face to face with you this
day, and to tell you that for his own and for his mother’s wrongs,
with all the strength of a soul which those wrongs have steeped in
wickedness--_he hates you!_”
“Don’t be violent,” said the Marquis, gently. “So, you are my son? Upon
my word I thought all along you were something of that kind, for you
are such a consummate villain.”
For the first time in his life Raymond de Marolles feels what it is
to be beaten by his own weapons. Against the _sang froid_ of the
Marquis the torrent of his passionate words dashes, as the sea dashes
at the foot of a rock, and makes as little impression.
“And what then?” says the Marquis. “Since it appears you are my son,
what then?”
“You must save me, monsieur,” said Raymond, in a hoarse voice.
“Save you? But, my worthy friend, how save you? Save you from the cab
and handcuffs? If I go out to those people and say, ‘He is my son; be
so good as to forego the cab and handcuffs,’ they will laugh at me.
They are so dreadfully matter-of-fact, that sort of people. What is to
be done?”
“Only this, monsieur. I must make my escape from this apartment. That
window looks into the garden, from the garden to the mews, through the
mews into a retired street, and thence----”
“Never mind that, if you get there. I really doubt the possibility of
your getting there. There is a policeman watching in that garden.”
Raymond smiles. He is recovering his presence of mind in the necessity
for action. He opens a drawer in the library table and takes out an
air-pistol, which looks rather like some elegant toy than a deadly
weapon.
“I must shoot that man,” he says.
“Then I give the alarm. I will not be implicated in a murder. Good
Heavens! the Marquis de Cevennes implicated in a murder! Why, it would
be talked of in Paris for a month.”
“There will be no murder, monsieur. I shall fire at that man from this
window and hit him in the knee. He will fall, and most likely faint
from the pain, and will not, therefore know whether I pass through the
garden or not. You will give the alarm, and tell the men without that I
have escaped through this window and the door in the wall yonder. They
will pursue me in that direction, while I----”
“You will do what?”
“Go out at the front door as a gentleman should. I was not unprepared
for such an event as this. Every room in this house has a secret
communication with the next room. There is only one door in this
library, as it seems, and they are carefully watching that.”