Fitz-Bertram is quite energetic in this omnes business, and says, “No, no!”—muttering to himself afterwards, “So help me, Jupiter, I knew the fellow was a nuisance!”
“But the adventure! Pray let us hear it!” cried eager voices.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, I was a careless reckless fellow; quite content to put on a pair of russet boots which half swallowed me, and a green cotton-velvet tunic short in the sleeves and tight across the chest, and to go on the stage and sing in a chorus with fifty others, as idle as myself, in other russet boots and cotton-velvet tunics, which, as you know, is the court costume of a chorus-singer from the time of Charlemagne to the reign of Louis XV. I was quite happy, I say, to lounge on to the stage, unknown, unnoticed, badly paid and worse dressed, provided when the chorus was finished I had my cigarette, dominoes, and my glass of cognac in a third-rate café. I was playing one morning at those eternal dominoes—(and never, I think,” said Mosquetti, parenthetically, “had a poor fellow so many double-sixes in his hand)—when I was told a gentleman wanted to see me. This seemed too good a joke—a gentleman for me! It couldn’t be a limb of the law, as I didn’t owe a farthing—no Parisian tradesman being quite so demented as to give me credit. It was a gentleman—a very aristocratic-looking fellow; handsome—but I didn’t like his face; affable—and yet I didn’t like his manner.”
Ah, Valerie! you may well listen now!
“He wanted me, he said,” continued Mosquetti, “to decide a little wager. Some foolish girl, who had seen De Lancy on the stage, and who believed him the ideal hero of romance, and was only in too much danger of throwing her heart and fortune at his feet, was to be disenchanted by any stratagem that could be devised. Her parents had intrusted the management of the affair to him, a relation of the lady’s. Would I assist him? Would I represent De Lancy, and play a little scene in the Bois de Boulogne, to open the eyes of this silly boarding-school miss—would I, for a consideration? It was only to act a little stage play off the stage, and was for a good cause. I consented; and that evening, at half-past ten o’clock, under the shadow of the winter night and the leafless trees, I——”
“Stop, stop! Signor Mosquetti!” cry the bystanders. “Madame! Madame de Marolles! Water! Smelling-salts! Your flacon, Lady Emily: she has fainted!”
No; she has not fainted; this is something worse than fainting, this convulsive agony, in which the proud form writhes, while the white and livid lips murmur strange and dreadful words.
“Murdered, murdered and innocent! while I, vile dupe, pitiful fool, was only a puppet in the hands of a demon!”
At this very moment Monsieur de Marolles, who has been summoned from the adjoining apartment, where he has been discussing a financial measure with some members of the lower House, enters hurriedly.
“Valerie, Valerie, what is the matter?” he says, approaching his wife.
She rises—rises with a terrible effort, and looks him full in the face.
“I thought, monsieur, that I knew the hideous abyss of your black soul to its lowest depths. I was wrong; I never knew you till to-night.”
Imagine such strong language as this in a Belgravian drawing-room, and then you can imagine the astonishment of the bystanders.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Signor Mosquetti hurriedly.
“What?” cried they eagerly.
“That is the very man I have been speaking of.”
“That? The Count de Marolles?”
“The man bending over the lady who has fainted.”
Petrified Belgravians experience a new sensation—surprise—and rather like it.
Argyle Fitz-Bertram twists his black moustachios reflectively, and mutters—
“So help me, Jupiter, I knew there’d be a row! I shan’t have to sing ‘Scots wha hae,’ and shall be just in time for that little supper at the Café de l’Europe.”
Chapter VII
The Golden Secret is Told, and the Golden Bowl is Broken
The new tiger, or, as he is called in the kitchen, the “tempory tiger,” takes his place, on the morning after Lady Londersdon’s Wednesday, behind the Count de Marolles’s cab, as that gentleman drives into the City.
There is little augury to be drawn from the pale smooth face of Raymond de Marolles, though Signor Mosquetti’s revelation has made his position rather a critical one. Till now he has ruled Valerie with a high hand; and though never conquering the indomitable spirit of the proud Spanish woman, he has at least forced that spirit to do the will of his. But now, now that she knows the trick put upon her—now that she knows that the man she so deeply adored did not betray her, but died the victim of another’s treachery—that the blood in which she has steeped her soul was the blood of the innocent,—what if now, in her desperation and despair, she dares all, and reveals all; what then?
“Why, then,” says Raymond de Marolles, cutting his horse over the ears with a delicate touch of the whip, which stings home, though, for all its delicacy; “why then, never shall it be said that Raymond Marolles found himself in a dilemma, without finding within himself the power to extricate himself. We are not conquered yet, and we have seen a good deal of life in thirty years—and not a little danger. Play your best card, Valerie; I’ve a trump in my own hand to play when the time comes. Till then, keep dark. I tell you, my good woman, I have hothouses of my own, and don’t want your Covent-Garden exotics at twopence a bunch!”
This last sentence is addressed to a woman, who pleads earnestly for the purchase of a wretched bunch of violets, which she holds up to tempt the man of fashion as she runs by the wheels of his cab, driving very slowly through the Strand.
“Fresh violets, sir. Do, sir, please. Only twopence, just twopence, sir, for the love of charity. I’ve a poor old woman at home, not related to me, sir, but I keep her. She’s dying—starving, sir, and dying of old age.”
“Bah! I tell you, my good woman, I’m not Lawrence Sterne on a sentimental journey, but a practical man of business. I don’t give macaroons to donkeys, or save mythic old women from starvation. You’d better keep out of the way of the wheels—they’ll be over your feet presently, and if you suffer from corns they may probably hurt you,” says the philanthropic banker, in his politest tones.
“Stop, stop!” suddenly exclaims the woman, with an energy that almost startles even Raymond. “It’s you, is it—Jim? No, not Jim; he’s dead and gone, I know; but you, you, the fine gentleman, the other brother. Stop, stop, I tell you, if you want to know a secret that’s in the keeping of one who may die while I am talking here! Stop, if you want to know who you are and what you are! Stop!”
Raymond does pull up at this last sentence.
“My good woman, do not be so energetic. Every eye in the Strand is on us; we shall have a crowd presently. Stay, wait for me in Essex Street; I’ll get out at the corner; that’s a quiet street, and we shall not be observed. Anything you have to tell me you can tell me there.”
The
