“Whatever you like, only tell me—tell me before you—”
“Die. Yes, deary; there ain’t any time to waste, is there? I don’t want to make a hard bargain. Will you bury me up to my neck in gold?”
“Yes, yes; speak!” He is almost beside himself, and raises a threatening hand. The old woman grins.
“I told you before that wasn’t the way, deary. Wait a bit. Sillikens, give me that ’ere old shoe, will you? Look you here! It’s a double sole, and the marriage certificate is between the two leathers. I’ve walked on it this thirty years and more.”
“And the name—the name?”
“The name of the Marquis was De—de—”
“She’s dying! Give me some water!” cried Raymond.
“De Ce—Ce—” the syllables come in fitful gasps. Raymond throws some water over her face.
“De Cevennes, my deary!—and the golden secret is told.”
And the golden bowl is broken!
Lay the ragged sheet over the ghastly face, Sillikens, and kneel down and pray for help in your utter loneliness; for the guilty being whose soul has gone forth to meet its Maker was your only companion and stay, however frail that stay might be.
Go out into the sunshine, Monsieur de Marolles; that which you leave behind in the tottering garret, shaken by an ague-paroxysm with the fitful autumn wind, is nothing so terrible to your eyes.
You have accustomed yourself to the face of Death before now; you have met that grim potentate on his own ground, and done with him what it is your policy to do with everything on earth—you have made him useful to you.
VIII
One Step Further on the Right Track
It is not a very romantic locality to which we must now conduct the reader, being neither more nor less than the shop and surgery of Mr. Augustus Darley; which temple of the healing god is scented, this autumn afternoon, with the mingled perfumes of Cavendish and bird’s-eye tobacco, Turkey rhubarb, whiskey-punch, otto of roses, and muffins; conflicting odours, which form, or rather object to form, an amalgamation, each particular effluvium asserting its individuality.
In the surgery Gus is seated, playing the intellectual and intensely exciting game of dominoes with our acquaintance of the Cheerful Cherokee Society, Mr. Percy Cordonner. A small jug, without either of those earthenware conventionalities, spout or handle, and with Mr. Cordonner’s bandana stuffed into the top to imprison the subtle essences of the mixture within, stands between the two gentlemen; while Percy, as a guest, is accommodated with a real tumbler, having only three triangular bits chipped out of the edge. Gus imbibes the exciting fluid from a cracked custard-cup, with paper wafered round it to keep the parts from separating, two of which cups are supposed to be equal (by just measurement) to Mr. P. C.’s tumbler. Before the small fire kneels the juvenile domestic of the young surgeon, toasting muffins, and presenting to the two gentlemen a pleasing study in anatomical perspective and the mysteries of foreshortening; to which, however, they are singularly inattentive, devoting their entire energies to the pieces of spotted ivory in their hands, and the consumption, by equitable division, of the whiskey-punch.
“I say, Gus,” said Mr. Cordonner, stopping in the middle of a gulp of his favourite liquid, at the risk of strangulation, with as much alarm in his face as his placid features were capable of exhibiting—“I say, this isn’t the professional tumbler, is it?”
“Why, of course it is,” said his friend. “We have only had that one since midsummer. The patients don’t like it because it’s chipped; but I always tell them, that after having gone through having a tooth out—particularly,” he added parenthetically, “as I take ’em out (plenty of lancet, forceps, and key, for their eighteenpence)—they needn’t grumble about having to rinse their mouths out of a cracked tumbler.”
Mr. Cordonner turned pale.
“Do they do that?” he said, and deliberately shot his last sip of the delicious beverage over the head of the kneeling damsel, with so good an aim that it in a manner grazed her curl-papers. “It isn’t friendly of you, Gus,” he said, with mild reproachfulness, “to treat a fellow like this.”
“It’s all right, old boy,” said Gus, laughing. “Sarah Jane washes it, you know. You wash the tumbler and things, don’t you, Sarah Jane?”
“Wash ’em?” answered the youthful domestic; “I should think so, sir, indeed. Why, I wipes ’em round reg’lar with my apron, and breathes on ’em to make ’em bright.”
“Oh, that’ll do!” said Mr. Cordonner, piteously. “Don’t investigate, Gus; you’ll only make matters worse. Oh, why, why did I ask that question? Why didn’t I remember ‘it’s folly to be otherwise?’ That punch was delicious—and now—” He leant his head upon his hand, buried his face in his pocket-handkerchief, pondered in his heart, and was still.
In the meantime the shop is not empty. Isabella is standing behind the counter, very busy with several bottles, a glass measure, and a pestle and mortar, making up a prescription, a cough mixture, from her brother’s Latin. Rather a puzzling document, this prescription, to anyone but Bell; for there are calculations about next year’s Derby scribbled on the margin, and rough sketches of the Smasher, and a more youthful votary of the Smasher’s art, surnamed “Whooping William,” pencilled on the back thereof; but to Bell it seems straightforward enough. At any rate, she dashes away with the bottles, the measure, and the pestle and mortar, as if she knew perfectly well what she was about.
She is not alone in the shop. A gentleman is leaning on the counter, watching the busy white hands very intently, and apparently deeply interested in the progress of the cough-mixture. This gentleman is her brother’s old friend, “Daredevil Dick.”
Richard Marwood has been a great deal at the surgery since the night on which he first set foot in his old haunts; he has brought his mother over, and introduced that lady to Miss Darley. Mrs. Marwood
