‘To judge from those you would suppose he was rather a cheerful companion,’ said La Chicot, ‘and yet he is more dismal than a funeral.’
‘He vents all his cheerfulness on his wood blocks,’ suggested Desrolles.
Of late Jack Chicot had been a restless wanderer, spending very little of his life in the Cibber Street lodging. There was not even the pretence of union between his wife and him, and there never had been since La Chicot’s recovery. They were civil to each other, for the most part; but there were times when the wife’s tongue grew bitter, and her evil temper flashed out like a thin thread of forked lightning cleaving a dark summer sky. The husband was always civil. La Chicot could not exasperate him into retaliation.
‘You hate me too much to lose your temper with me,’ she said to him one day in the presence of the landlady; ‘you are afraid to trust yourself. If you gave way for a moment you might kill me. The temptation would be too strong for you.’
Jack Chicot said never a word, but stood with his arms folded, smiling at her, heaven knows how bitterly.
One day she stung him into speech.
‘You are in love with some other woman,’ she cried. ‘I know it.’
‘I have seen a woman who is not like you,’ he answered with a sigh.
‘And you are in love with her.’
‘For her unlikeness to you? That would be a charm, certainly.’
‘Go to her. Go to your — —’
The sentence ended in a foul epithet — one of the poison-flowers of Parisian argot.
‘The journey is too long,’ he said. ‘It is not easy to travel from hell to heaven.’
Jack Chicot had been once to the Prince Frederick Theatre since his wife’s return to the stage. He went on the first night of the grand spectacular burlesque which had brought Mr. Smolendo so much money. He sat looking on with a grave unchanging face while the audience round him grinned in ecstacy; and when La Chicot asked his opinion of the performance, he openly expressed his disgust.
‘Are not my costumes beautiful,’ she asked.
‘Very. But I should prefer a little less beauty and a little more decency.’
The rest of the audience were easier to please. They saw no indecency in the dresses. No doubt they saw what they had paid to see, and that contented them.
Never had woman more of her own way than La Chicot after that wonderful recovery of hers. She went where she liked, drank as much as she liked, spent every sixpence of her liberal salary on her own pleasure, and was held accountable by no one. Her husband was a husband only in name. She saw more of Desrolles than of Jack Chicot.
There was only one person who ever ventured to reprove or expostulate with her, and that was the man who had saved her life, at so large a sacrifice of time and care. George Gerard called upon her now and then, and spoke to her plainly.
‘You have been drinking again,’ he would say, while they were shaking hands.
‘I have had nothing since last night, when I took a glass of champagne with my supper’
‘You mean a bottle; and you have had half a bottle of brandy this morning to correct the champagne.’
She no longer attempted to deny the impeachment.
‘Well, why should I not drink?’ she exclaimed defiantly. ‘Who cares what becomes of me?’
‘I care: I have saved your life once, against long odds. You owe me something for that. But I cannot save you if you make up your mind to drink yourself to death. Brandy is a slow suicide, but for a woman of your temperament it’s as certain as prussic acid.’
Upon this La Chicot would dissolve in maudlin tears. It was a pitiful sight, and wrung the student’s heart. He could have loved her so well, would have tried so hard to save her, had it been possible. He did not know how heartless a piece of beautiful clay she was. He put down her errors to her husband’s neglect.
‘If she had been my wife she might have been a very different woman,’ he said to himself, not believing the innate depravity of anything so absolutely beautiful as La Chicot.
He forgot how fair some poisonous weeds are, how beautiful the scarlet berries of the nightshade look when they star the brown autumn hedges.
So La Chicot went her way triumphantly. There was no danger to life or limb for her in the new piece — no perilous ascent to the sky borders. She drank as much brandy as she liked, and, so long as she contrived to appear sober before the audience, Mr. Smolendo said nothing.
‘I’m afraid she’ll drink herself into a dropsy, poor thing,’ he said compassionately one day to a friend at the Garrick Club. ‘But I hope she’ll last my time. A woman of her type could hardly be expected to draw for more than three seasons, and La Chicot ought to hold out for another year or so.’
‘After that, the hospital,’ said his friend.
Mr. Smolendo shrugged his shoulders.
‘I never trouble myself about the after-career of my artists,’ he answered pleasantly.
VOLUME II.
CHAPTER I. EDWARD CLARE DISCOVERS A LIKENESS.
HAZLEHURST RECTORY, February 22nd. — Dear Ned, — Do you remember my saying, when Laura refused to have a proper wedding gown, that her marriage was altogether an ill-omened business? I told her so, I told you so; in fact, I think I told everybody so; if it be not an unpardonable exaggeration to call the handful of wretched dowdier and frumps in such a place as Hazlehurst everybody. Well, I was right. The marriage has been a complete ,fiasco. What do you think of our poor Laura’s coming home from her honeymoon alone? Without even so much as her husband’s portmanteau! She has shut herself up in the Manor House, where she lives the life of a female anchorite, and is so reserved in her manner towards me, her oldest friend, her all but sister, that even I do not know the cause of this extraordinary state of affairs.
‘“My dear Celia, don’t ask me anything about it,” she said, when we had kissed each other, and cried a little, and I had looked at her collar and cuffs, to see if she had brought a new style front Paris.
‘“My dearest, I must ask you,” I replied; “I don’t pretend to be more than human, and I am burning with curiosity and suppressed indignation. What does it all mean? Why have you challenged public opinion by coming home alone? Have you and Mr. Treverton quarrelled?”
“No,” she said, decisively; “and that is the last question about my married life that I shall ever answer, Celia, so you need not ask me any more.”
‘“Where did you part with him?” I asked, determined not to give way. My unhappy friend was obstinately silent.
‘“Come and see me as often as you like, so long as you do not talk to me of my husband,” she said, a little later. “But if you insist upon talking about him, I shall shut my door upon you.’
‘“I hear he has acted most generously with regard to the settlements, so he cannot be altogether bad,” I said — for you know I am not easily put down — but Laura was adamant. I could not extort another word from her.
Perhaps I ought not to tell you this, Ned, knowing what I do about your former affection for Laura; but I felt that I must open my heart to somebody. Parents are so stupid that it’s impossible to tell them things.
“I can’t conceive what this poor girl is going to do with her life. He has settled the whole estate upon her, papa says, and she is awfully rich. But, she is living like a hermit, and not spending more than her own small income. She even talks of selling the carriage-horses, Tommy, and Harry, or sending then, back to the plough, though I know she dotes upon them. If this is meanness, it is too awful. If she has conscientious, scruples about spending John Treverton’s money, it is simply idiotic. Of the two, I could rather think my friend a miser than an idiot.
‘And now, my dear Ned, as there is nothing else to tell you about the dismalest place in the universe, I may as well say good-bye. — Your loving sister,
‘CELIA’
P.S. — I hope you are writing a hook poems that will make the Laureate burst with envy. I have no personal animosity to him; but you are
my brother, and, of course, your interests must be paramount.’
This letter reached Edward Clare in his dingy lodgings, in a narrow side street near the British Museum, lodgings so dingy that it would have grieved the heart of his country-born and country-bred mother to see hey boy in such a den. But the apartments were quite dear enough for his slender means. The world, had not yet awakened to the stupendous fact that a new poet had been born into it. Stupid reviewers went on prosing about Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne, and the name of Clare was still unknown; even though it had appeared pretty often at the foot of a neat triplet of verses filling an odd page in a magazine.
‘I shall never win a name in the magazines,’ the young man told himself. ‘It is worse than not writing at all. I shall rot unknown in my garret, or die of hunger and opium, like that poor boy who perished within a quarter of a mile of this dismal hole, unless I can get some rich publisher to launch me properly.’
But in the meantime a man must live, and Edward was very glad to get an occasional guinea or two from a magazine. The supplies from home fell considerably below his requirements, though to send them strained the father’s resources. The embryo Laureate liked to take life pleasantly. He liked to dine at a popular restaurant, and to wash down his dinner with good Rhine wine, or sound claret. He liked good cigars. He could not wear cheap boots. He could do without gloves at a pinch, but those he wore must be the best. When he was in funds he perferred a hansom to pedestrianism. This, he told himself, was the poetical temperament. Alfred de Musset was, doubtless, just such a man. He could fancy Heine leading the same kind of life in Paris, before disease had chained him to his bed.
That letter from Celia was like vitriol dropped into an open wound. Edward had not forgiven Laura for accepting John Treverton, or the estate that went with him. He hated John Treverton with a vigorous hatred that would stand a great deal of wear and tear. He pondered long over Celia’s letter, trying to discover the clue to the mystery. It seemed to him tolerably clear. Mr. and Mrs. Treverton had married with a deliberate understanding. Love between them there was none, and they had been too honest to pretend an affection which neither felt. They had agreed to marry and live apart, sharing the dead man’s wealth, fulfilling the letter of the law, but not the spirit.
‘I call it sheer dishonesty,’ said Edward. ‘I wonder that Laura can lend herself to such an underhand course.’
It was all very well to talk about John Treverton’s liberality in settling the entire estate upon his wife. No doubt they had their private under-standing, duly set forth in black and white. The Husband was to have his share of the fortune, and squander it how he pleased in London or Paris, or any part of the globe that seemed best to him.
‘There never was such confounded luck,’ exclaimed Edward, angry with Fate for having; given this man so much and himself so little; ‘a fellow who three months ago was a beggar.’
In his idle reverie he found himself thinking what he would have done in John Treverton’s place, with, say, seven thousand a year at his disposal.
‘I would have chambers in the Albany,’ he thought, ‘furnished on the purest aesthetic principles. I’d keep a yacht at Cowes, and three or four hunters at Melton Mowbray. I’d spend February and March in the south, and April and May in Paris, where I should have a pied à terre in the Champs Elysées. Yes, one could lead a very pleasant life, as a bachelor, on seven thousand a year.’
Thus it will be seen that, although Mr. Clare had been seriously in love with Miss Malcolm, it was the loss of Jasper Treverton’s money which lie felt most keenly, and it was the possession of that fortune for which he envied John Treverton.
One afternoon in February, one of those rare afternoons on which the winter sun glorifies the gloomy London streets, Mr. Clare called at the office of comic periodical, the editor of which had accepted some of his lighter erses — society poems in the Praed and Locker manner. Two or three of his contributions had been published within the last month, and he came to the office with the pleasant consciousness that there was a cheque due to him.
‘I shall treat myself to a careful little dinner at the Restaurant du Pavillon,’ he told himself, ‘and a stall at the Prince of Wales’s to wind up the evening.’
He was not a man of vicious tastes. It was not the aqua fortis of vice, but the champagne of pleasure that he relished. He was too fond of himself, too careful of his own well-being, to fling away youth, health, and vigour in the sloughs and sewers of evil living. He had a refined selfishness that was calculated to keep him pure of low iniquities. He had no aspiration to scale mountain peaks, but he had sufficient regard for himself to eschew gutters.
The cheque was ready for him, but, when he had signed the formal receipt, the clerk told him the editor wanted to speak to him presently, if he would be kind enough to wait a few minutes.
‘There’s a gentleman with him, but I don’t suppose he’ll be long,’ said the clerk, ‘if you don’t mind waiting.’
Mr. Clare did not mind, particularly. He sat down on an office stool, and made himself a cigarette, while he thoughtfully planned his dinner.
He was not going to be extravagant. A plate of bisque soup, a slice of salmon en papilotte, a wing of chicken with mushrooms, an omelette, half a bottle of St. Julien, and a glass of vermuth.
While he was musing pleasantly thus, the swinging inner door of the office was dashed open, and a gentleman walked quickly through to the open doorway that led into the street, with only a passing nod to the clerk. Edward Clare just caught a glimpse of his face as he turned to give that brief salutation.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked, starting up from his stool, and dropping the half-made cigarette.
‘Mr. Chicot, the artist.’
‘Are you sure?’
The clerk grinned.
‘Pretty positive,’ he said. ‘He comes here every week, sometimes twice a week. I ought to know him.’
Edward knew the name well. The slap-dash caricatures, more Parisian in style than English, which adorned the middle page of the weekly paper called ‘FOLLY AS IT FLIES,’ were all signed ‘Chicot.’ The dancer’s admirers, for the most part, gave her the credit of those productions, an idea which Mr. Smolendo had taken care to encourage. It was an advantage that his dancer should be thought a woman of many accomplishments — a Sarah Bernhardt, in a small way.
Edward Clare was mystified. The face which he had seen turned towards the clerk had presented a wondrous likeness of John Treverton. If this man who called himself Chicot had been John Treverton’s twin brother, the two could not have been more alike. Edward was so impressed with this idea that, instead of waiting to see his editor, he hurried out into the street, bent upon following Mr. Chicot the artist. The office was in one of the narrow streets northward of the Strand. If Chicot had turned to the left, he must be by this time following the strong current of the Strand, which flows westward at this hour, with its tide of human life, as regularly as the river flows to the sea. If he had turned to the right, he was most likely lost in the labyrinth between Drury Lane and Holborn. In either case — three minutes having been wasted in surprise and interrogation — there seemed little chance of catching him.
Edward turned to the right, and went towards Holborn. Accident favoured him. At the corner of Long Acre he saw Chicot, the artist, buttonholed by an older man, of somewhat raffish aspect. That Chicot was anxious to get away from the button-holey was obvious, and before Edward could reach the corner he had done so, and was off at a, rapid pace westward. There would be no chance of overtaking him, except by running; and to run in Long Acre would be to make oneself unpleasantly conspicuous. There was no empty hansom within sight. Edward looked round despairingly. There stood the raffish man watching him, and looking as if he knew exactly what Mr. Clare wanted.
Edward crossed the street, looked at the raffish man, and lingered, half inclined to speak. The raffish man anticipated his desire.
‘I think you wanted my friend Chicot,’ he said,
in a most insinuating tone.
He had the accent of a gentleman, though his degradation from that high estate was patent to every eye. His tall hat, sponged and coaxed to a factitious polish, was of an exploded shape; his coat was the coat of to-day; his stock was twenty years old in style, and so frayed and greasy that it might have been worn ever since it first came into fashion. The hawk’s eye, the iron lines about the mouth and chin, were warnings to the man’s fellow-creatures. Here was a man capable of anything — a being so obviously at war with society as to be bound by no law, daunted by no penalty.
Edward Clare dimly divined that the creature belonged to the dangerous classes, but in his excellent opinion of his own cleverness deemed himself strong enough to cope with half a dozen such seedy sinners.
‘Well, yes, I did rather want to speak to him — er — about a literary matter. Does he live far from here?’
‘Five minutes’ walk. Cibber Street, Leicester Square. I’ll take you there if you like. I live in the same house.’
‘Ah, then you can tell me all about him. But it isn’t the pleasantest thing to stand and talk in an east wind. Come in and take a glass of something,’ suggested Edward, comprehending that this shabby genteel stranger must be plied with drink.
‘Ah,’ thought Mr. Desrolles, ‘he wants something of me. This liberality is not motiveless.’
Tavern doors opened for them close at hand. They entered the refined seclusion of a jug and bottle department, and each chose the liquor he preferred — Edward sherry and soda water, the stranger a glass of brandy, ‘short.’
‘Have you known Mr. Chicot long?’ asked Edward. ‘Don’t suppose I’m actuated by impertinent curiosity. It’s a matter of business.’
‘Sir, I know when I am talking to a gentleman,’ replied Desrolles, with a stately air. ‘I was a gentleman myself once, but it’s so long ago that the world and I have forgotten it.’
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 599