The Trail of the Serpent/Book 6/Chapter 2
Chapter II.
Raymond de Marolles shows himself better than all Bow Street.
"And so, Monsieur de Marolles," said the Marquis, as Raymond closed the door on the group in the hall, and the two gentlemen were left entirely alone, "and so you have—by what means I shall certainly not so far inconvenience myself as to endeavour to guess—contrived to become informed of some of the antecedents of your very humble servant?"
"Of some of the antecedents—why not say of all the antecedents, Monsieur de Cevennes?"
"Just as you like, my dear young friend," replies the Marquis. He really seems to get quite affectionate to Raymond, but in a far-off, patronizing, and superb manner something that of a gentlemanly 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 Buonapartist 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."
As he speaks he softly opens the window and fires at the man in the garden, who falls, only uttering a groan. As Raymond predicted, he faints with the pain.
With the rapidity of lightning he flings the window up violently, hurls the pistol to the farthest extremity of the garden, snatches the Marquis's hat from the chair on which it lies, presses one finger on the gilded back of a volume of Gibbon's Rome, a narrow slip of the bookcase opens inwards, and reveals a door leading into the next apartment, which is the dining-room. This door is made on a peculiar principle, and, as he pushes through, it closes behind him.
This is the work of a second; and as the officers, alarmed by the sound of the opening of the window, rush into the room, the Marquis gives the alarm. "He has escaped by the window!" he said. "He has wounded your assistant, and passed through that door. He cannot be twenty yards in advance; you will easily know him by his having no hat on."
"Stop!" cries the detective officer, "this may be a trap. He may have got round to the front door. Go and watch, Johnson."
A little too late this precaution. As the officers rushed into the library, Raymond passed from the dining-room door out of the open street-door, and jumped into the very cab which was waiting to take him to prison. "Five pounds, if you catch the Liverpool Express," he said to the cabman.
"All right, sir," replied that worthy citizen, with a wink. "I've druv a many gents like you, and very good fares they is too, and a godsend to a hard-working man, what old ladies with hand-bags and umbrellas grudges eightpence a mile to," mutters the charioteer, as he gallops down Upper Brook Street and across Hanover Square, while the gentlemen of the police force, aided by Dr. Tappenden and the obliging Marquis, search the mews and neighbourhood adjoining. Strange to say, they cannot obtain any information from the coachman and stableboys concerning a gentleman without a hat, who must have passed through the mews about three minutes before.