The Trail of the Serpent

by Mary Braddon

  It would have been difficult to imagine either the heavens or the earth under a darker aspect in the month of June. Not so, however, thought Mr. Jabez North; for, after contemplating the sky for some moments in silence, he exclaimed—“A fine night! A glorious night! It could not be better!”

  A figure, one shade darker than the night, came between him and the darkness. It was the doctor, who said—

  “Well, sir, I’m glad you think it a fine night; but I must beg to differ with you on the subject, for I never remember seeing a blacker sky, or one that threatened a more terrible storm at this season of the year.”

  “I was scarcely thinking of what I was saying, doctor. That poor man in there——”

  “Ah, yes; poor fellow! I doubt if he’ll witness the storm, near as it seems to be. I suppose you take some interest in him on account of his extraordinary likeness to you?”

  “That would be rather an egotistical reason for being interested in him. Common humanity induced me to come down to this wretched place, to see if I could be of any service to the poor creature.”

  “The action does you credit, sir,” said the doctor. “And now for my patient.”

  It was with a very grave face that the medical man looked at poor Jim, who had, by this time, fallen into a fitful and restless slumber; and when Jabez drew him aside to ask his opinion, he said,—“If he lives through the next half-hour I shall be surprised. Where is the old woman—his grandmother?”

  “I haven’t seen her this evening,” answered Jabez. And then, turning to the girl, he asked her if she knew where the old woman was.

  “No; she went out some time ago, and didn’t say where she was going. She’s not quite right in her mind, you know, sir, and often goes out after dark.”

  The doctor seated himself on a broken chair, near the mattress on which the sick man lay. Only one feeble guttering candle, with a long, top-heavy wick, lighted the dismal and comfortless room. Jabez paced up and down with that soft step of which we have before spoken. Although in his character of a philosopher the death of a fellow-creature could scarcely have been very distressing to him, there was an uneasiness in his manner on this night which he could not altogether conceal. He looked from the doctor to the girl, and from the girl to his sick brother. Sometimes he paused in his walk up and down the room to peer out at the open door. Once he stooped over the feeble candle to look at his watch. There was a listening expression too in his eyes; an uneasy twitching about his mouth; and at times he could scarcely suppress a tremulous action of his slender fingers, which bespoke impatience and agitation. Presently the clocks of Slopperton chimed the first quarter after ten. On hearing this, Jabez drew the medical man aside, and whispered to him,—

  “Are there no means,” he said, “of getting that poor girl out of the way? She is very much attached to that unfortunate creature; and if he dies, I fear there will be a terrible scene. It would be an act of mercy to remove her by some stratagem or other. How can we get her away till it is all over?”

  “I think I can manage it,” said the doctor. “My partner has a surgery at the other end of the town; I will send her there.”

  He returned to the bedside, and presently said,—

  “Look here, my good girl; I am going to write a prescription for something which I think will do our patient good. Will you take it for me, and get the medicine made up?”

  The girl looked at him with an appealing glance in her mournful eyes.

  “I don’t like to leave him, sir.”

  “But if it’s for his good, my dear?”

  “Yes, yes, sir. You’re very kind. I will go. I can run all the way. And you won’t leave him while I’m gone, will you, sir?”

  “No, my good girl, I won’t. There, there; here’s the prescription. It’s written in pencil, but the assistant will understand it. Now listen, while I tell you where to find the surgery.”

  He gave her the direction; and after a lingering and mournful look at her lover, who still slept, she left the house, and darted off in the direction of Slopperton.

  “If she runs as fast as that all the way,” said Jabez, as he watched her receding figure, “she will be back in less than an hour.”

  “Then she will find him either past all help, or better,” replied the doctor.

  Jabez’s pale face turned white as death at this word “better.”

  “Better!” he said. “Is there any chance of his recovery?”

  “There are wonderful chances in this race between life and death. This sleep may be a crisis. If he wakes, there may be a faint hope of his living.”

  Jabez’s hand shook like a leaf. He turned his back to the doctor, walked once up and down the room, and then asked, with his old calmness,—

  “And you, sir—you, whose time is of such value to so many sick persons—you can afford to desert them all, and remain here, watching this man?”

  “His case is a singular one, and interests me. Besides, I do not know that I have any patient in imminent danger to-night. My assistant has my address, and would send for me were my services peculiarly needed.”

  “I will go out and smoke a cigar,” said Jabez, after a pause. “I can scarcely support this sick room, and the suspense of this terrible conflict between life and death.”

  He strode out into the darkness, was absent about five minutes, and returned.

  “Your cigar did not last long,” remarked the doctor. “You are a quick smoker. Bad for the system, sir.”

  “My cigar was a bad one. I threw it away.”

  Shortly afterwards there was a knock at the door, and a ragged vagabond-looking boy, peeping in, asked,—

  “Is Mr. Saunders the doctor here?”

  “Yes, my lad. Who wants me?”

  “A young woman up in Hill Fields, sir, what’s took poison, they say. You’re wanted very bad.”

  “Poison! that’s urgent,” said Mr. Saunders. “Who sent you here for me?”

  The lad looked with a puzzled expression at Jabez standing in the shadow, who, unperceived by the doctor, whispered something behind his hand.

  “Surgery, sir,” answered the boy, still looking at Jabez.

  “Oh, you were sent from the surgery. I must be off, for this is no doubt a desperate case. I must leave you to look after this poor fellow. If he wakes, give him two teaspoonfuls of that medicine there. I could do no more if I stopped myself. Come, my lad.”

  The doctor left the house, followed by the boy, and in a few moments both were lost in the darkness, and far out of the ken of Blind Peter.

  Five minutes after the departure of the medical man Jabez went to the door, and after looking out at the squalid houses, which were all dark, gave a long low whistle.

  A figure crept out of the darkness, and came up to where he stood. It was the old woman, his grandmother.

  “All’s right, deary,” she whispered. “Bill Withers has got everything ready. He’s a waiting down by the wall yonder. There’s not a mortal about; and I’ll keep watch. You’ll want Bill’s help. When you’re ready for him, you’re to whistle softly three times running. He’ll know what it means—and I’m going to watch while he helps you. Haven’t I managed beautiful, deary? and shan’t I deserve the golden sovereigns you’ve promised me? They was guineas always when I was young, deary. Nothing’s as good now as it used to be.”

  “Don’t let us have any chattering,” said Jabez, as he laid a rough hand upon her arm; “unless you want to wake everybody in the place.”

  “But, I say, deary, is it all over? Nothing unfair, you know. Remember your promise.”

  “All over? Yes; half an hour ago. If you hinder me here with your talk, the girl will be back before we’re ready for her.”

  “Let me come in and close his eyes, deary,” supplicated the old woman. “His mother was my own child. Let me close his eyes.”

  “Keep where you are, or I’ll strangle you!” growled her dutiful grandson, as he shut the door upon his venerable relation, and left her mumbling
upon the threshold.

  Jabez crept cautiously towards the bed on which his brother lay. Jim at this moment awoke from his restless slumber; and, opening his eyes to their widest extent, looked full at the man by his side. He made no effort to speak, pointed to his lips, and, stretching out his hand towards the bottles on the table, made signs to his brother. These signs were a supplication for the cooling draught which always allayed the burning heat of the fever.

  Jabez never stirred. “He has awoke,” he murmured. “This is the crisis of his life, and of my fate.”

  The clocks of Slopperton chimed the quarter before eleven.

  “It’s a black gulf, lass,” gasped the dying man; “and I’m fast sinking into it.”

  There was no friendly hand, Jim, to draw you back from that terrible gulf. The medicine stood untouched upon the table; and, perhaps as guilty as the first murderer,1 your twin brother stood by your bed-side.

  CHAPTER V

  MIDNIGHT BY THE SLOPPERTON CLOCKS

  The clouds and the sky kept their promise, and as the clocks chimed the quarter before twelve the storm broke over the steeples at Slopperton.

  Blue lightning-flashes lit up Blind Peter, and attendant thunderclaps shook him to his very foundation; while a violent shower of rain gave him such a washing-down of every flagstone, chimneypot, and door-step, as he did not often get. Slopperton in bed was almost afraid to go to sleep; and Slopperton not in bed did not seem to care about going to bed. Slopperton at supper was nervous as to handling of glittering knives and steel forks; and Slopperton going to windows to look out at the lightning was apt to withdraw hurriedly at the sight thereof. Slopperton in general was depressed by the storm; thought there would be mischief somewhere; and had a vague idea that something dreadful would happen before the night was out.

  In Dr. Tappenden’s quiet household there was consternation and alarm. Mr. Jabez North, the principal assistant, had gone out early in the evening, and had not returned at the appointed hour for shutting up the house. This was such an unprecedented occurrence, that it had occasioned considerable uneasiness—especially as Dr. Tappenden was away from home, and Jabez was, in a manner, deputy-master of the house. The young woman who looked after the gentlemen’s wardrobes had taken compassion upon the housemaid, who sat up awaiting Mr. North’s return, and had brought her workbox, and a lapful of young gentlemen’s dilapidated socks, to the modest chamber in which the girl waited.

  “I hope,” said the housemaid, “nothing ain’t happened to him through the storm. I hope he hasn’t been getting under no trees.”

  The housemaid had a fixed idea that to go under a tree in a thunderstorm was to encounter immediate death.

  “Poor dear young gentleman,” said the lady of the wardrobes; “I tremble to think what can keep him out so. Such a steady young man; never known to be a minute after time either. I’m sure every sound I hear makes me expect to see him brought in on a shutter.”

  “Don’t now, Miss Smithers!” cried the housemaid, looking behind her as if she expected to see the ghost of Jabez North pointing to a red spot on his left breast at the back of her chair. “I wish you wouldn’t now! Oh, I hope he ain’t been murdered. There’s been such a many murders in Slopperton since I can remember. It’s only three years and a half ago since a man cut his wife’s throat down in Windmill Lane, because she hadn’t put no salt in the saucepan when she boiled the greens.”

  The frightful parallel between the woman who boiled the greens without salt and Jabez North two hours after his time, struck such terror to the hearts of the young women, that they were silent for some minutes, during which they both looked uneasily at a thief in the candle which neither of them had the courage to take out—their nerves not being equal to the possible clicking of the snuffers.

  “Poor young man!” said the housemaid, at last. “Do you know, Miss Smithers, I can’t help thinking he has been rather low lately.”

  Now this word “low” admits of several applications, so Miss Smithers replied, rather indignantly,—

  “Low, Sarah Anne! Not in his language, I’m sure. And as to his manners, they’d be a credit to the nobleman that wrote the letters.”1

  “No, no, Miss Smithers; I mean his spirits. I’ve fancied lately he’s been a fretting about something; perhaps he’s in love, poor dear.”

  Miss Smithers coloured up. The conversation was getting interesting. Mr. North had lent her Rasselas,2 which she thought a story of thrilling interest; and she had kept his stockings and shirt buttons in order for three years. Such things had happened; and Mrs. Jabez North sounded more comfortable than Miss Smithers, at any rate.

  “Perhaps,” said Sarah Anne, rather maliciously—“perhaps he’s been forgetting his situation and giving way to thoughts of marrying our young missus. She’s got a deal of money, you know, Miss Smithers, though her figure ain’t much to look at.”

  Sarah Anne’s figure was plenty to look at, having a tendency to break out into luxuriance where you least expected it.

  It was in vain that Sarah Anne or Miss Smithers speculated on the probable causes of the usher’s absence. Midnight struck from the Dutch clock in the kitchen, the eight-day clock on the staircase, the time-piece in the drawing-room—a liberal and complicated piece of machinery which always struck eighteen to the dozen—and eventually from every clock in Slopperton; and yet there was no sign of Jabez North.

  No sign of Jabez North. A white face and a pair of glazed eyes staring up at the sky, out on a dreary heath three miles from Slopperton, exposed to the fury of a pitiless storm; a man lying alone on a wretched mattress in a miserable apartment in Blind Peter—but no Jabez North.

  Through the heartless storm, dripping wet with the pelting rain, the girl they have christened Sillikens hastens back to Blind Peter. The feeble glimmer of the candle, with the drooping wick sputtering in a pool of grease, is the only light which illumes that cheerless neighbourhood. The girl’s heart beats with a terrible flutter as she approaches that light, for an agonizing doubt is in her soul about that other light which she left so feebly burning, and which may be now extinct. But she takes courage; and pushing open the door, which opposes neither bolts nor bars to any deluded votary of Mercury,3 she enters the dimly-lighted room. The man lies with his face turned to the wall; the old woman is seated by the hearth, on which a dull and struggling flame is burning. She has on the table among the medicine-bottles, another, which no doubt contains spirits, for she has a broken teacup in her hand, from which ever and anon she sips consolation, for it is evident she has been crying.

  “Mother, how is he—how is he?” the girl asks, with a hurried agitation painful to witness, since it reveals how much she dreads the answer.

  “Better, deary, better—Oh, ever so much better,” the old woman answers in a crying voice, and with another application to the broken teacup.

  “Better! thank Heaven!—thank Heaven!” and the girl, stealing softly to the bed-side, bends down and listens to the sick man’s breathing, which is feeble, but regular.

  “He seems very fast asleep, grandmother. Has he been sleeping all the time?”

  “Since when, deary?”

  “Since I went out. Where’s the doctor?”

  “Gone, deary. Oh, my blessed boy, to think that it should come to this, and his dead mother was my only child! O dear, O dear!” And the old woman burst out crying, only choking her sobs by the aid of the teacup.

  “But he’s better, grandmother; perhaps he’ll get over it now. I always said he would. Oh, I’m so glad—so glad.” The girl sat down in her wet garments, of which she never once thought, on the little stool by the side of the bed. Presently the sick man turned round and opened his eyes.

  “You’ve been away a long time, lass,” he said.

  Something in his voice, or in his way of speaking, she did not know which, startled her; but she wound her arm round his neck, and said—

  “Jim, my own dear Jim, the danger’s past. The black gulf you’ve been looking down
is closed for these many happy years to come, and maybe the sun will shine on our wedding-day yet.”

  “Maybe, lass—maybe. But tell me, what’s the time?”

  “Never mind the time, Jim. Very late, and a very dreadful night; but no matter for that! You’re better, Jim; and if the sun never shone upon the earth again, I don’t think I should be able to be sorry, now you are safe.”

  “Are all the lights out in Blind Peter, lass?” he asked.

  “All the lights out? Yes, Jim—these two hours. But why do you ask?”

  “And in Slopperton did you meet many people, lass?”

  “Not half-a-dozen in all the streets. Nobody would be out in such a night, Jim, that could help it.”

  He turned his face to the wall again, and seemed to sleep. The old woman kept moaning and mumbling over the broken teacup,—

  “To think that my blessed boy should come to this—on such a night too, on such a night!”

  The storm raged with unabated fury, and the rain pouring in at the dilapidated door threatened to flood the room. Presently the sick man raised his head a little way from the pillow.

  “Lass,” he said, “could you get me a drop o’ wine? I think, if I could drink a drop o’ wine, it would put some strength into me somehow.”

  “Grandmother,” said the girl, “can I get him any? You’ve got some money; it’s only just gone twelve; I can get in at the public-house. I will get in, if I knock them up, to get a drop o’ wine for Jim.”

  The old woman fumbled among her rags and produced a sixpence, part of the money given her from the slender purse of the benevolent Jabez, and the girl hurried away to fetch the wine.

  The public-house was called the Seven Stars; the seven stars being represented on a signboard in such a manner as to bear rather a striking resemblance to seven yellow hot-cross buns on a very blue background. The landlady of the Seven Stars was putting her hair in papers when the girl called Sillikens invaded the sanctity of her private life. Why she underwent the pain and grief of curling her hair for the admiration of such a neighbourhood as Blind Peter is one of those enigmas of this dreary existence to solve which the Œdipus4 has not yet appeared. I don’t suppose she much cared about suspending her toilet, and opening her bar, for the purpose of selling sixpennyworth of port wine; but when she heard it was for a sick man, she did not grumble. The girl thanked her heartily, and hurried homewards with her pitiful measure of wine.