The trail of the serpent
a good ship sets sail for the land of dear brother Jonathan; but the
Count de Marolles there was not.
No, decidedly, no Count de Marolles! There was a very quiet-looking
Irish labourer, keeping quite aloof from the rest of his kind, who were
sufficiently noisy and more than sufficiently forcible in the idiomatic
portions of their conversation. There was this very quiet Irishman,
leaning on his spade and pickaxe, and evidently bent on not going on
board till the very last moment; and there was an elderly gentleman in
a black coat, who looked rather like a Methodist parson, and who held a
very small carpet-bag in his hand; but there was no Count de Marolles;
and what’s more, there was no Mr. Peters.
This latter circumstance made Augustus Darley very uneasy; but I regret
to say that the Smasher wore, if anything, a look of triumph as the
hands of the clocks about the quay pointed to three o’clock, and no
Peters appeared.
“I knowed,” he said, with effusion--“I knowed that cove wasn’t up to
his business. I wouldn’t mind bettin’ the goodwill of my little crib in
London agen sixpen’orth of coppers, that he’s a-standin’ at this very
individual moment of time at a street-corner a mile off, makin’ signs
to one of the Liverpool police-officers.”
The gentleman in the black coat standing before them turned round
on hearing this remark, and smiled--smiled very very faintly; but he
certainly did smile. The Smasher’s blood, which was something like that
of Lancaster, and distinguished for its tendency to mount, was up in a
moment.
“I hope you find my conversation amusin’, old gent,” he said, with
considerable asperity; “I came down here on purpose to put you in
spirits, on account of bein’ grieved to see you always a-lookin’ as
if you’d just come home from your own funeral, and the undertaker was
a-dunnin’ you for the burial-fees.”
Gus trod heavily on his companion’s foot as a friendly hint to him not
to get up a demonstration; and addressing the gentleman, who appeared
in no hurry to resent the Smasher’s contemptuous animadversions, asked
him when he thought the boat would start.
“Not for five or ten minutes, I dare say,” he answered. “Look there; is
that a coffin they’re bringing this way? I’m rather short-sighted; be
good enough to tell me if it is a coffin?”
The Smasher, who had the glance of an eagle, replied that it decidedly
was a coffin; adding, with a growl, that he knowed somebody as might be
in it, and no harm done to society.
The elderly gentleman took not the slightest notice of this gratuitous
piece of information on the part of the left-handed gladiator; but
suddenly busied himself with his fingers in the neighbourhood of his
limp white cravat.
“Why, I’m blest,” cried the Smasher, “if the old baby ain’t at Peters’s
game, a-talkin’ to nobody upon his fingers!”
Nay, most distinguished professor of the noble art of self-defence,
is not that assertion a little premature? Talking on his fingers,
certainly--looking at nobody, certainly; but for all that, talking to
somebody, and to a somebody who is looking at him; for, from the other
side of the little crowd, the Irish labourer fixes his eyes intently on
every movement of the grave elderly gentleman’s fingers, as they run
through four or five rapid words; and Gus Darley, perceiving this look,
starts in amazement, for the eyes of the Irish labourer are the eyes of
Mr. Peters of the detective police.
But neither the Smasher nor Gus is to notice Mr. Peters unless Mr.
Peters notices them. It is so expressed in the note, which Mr. Darley
has at that very moment in his waistcoat pocket. So Gus gives his
companion a nudge, and directs his attention to the smock-frock and
the slouched hat in which the detective has hidden himself, with a
hurried injunction to him to keep quiet. We are human at the best; ay,
even when we are celebrated for our genius in the muscular science,
and our well-known blow of the left-handed postman’s knock, or double
auctioneer: and, if the sober truth must be told, the Smasher was
sorry to recognize Mr. Peters in that borrowed garb. He didn’t want
the dumb detective to arrest the Count de Marolles. He had never read
Coriolanus, neither had he seen _the_ Roman, Mr. William Macready,
in that character; but, for all that, the Smasher wanted to go home to
the dear purlieus of Drury Lane, and say to his astonished admirers,
“Alone I did it!” And lo, here were Mr. Peters and the elderly stranger
both entered for the same event.
While gloomy and vengeful thoughts, therefore, troubled the manly
breast of the Vinegar-Yard gladiator, four men approached, bearing
on their shoulders the coffin which had so aroused the stranger’s
attention. They bore it on board the steamer, and a few moments after
a gentlemanly and cheerful-looking man, of about forty, stepped across
the narrow platform, and occupied himself with a crowd of packages,
which stood in a heap, apart from the rest of the luggage on the
crowded deck.
Again the elderly stranger’s fingers were busy in the region of his
cravat. The superficial observer would have merely thought him very
fidgety about the limp bit of muslin; but this time the fingers of Mr.
Peters telegraphed an answer.
“Gentlemen,” said the stranger, addressing Mr. Darley and the Smasher
in the most matter-of-fact manner, “you will be good enough to go
on board that steamer with me? I am working with Mr. Peters in this
affair. Remember, I am going to America by that vessel yonder, and you
are my friends come with me to see me off. Now, gentlemen.”
He has no time to say any more, for the bell rings; and the last
stragglers, the people who will enjoy the latest available moment on
_terra firma_, scramble on board; amongst them the Smasher, Gus,
and the stranger, who stick very closely together.
The coffin has been placed in the centre of the vessel, on the top of a
pile of chests, and its gloomy black outline is sharply defined against
the clear blue autumn sky. Now there is a general feeling amongst the
passengers that the presence of this coffin is a peculiar injury to
them.
It is unpleasant, certainly. From the very moment of its appearance
amongst them a change has come over the spirits of every one of the
travellers. They try to keep away from it, but they try in vain;
there is a dismal fascination in the defined and ghastly shape, which
all the rough wrappers that can be thrown over it will not conceal.
They find their eyes wandering to it, in preference even to watching
receding Liverpool, whose steeples and tall chimneys are dipping down
and down into the blue water, and will soon disappear altogether. They
are interested in it in spite of themselves; they ask questions of one
another; they ask questions of the engineer, and of the steward, and of
the captain of the steamer, but can elicit nothing--except that lying
in that coffin, so close to them, and yet so very very far away from
them, there is an American gentleman of some distinction, who, having
died suddenly in England, is being carried back to New York, to be
buried amongst his friends in that city. The aggrieved passengers for
the _Washington_ think it very hard upon them that the American
gentleman of distinction--they remember that he _is_ a gentleman
of distinction, and modify their tone accordingly--could not have
been buried in England like a reasonable being. The British dominions
were not good enough for _him_, they supposed. Other passengers,
pushing the question still further, ask whether he couldn’t have been
taken home by some other vessel; nay, whether indeed he ought not to
have had a ship all to himself, instead of harrowing the feelings and
preying upon the spirits of first-class passengers. They look almost
spitefully, as they make these remarks, towards the shrouded coffin,
which, to their great aggravation, is not entirely shrouded by the
wrappers about it. One corner has been left uncovered, revealing the
stout rough oak; for it is only a temporary coffin, and the gentleman
of distinction will be put into something better befitting his rank
when he arrives at his destination. It is to be observed, and it is
observed by many, that the cheerful passenger in fashionable mourning,
and with the last greatcoat which the inspiration of Saville Row has
given to the London world thrown over his arm, hovers in a protecting
manner about the coffin, and evinces a fidelity which, but for his
perfectly cheerful countenance and self-possessed manner, would be
really touching, towards the late American gentleman of distinction,
whom he has for his only travelling companion.
Now, though a great many questions had been asked on all sides,
one question especially, namely, whether _it_--people always
dropped their voices when they pronounced that small pronoun--whether
_it_ would not be put in the hold as soon as they got on board the
_Washington_, the answer to which question was an affirmative,
and gave considerable satisfaction--except indeed to one moody old
gentleman, who asked, “How about getting any little thing one happened
to want on the journey out of the hold?” and was very properly snubbed
for the suggestion, and told that passengers had no business to want
things out of the hold on the voyage; and furthermore insulted by the
liveliest of the lively travellers, who suggested, in an audible aside,
that perhaps the old gentleman had only one clean shirt, and had put
that at the bottom of his travelling chest,--now, though, I say, so
many questions had been asked, no one had as yet presumed to address
the cheerful-looking gentleman convoying the American of distinction
home to his friends, though this very gentleman might, after all, be
naturally supposed to know more than anybody else about the subject. He
was smoking a cigar, and though he kept very close to the coffin, he
was about the only person on board who did not look at it, but kept
his gaze fixed on the fading town of Liverpool. The Smasher, Gus, and
Mr. Peters’s unknown ally stood very close to this gentleman, while the
detective himself leant over the side of the vessel, near to, though a
little apart from, the Irish labourers and rosy-cheeked country girls,
who, as steerage passengers, very properly herded together, and did not
attempt to contaminate by their presence the minds or the garments of
those superior beings who were to occupy state-cabins six feet long by
three feet wide, and to have green peas and new milk from the cow all
the way out. Presently, the elderly gentleman of rather shabby-genteel
but clerical appearance, who had so briefly introduced himself to Gus
and the Smasher, made some remarks about the town of Liverpool to the
cheerful friend of the late distinguished American.
The cheerful friend took his cigar out of his mouth, smiled, and said,
“Yes; it’s a thriving town, a small London, really--the metropolis in
miniature.”
“You know Liverpool very well?” asked the Smasher’s companion.
“No, not very well; in point of fact, I know very little of England at
all. My visit has been a brief one.”
He is evidently an American from this remark, though there is very
little of brother Jonathan in his manner.
“Your visit has been a brief one? Indeed. And it has had a very
melancholy termination, I regret to perceive,” said the persevering
stranger, on whose every word the Smasher and Mr. Darley hung
respectfully.
“A very melancholy termination,” replied the gentleman, with the
sweetest smile. “My poor friend had hoped to return to the bosom of
his family, and delight them many an evening round the cheerful hearth
by the recital of his adventures in, and impressions of, the mother
country. You cannot imagine,” he continued, speaking very slowly,
and as he spoke, allowing his eyes to wander from the stranger to