The trail of the serpent
_Oronoko_, a vessel lying off Liverpool, and about to sail for
South America. Richard is there, his wife and mother still by his side;
and there are several others whom we know grouped about the deck.
Mr. Peters is there. He has come to bid farewell to the young man in
whose fortunes and misfortunes he has taken so warm and unfailing an
interest. He is a man of independent property now, thanks to Richard,
who thinks the hundred a year settled on him a very small reward for
his devotion--but he is very melancholy at parting with the master he
has so loved.
“I think, sir,” he says on his fingers, “I shall marry Kuppins, and
give my mind to the education of the ‘fondling.’ He’ll be a great
man, sir, if he lives; for his heart, boy as he is, is all in his
profession. Would you believe it, sir, that child bellowed for three
mortal hours because his father committed suicide, and disappointed the
boy of seein’ him hung? That’s what I calls a love of business, and no
mistake.”
On the other side of the deck there is a little group which Richard
presently joins. A lady and gentleman and a little boy are standing
there; and, at a short distance from them, a grave-looking man with
dark-blue spectacles, and a servant--a Lascar.
There is a peculiar style about the gentleman, on whose arm the lady
leans, that bespeaks him to the most casual observer to be a military
man, in spite of his plain dress and loose great coat. And the lady on
his arm, that dark classic face, is not one to be easily forgotten. It
is Valerie de Cevennes, who leans on the arm of her first and beloved
husband, Gaston de Lancy. If I have said little of this meeting--of
this restoration of the only man she ever loved, which has been to
her as a resurrection of the dead--it is because there are some joys
which, from their very intensity, are too painful and too sacred for
many words. He was restored to her. She had never murdered him. The
potion given her by Blurosset was a very powerful opiate, which had
produced a sleep resembling death in all its outward symptoms. Through
the influence of the chemist the report of the death was spread abroad.
The truth, except to Gaston’s most devoted friends, had never been
revealed. But the blow had been too much for him; and when he was told
by whom his death had been attempted, he fell into a fever, which
lasted for many months, during which period his reason was entirely
lost, and from which he was only rescued by the devotion of the
chemist--a devotion on Blurosset’s part which, perhaps, had proceeded
as much from love of the science he studied as of the man he saved.
Recovering at last, Gaston de Lancy found that the glorious voice which
had been his fortune was entirely gone. What was there for him to do?
He enlisted in the East India Company’s service; rose through the Sikh
campaign with a rapidity which astonished the bravest of his compeers.
There was a romance about his story that made him a hero in his
regiment. He was known to have plenty of money--to have had no earthly
reason for enlisting; but he told them he would rise, as his father had
done before him, in the wars of the Empire, by merit alone, and he had
kept his word. The French ensign, the lieutenant, the captain--in each
rising grade he had been alike beloved, alike admired, as a shining
example of reckless courage and military genius.
The arrest of the _soi-disant_ Count de Marolles had brought
Richard Marwood and Gaston de Lancy into contact. Both sufferers from
the consummate perfidy of one man, they became acquainted, and, ere
long, friends. Some part of Gaston’s story was told to Richard and his
young wife, Isabella; but it is needless to say, that the dark past
in which Valerie was concerned remained a secret in the breast of her
husband, of Laurent Blurosset, and herself. The father clasped his
son to his heart, and opened his arms to receive the wife whom he had
pardoned long ago, and whose years of terrible agony had atoned for the
wildly-attempted crime of her youth.
On Richard and Gaston becoming fast friends, it had been agreed
between them that Richard should join De Lancy and his wife in South
America; where, far from the scenes which association had made painful
to both, they might commence a new existence. Valerie, once more
mistress of that immense fortune of which De Marolles had so long had
the command, was enabled to bestow it on the husband of her choice.
The bank was closed in a manner satisfactory to all whose interests
had been connected with it. The cashier, who was no other than the
lively gentleman who had assisted in De Marolles’ attempted escape, was
arrested on a charge of embezzlement, and made to disgorge the money he
had abstracted.
The Marquis de Cevennes elevated his delicately-arched eyebrows on
reading an abridged account of the trial of his son, and his subsequent
suicide; but the elegant Parisian did not go into mourning for this
unfortunate scion of his aristocratic house; and indeed, it is
doubtful if five minutes after he had thrown aside the journal he
had any sensation whatever about the painful circumstances therein
related. He expressed the same gentlemanly surprise upon being informed
of the marriage of his niece with Captain Lansdown, late of the East
India Company’s service, and of her approaching departure with her
husband for her South American estates. He sent her his blessing and
a breakfast-service; with the portraits of Louis the Well-beloved,
Madame du Barry, Choiseul, and D’Aiguillon, painted on the cups, in
oval medallions, on a background of turquoise, packed in a casket of
buhl lined with white velvet; and, I dare say, he dismissed his niece
and her troubles from his recollection quite as easily as he despatched
this elegant present to the railway which was to convey it to its
destination.
The bell rings; the friends of the passengers drop down the side of the
vessel into the little Liverpool steamer. There are Mr. Peters and Gus
Darley waving their hats in the distance. Farewell, old and faithful
friends, farewell; but surely not for ever. Isabella sinks sobbing on
her husband’s shoulder. Valerie looks with those deep unfathomable eyes
out towards the blue horizon-line that bounds the far away to which
they go.
“There, Gaston, we shall forget----”
“Never your long sufferings, my Valerie,” he murmurs, as he presses the
little hand resting on his arm; “those shall never be forgotten.”
“And the horror of that dreadful night, Gaston----”
“Was the madness of a love which thought itself wronged, Valerie: we
can forgive every wrong which springs from the depth of such a love.”
Spread thy white wings, oh, ship! The shadows melt away into that
purple distance. I see in that far South two happy homes; glistening
white-walled villas, half buried in the luxuriant verdure of that
lovely climate. I hear the voices of the children in the dark
orange-groves, where the scented blossoms fall into the marble basin
of the fountain. I see Richard reclining in an easy-chair, under the
veranda, half hidden by the trailing jasmines that shroud it from the
evening sunshine, smoking the long cherry-stemmed pipe which his wife
has filled for him. Gaston paces, with his sharp military step, up
and down the terrace at their feet, stopping as he passes by to lay a
caressing hand on the dark curls of the son he loves. And Valerie--she
leans against the slender pillar of the porch, round which the scented
yellow roses are twined, and watches, with earnest eyes, the husband of
her earliest choice. Oh, happy shadows! Few in this work-a-day world so
fortunate as you who win in your prime of life the fulfilment of the
dear dream of your youth!
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.