The Trail of the Serpent

by Mary Braddon

  “My dear generous uncle!” Richard cries, shaking the old man by the hand.

  Was it a bargain? Of course it was. A merchant’s office—the very thing for Richard. He would work hard, work night and day to repair the past, and to show the world there was stuff in him to make a man, and a good man yet.

  Poor Richard, half an hour ago wishing to be hung and put out of the way, now full of radiance and hope, while the good angel has the best of it!

  “You must not begin your new life without money, Richard: I shall, therefore, give you all I have in the house. I think I cannot better show my confidence in you, and my certainty that you will not return to your old habits, than by giving you this money.” Richard looks—he cannot speak his gratitude.

  The old man conducts his nephew up stairs to his bedroom, an old-fashioned apartment, in one window of which is a handsome cabinet, half desk, half bureau. He unlocks this, and takes from it a pocket-book containing one hundred and thirty-odd pounds in small notes and gold, and two bills for one hundred pounds each on an Anglo-Indian bank in the city.

  “Take this, Richard. Use the broken cash as you require it for present purposes—in purchasing such an outfit as becomes my nephew; and on your arrival in Gardenford, place the bills in the bank for future exigencies. And as I wish your mother to know nothing of our little plan until you are gone, the best thing you can do is to start before any one is up—to-morrow morning.”

  “I will start at day-break. I can leave a note for my mother.”

  “No, no,” said the uncle, “I will tell her all. You can write directly you reach your destination. Now, you will think it cruel of me to ask you to leave your home on the very night of your return to it; but it is quite as well, my dear boy, to strike while the iron’s hot. If you remain here your good resolutions may be vanquished by old influences; for the best resolution, Richard, is but a seed, and if it doesn’t bear the fruit of a good action, it is less than worthless, for it is a lie, and promises what it doesn’t perform. I’ve a higher opinion of you than to think that you brought no better fruit of your penitence home to your loving mother than empty resolutions. I believe you have a steady determination to reform.”

  “You only do me justice in that belief, sir. I ask nothing better than the opportunity of showing that I am in earnest.”

  Mr. Harding is quite satisfied, and once more suggests that Richard should depart very early the next day.

  “I will leave this house at five in the morning,” said the nephew; “a train starts for Gardenford about six. I shall creep out quietly, and not disturb any one. I know the way out of the dear old house—I can get out of the drawing-room window, and need not unlock the hall-door; for I know that good stupid old woman Martha sleeps with the key under her pillow.

  “Ah, by the bye, where does Martha mean to put you to-night?”

  “In the little back parlour, I think she said; the room under this.”

  The uncle and nephew went down to this little parlour, where they found old Martha making up a bed on the sofa.

  “You will sleep very comfortably here for to-night, Master Richard,” said the old woman; “but if my mistress doesn’t have this ceiling mended before long there’ll be an accident some day.”

  They all looked up at the ceiling. The plaster had fallen in several places, and there were one or two cracks of considerable size.

  “If it was daylight,” grumbled the old woman, “you could see through into Mister Harding’s bedroom, for his worship won’t have a carpet.”

  His worship said he had not been used to carpets in India, and liked the sight of Mrs. Martha’s snow-white boards.

  “And it’s hard to keep them white, sir, I can tell you; for when I scour the floor of that room the water runs through and spoils the furniture down here.”

  But Daredevil Dick didn’t seem to care much for the dilapidated ceiling. The madeira, his brightened prospects, and the excitement he had gone through, all combined to make him thoroughly wearied out. He shook his uncle’s hand with a brief but energetic expression of gratitude, and then flung himself half dressed upon the bed.

  “There is an alarum clock in my room,” said the old man, “which I will set for five o’clock. I always sleep with my door open; so you will be sure to hear it go down. It won’t disturb your mother, for she sleeps at the other end of the house. And now good night, and God bless you, my boy!”

  He is gone, and the returned prodigal is asleep. His handsome face has lost half its look of dissipation and care, in the renewed light of hope; his black hair is tossed off his broad forehead, and it is a fine candid countenance, with a sweet smile playing round the mouth. Oh, there is stuff in him to make a man yet, though he says they should hang such fellows as he!

  His uncle has retired to his room, where his half-caste servant assists at his toilette for the night. This servant, who is a Lascar,9 and cannot speak one word of English (his master converses with him in Hindostanee), and is thought to be as faithful as a dog, sleeps in a little bed in the dressing-room adjoining his master’s apartment.

  So, on this bad November night, with the wind howling round the walls as if it were an angry unadmitted guest that clamoured to come in; with the rain beating on the roof, as if it had a special purpose and was bent on flooding the old house; there is peace and happiness, and a returned and penitent wanderer at the desolate old Black Mill.

  The wind this night seems to howl with a peculiar significance, but nobody has the key to its strange language; and if, in every shrill dissonant shriek, it tries to tell a ghastly secret or to give a timely warning, it tries in vain, for no one heeds or understands.

  CHAPTER III

  THE USHER WASHES HIS HANDS

  Mr. Jabez North had not his little room quite to himself at Dr. Tappenden’s. There are some penalties attendant even on being a good young man, and our friend Jabez sometimes found his very virtues rather inconvenient. It happened that Allecompain Junior was ill of a fever—sometimes delirious; and as the usher was such an excellent young person, beloved by the pupils and trusted implicitly by the master, the sick little boy was put under his especial care, and a bed was made up for him in Jabez’s room.

  This very November night, when the usher comes up stairs, his great desk under one arm (he is very strong, this usher), and a little feeble tallow candle in his left hand, he finds the boy very ill indeed. He does not know Jabez, for he is talking of a boat-race—a race that took place in the bright summer gone by. He is sitting up on the pillow, waving his little thin hand, and crying out at the top of his feeble voice, “Bravo, red! Red wins! Three cheers for red! Go it—go it, red! Blue’s beat—I say blue’s beat! George Harris has won the day. I’ve backed George Harris. I’ve bet six-pennorth of toffey on George Harris! Go it, red!”

  “We’re worse to-night, then,” said the usher; “so much the better. We’re off our head, and we’re not likely to take much notice; so much the better;” and this benevolent young man began to undress. To undress, but not to go to bed; for from a small trunk he takes out a dark smock-frock,1 a pair of leather gaiters,2 a black scratch wig,3 and a countryman’s slouched hat. He dresses himself in these things, and sits down at a little table with his desk before him.

  The boy rambles on. He is out nutting in the woods with his little sister in the glorious autumn months gone by.

  “Shake the tree, Harriet, shake the tree; they’ll fall if you only shake hard enough. Look at the hazel-nuts! so thick you can’t count ’em. Shake away, Harriet; and take care of your head, for they’ll come down like a shower of rain!”

  The usher takes the coil of rope from his desk, and begins to unwind it; he has another coil in his little trunk, another hidden away under the mattress of his bed. He joins the three together, and they form a rope of considerable length. He looks round the room; holds the light over the boy’s face, but sees no consciousness of passing events in those bright feverish eyes.

  He opens the window of his room;
it is on the second story, and looks out into the playground—a large space shut in from the lane in which the school stands by a wall of considerable height. About half the height of this room are some posts erected for gymnastics; they are about ten feet from the wall of the house, and the usher looks at them dubiously. He lowers the rope out of the window and attaches one end of it to an iron hook in the wall—a very convenient hook, and very secure apparently, for it looks as if it had been only driven in that very day.

  He surveys the distance beneath him, takes another dubious look at the posts in the playground, and is about to step out of the window, when a feeble voice from the little bed cries out—not in any delirious ramblings this time—“What are you doing with that rope? Who are you? What are you doing with that rope?”

  Jabez looks round, and although so good a young man, mutters something very much resembling an oath.

  “Silly boy, don’t you know me? I’m Jabez, your old friend——”

  “Ah, kind old Jabez; you won’t send me back in Virgil, because I’ve been ill; eh, Mr. North?”

  “No, no! See, you want to know what I am doing with this rope; why, making a swing, to be sure.”

  “A swing? Oh, that’s capital. Such a jolly thick rope too! When shall I be well enough to swing, I wonder? It’s so dull up here. I’ll try and go to sleep; but I dream such bad dreams.”

  “There, there, go to sleep,” says the usher, in a soothing voice. This time, before he goes to the window, he puts out his tallow candle; the rushlight on the hearth he extinguishes also; feels for something in his bosom, clutches this something tightly; takes a firm grasp of the rope, and gets out of the window.

  A curious way to make a swing! He lets himself down foot by foot, with wonderful caution and wonderful courage. When he gets on a level with the posts of the gymnasium he gives himself a sudden jerk, and swinging over against them, catches hold of the highest post, and his descent is then an easy one for the post is notched for the purpose of climbing, and Jabez, always good at gymnastics, descends it almost as easily as another man would an ordinary staircase. He leaves the rope still hanging from his bedroom window, scales the playground wall, and when the Slopperton clocks strike twelve is out upon the highroad. He skirts the town of Slopperton by a circuitous route, and in another half hour is on the other side of it, bearing towards the Black Mill. A curious manner of making a swing this midnight ramble. Altogether a curious ramble for this good young usher; but even good men have sometimes strange fancies, and this may be one of them.

  One o’clock from the Slopperton steeples: two o’clock: three o’clock. The sick little boy does not go to sleep, but wanders, oh, how wearily, through past scenes in his young life. Midsummer rambles, Christmas holidays, and merry games; the pretty speeches of the little sister who died three years ago; unfinished tasks and puzzling exercises, all pass through his wandering mind; and when the clocks chime the quarter after three, he is still talking, still rambling on in feeble accents, still tossing wearily on his pillow.

  As the clocks chime the quarter, the rope is at work again, and five minutes afterwards the usher clambers into the room.

  Not very good to look upon, either in costume or countenance; bad to look upon, with his clothes mud-bespattered and torn; wet to the skin; his hair in matted locks streaming over his forehead; worse to look upon, with his light blue eyes, bright with a dangerous and wicked fire—the eyes of a wild beast baulked of his prey; dreadful to look upon, with his hands clenched in fury, and his tongue busy with half-suppressed but terrible imprecations.

  “All for nothing!” he mutters. “All the toil, the scheming, and the danger for nothing—all the work of the brain and the hands wasted—nothing gained, nothing gained!”

  He hides away the rope in his trunk, and begins to unbutton his mud-stained gaiters. The little boy cries out in a feeble voice for his medicine.

  The usher pours a tablespoonful of the mixture into a wine-glass with a steady hand, and carries it to the bedside.

  The boy is about to take it from him, when he utters a sudden cry.

  “What’s the matter?” asks Jabez, angrily.

  “Your hand!—your hand! What’s that upon your hand?”

  A dark stain scarcely dry—a dark stain, at the sight of which the boy trembles from head to foot.

  “Nothing, nothing!” answers the tutor. “Take your medicine, and go to sleep.”

  No, the boy cries hysterically, he won’t take his medicine; he will never take anything again from that dreadful hand. “I know what that horrid stain is. What have you been doing? Why did you climb out of the window with a rope? It wasn’t to make a swing; it must have been for something dreadful! Why did you stay away three hours in the middle of the night? I counted the hours by the church clocks. Why have you got those strange clothes on? What does it all mean? I’ll ask the Doctor to take me out of this room! I’ll go to him this moment, for I’m afraid of you.”

  The boy tries to get out of bed as he speaks; but the usher holds him down with one powerful hand, which he places upon the boy’s mouth, at the same time keeping him from stirring and preventing him from crying out.

  With his free right hand he searches among the bottles on the table by the bedside.

  He throws the medicine out of the glass, and pours from another bottle a few spoonfuls of a dark liquid labelled, “Opium—Poison!”4

  “Now, sir, take your medicine, or I’ll report you to the principal to-morrow morning.”

  The boy tries to remonstrate, but in vain; the powerful hand throws back his head, and Jabez pours the liquid down his throat.

  For a little time the boy, quite delirious now, goes on talking of the summer rambles and the Christmas games, and then falls into a deep slumber.

  Then Jabez North sets to work to wash his hands. A curious young man, with curious fashions for doing things—above all, a curious fashion of washing his hands.

  He washes them very carefully in a small quantity of water, and when they are quite clean, and the water has become a dark and ghastly colour, he drinks it, and doesn’t make even one wry face at the horrible draught.

  “Well, well,” he mutters, “if nothing is gained by to-night’s work, I have at least tried my strength, and I now know what I’m made of.”

  Very strange stuff he must have been made of—very strange and perhaps not very good stuff, to be able to look at the bed on which the innocent and helpless boy lay in a deep slumber, and say,—

  “At any rate, he will tell no tales.”

  No! he will tell no tales, nor ever talk again of summer rambles, or of Christmas holidays, or of his dead sister’s pretty words. Perhaps he will join that wept-for little sister in a better world, where there are no such good young men as Jabez North.

  That worthy gentleman goes down aghast, with a white face, next morning, to tell Dr. Tappenden that his poor little charge is dead, and that perhaps he had better break the news to Allecompain Major, who is sick after that supper, which, in his boyish thoughtlessness, and his certainty of his little brother’s recovery, he had given last night.

  “Do, yes, by all means, break the sad news to the poor boy; for I know, North, you’ll do it tenderly.”

  CHAPTER IV

  RICHARD MARWOOD LIGHTS HIS PIPE

  Daredevil Dick hears the alarum at five o’clock, and leaves his couch very cautiously. He would like, before he leaves the house, to go to his mother’s door, if it were only to breathe a prayer upon the threshold. He would like to go to his uncle’s bedside, to give one farewell look at the kind face; but he has promised to be very cautious, and to awaken no one; so he steals quietly out through the drawing-room window—the same window by which he entered so strangely the preceding evening—into the chill morning, dark as night yet. He pauses in the little garden-walk for a minute while he lights his pipe, and looks up at the shrouded windows of the familiar house. “God bless her!” he mutters; “and God reward that good old man, for giving a scamp like m
e the chance of redeeming his honour!”

  There is a thick fog, but no rain. Daredevil Dick knows his way so well, that neither fog nor darkness are any hindrance to him, and he trudges on with a cheery step, and his pipe in his mouth, towards the Slopperton railway station. The station is half an hour’s walk out of the town, and when he reaches it the clocks are striking six. Learning that the train will not start for half an hour, he walks up and down the platform, looking, with his handsome face and shabby dress, rather conspicuous. Two or three trains for different destinations start while he is waiting on the platform, and several people stare at him, as he strides up and down, his hands in his pockets, and his weather-beaten hat slouched over his eyes—(for he does not want to be known by any Slopperton people yet awhile, till his position is better)—and when one man, with whom he had been intimate before he left the town, seemed to recognize him, and approached as if to speak to him, Richard turned abruptly on his heel and crossed to the other side of the station.

  If he had known that such a little incident as that could have a dark and dreadful influence on his life, surely he would have thought himself foredoomed and set apart for a cruel destiny.

  He strolled into the refreshment-room, took a cup of coffee, changed a sovereign1 in paying for his ticket, bought a newspaper, seated himself in a second-class carriage, and in a few minutes was out of Slopperton.

  There was only one other passenger in the carriage—a commercial traveller;2 and Richard and he smoked their pipes in defiance of the guards at the stations they passed. When did ever Daredevil Dick quail before any authorities? He had faced all Bow Street, chaffed Marlborough Street out of countenance, and had kept the station-house awake all night singing, “We won’t go home till morning.”