The Victorian Villains Megapack (69 page)

“A viper!” cried Jean-Marie, running towards him. “A viper! You are bitten!”

The Doctor came down heavily out of the cleft, and advanced in silence to meet the boy, whom he took roughly by the shoulder.

“I have found it,” he said, with a gasp.

“A plant?” asked Jean-Marie.

Desprez had a fit of unnatural gaiety, which the rocks took up and mimicked. “A plant!” he repeated scornfully. “Well—yes—a plant. And here,” he added suddenly, showing his right hand, which he had hitherto concealed behind his back—“here is one of the bulbs.”

Jean-Marie saw a dirty platter, coated with earth.

“That?” said he. “It is a plate!”

“It is a coach and horses,” cried the Doctor. “Boy,” he continued, growing warmer, “I plucked away a great pad of moss from between these boulders, and disclosed a crevice; and when I looked in
, what do you suppose I saw? I saw a house in Paris with a court and garden, I saw my wife shining with diamonds, I saw myself a deputy, I saw you—well, I—I saw your future,” he concluded, rather feebly. “I have just discovered America,” he added.

“But what is it?” asked the boy.

“The Treasure of Franchard,” cried the Doctor; and, throwing his brown straw hat upon the ground, he whooped like an Indian and sprang upon Jean-Marie, whom he suffocated with embraces and bedewed with tears. Then he flung himself down among the heather and once more laughed until the valley rang.

But the boy had now an interest of his own, a boy’s interest. No sooner was he released from the Doctor’s accolade than he ran to the boulders, sprang into the niche, and, thrusting his hand into the crevice, drew forth one after another, encrusted with the earth of ages, the flagons, candlesticks, and patens of the hermitage of Franchard. A casket came last, tightly shut and very heavy.

“Oh what fun!” he cried.

But when he looked back at the Doctor, who had followed close behind and was silently observing, the words died from his lips. Desprez was once more the colour of ashes; his lip worked and trembled; a sort of bestial greed possessed him.

“This is childish,” he said. “We lose precious time. Back to the inn, harness the trap, and bring it to yon bank. Run for your life, and remember—not one whisper. I stay here to watch.”

Jean-Marie did as he was bid, though not without surprise. The noddy was brought round to the spot indicated; and the two gradually transported the treasure from its place of concealment to the boot below the driving-seat. Once it was all stored the Doctor recovered his gaiety.

“I pay my grateful duties to the genius of this dell,” he said. “Oh for a live coal, a heifer, and a jar of country wine! I am in the vein for sacrifice, for a superb libation. Well, and why n
ot? We are at Franchard. English pale ale is to be had—not classical, indeed, but excellent. Boy, we shall drink ale.”

“But I thought it was so unwholesome,” said Jean-Marie, “and very dear besides.”

“Fiddle-de-dee!” exclaimed the Doctor gaily. “To the inn!”

And he stepped into the noddy, tossing his head with an elastic, youthful air. The horse was turned, and in a few seconds they drew up beside the palings of the inn garden.

“Here,” said Desprez—“here, near the table, so that we may keep an eye upon things.”

They tied the horse, and entered the garden, the Doctor singing, now in fantastic high notes, now producing deep reverberations from his chest. He took a seat, rapped loudly on the table, assailed the waiter with witticisms; and when the bottle of Bass was at length produced, far more charged with gas than the most delirious champagne, he filled out a long glassful of froth and pushed it over to Jean-Marie. “Drink,” he said; “drink deep.”

“I would rather not,” faltered the boy, true to his training.

“What?” thundered Desprez.

“I am afraid of it,” said Jean-Marie: “my stomach—”

“Take it or leave it,” interrupted Desprez fiercely: “but understand it once for all—there is nothing so contemptible as a precisian.”

Here was a new lesson! The boy sat bemused, looking at the glass but not tasting it, while the Doctor emptied and refilled his own, at first with clouded brow, but gradually yielding to the sun, the heady, prickling beverage, and his own predisposition to be happy.

“Once in a way,” he said at last, by way of a concession to the boy’s more rigorous attitude, “once in a way, and at so critical a moment, this ale is a nectar for the gods. The habit, indeed, is debasing; wine, the juice of the grape, is the true drink of the Frenchman, as I have often had
occasion to point out; and I do not know that I can blame you for refusing this outlandish stimulant. You can have some wine and cakes. Is the bottle empty? Well, we will not be proud; we will have pity on your glass.”

The beer being done, the Doctor chafed bitterly while Jean-Marie finished his cakes. “I burn to be gone,” he said, looking at his watch. “Good God, how slow you eat!” And yet to eat slowly was his own particular prescription, the main secret of longevity!

His martyrdom, however, reached an end at last; the pair resumed their places in the buggy, and Desprez, leaning luxuriously back, announced his intention of proceeding to Fontainebleau.

“To Fontainebleau?” repeated Jean-Marie.

“My words are always measured,” said the Doctor. “On!”

The Doctor was driven through the glades of paradise; the air, the light, the shining leaves, the very movements of the vehicle, seemed to fall in tune with his golden meditations; with his head thrown back, he dreamed a series of sunny visions, ale and pleasure dancing in his veins. At last he spoke.

“I shall telegraph for Casimir,” he said. “Good Casimir! A fellow of the lower order of intelligence, Jean-Marie, distinctly not creative, not poetic; and yet he will repay your study; his fortune is vast, and is entirely due to his own exertions. He is the very fellow to help us to dispose of our trinkets, find us a suitable house in Paris, and manage the details of our installation. Admirable Casimir, one of my oldest comrades! It was on his advice, I may add, that I invested my little fortune in Turkish bonds; when we have added these spoils of the mediæval Church to our stake in the Mahometan empire, little boy, we shall positively roll among doubloons, positively roll!—Beautiful forest,” he cried, “farewell! Though called to other scenes, I will not forget thee. Thy name is graven in my heart. Under the influenc
e of prosperity I become dithyrambic, Jean-Marie. Such is the impulse of the natural soul; such was the constitution of primæval man. And I—well, I will not refuse the credit—I have preserved my youth like a virginity; another, who should have led the same snoozing, countrified existence for these years, another had become rusty, become stereotype; but I, I praise my happy constitution, retain the spring unbroken. Fresh opulence and a new sphere of duties find me unabated in ardour and only more mature by knowledge. For this prospective change, Jean-Marie—it may probably have shocked you. Tell me now, did it not strike you as an inconsistency? Confess—it is useless to dissemble—it pained you?”

“Yes,” said the boy.

“You see,” returned the Doctor, with sublime fatuity, “I read your thoughts! Nor am I surprised—your education is not yet complete; the higher duties of men have not been yet presented to you fully. A hint—till we have leisure—must suffice. Now that I am once more in possession of a modest competence; now that I have so long prepared myself in silent meditation, it becomes my superior duty to proceed to Paris. My scientific training, my undoubted command of language, mark me out for the service of my country. Modesty in such a case would be a snare. If sin were a philosophical expression, I should call it sinful. A man must not deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade his obligations. I must be up and doing; I must be no skulker in life’s battle.”

So he rattled on, copiously greasing the joint of his inconsistency with words; while the boy listened silently, his eyes fixed on the horse, his mind seething. It was all lost eloquence; no array of words could unsettle a belief of Jean-Marie’s; and he drove into Fontainebleau filled with pity, horror, indignation, and despair.

In the town Jean-Marie was kept a fixture on the driving-seat, to guard the treasure; while the Doctor, with a singular, slightly tipsy airiness of manner, fluttered in and out of cafés, where he shook hands with garrison officers, and mixed an absinthe with the
nicety of old experience; in and out of shops, from which he returned laden with costly fruits, real turtle, a magnificent piece of silk for his wife, a preposterous cane for himself, and a képi of the newest fashion for the boy; in and out of the telegraph office, whence he despatched his telegram, and where three hours later he received an answer promising a visit on the morrow, and generally pervaded Fontainebleau with the first fine aroma of his divine good-humour.

The sun was very low when they set forth again; the shadows of the forest trees extended across the broad white road that led them home; the penetrating odour of the evening wood had already arisen, like a cloud of incense, from that broad field of tree-tops; and even in the streets of the town, where the air had been baked all day between white walls, it came in whiffs and pulses, like a distant music. Half-way home, the last gold flicker vanished from a great oak upon the left; and when they came forth beyond the borders of the wood, the plain was already sunken in pearly greyness, and a great, pale moon came swinging skyward through the filmy poplars.

The Doctor sang, the Doctor whistled, the Doctor talked. He spoke of the woods, and the wars, and the deposition of dew; he brightened and babbled of Paris; he soared into cloudy bombast on the glories of the political arena. All was to be changed; as the day departed, it took with it the vestiges of an outworn existence, and tomorrow’s sun was to inaugurate the new. “Enough,” he cried, “of this life of maceration!” His wife (still beautiful, or he was sadly partial) was to be no longer buried; she should now shine before society. Jean-Marie would find the world at his feet; the roads open to success, wealth, honour, and posthumous renown. “And oh, by the way,” said he, “for God’s sake keep your tongue quiet! You are, of course, a very silent fellow; it is a quality I gladly recognise in you—silence, golden silence! But this is a matter of gravity. No word must get abroad; none but the good Casimir is
to be trusted; we shall probably dispose of the vessels in England.”

“But are they not even ours?” the boy said, almost with a sob—it was the only time he had spoken.

“Ours in this sense, that they are nobody else’s,” replied the Doctor. “But the State would have some claim. If they were stolen, for instance, we should be unable to demand their restitution; we should have no title; we should be unable even to communicate with the police. Such is the monstrous condition of the law.
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It is a mere instance of what remains to be done, of the injustices that may yet be righted by an ardent, active, and philosophical deputy.”

Jean-Marie put his faith in Madame Desprez; and as they drove forward down the road from Bourron, between the rustling poplars, he prayed in his teeth, and whipped up the horse to an unusual speed. Surely, as soon as they arrived, madame would assert her character, and bring this waking nightmare to an end.

Their entrance into Gretz was heralded and accompanied by a most furious barking; all the dogs in the village seemed to smell the treasure in the noddy. But there was no one in the street, save three lounging landscape-painters at Tentaillon’s door. Jea
n-Marie opened the green gate and led in the horse and carriage; and almost at the same moment Madame Desprez came to the kitchen threshold with a lighted lantern; for the moon was not yet high enough to clear the garden walls.

“Close the gates, Jean-Marie!” cried the Doctor, somewhat unsteadily alighting.—“Anastasie, where is Aline?”

“She has gone to Montereau to see her parents,” said madame.

“All is for the best!” exclaimed the Doctor fervently. “Here quick, come near to me; I do not wish to speak too loud,” he continued. “Darling, we are wealthy!”

“Wealthy!” repeated the wife.

“I have found the treasure of Franchard,” replied her husband, “See, here are the first-fruits; a pine-apple, a dress for my ever-beautiful—it will suit her—trust a husband’s, trust a lover’s taste! Embrace me, d
arling! This grimy episode is over; the butterfly unfolds its painted wings. Tomorrow Casimir will come; in a week we may be in Paris—happy at last! You shall have diamonds.—Jean-Marie, take it out of the boot, with religious care, and bring it piece by piece into the dining-room. We shall have plate at table! Darling, hasten and prepare this turtle; it will be a whet—it will be an addition to our meagre ordinary. I myself will proceed to the cellar. We shall have a bottle of that little Beaujolais you like, and finish with the Hermitage; there are still three bottles left. Worthy wine for a worthy occasion.”

“But, my husband, you put me in a whirl,” she cried. “I do not comprehend.”

“The turtle, my adored, the turtle!” cried the Doctor; and he pushed her towards the kitchen, lantern and all.

Jean-Marie stood dumfoundered. He had pictured to himself a different scene—a more immediate protest, and his hope began to dwindle on the spot.

The Doctor was everywhere, a little doubtful on his legs, perhaps, and now and then taking the wall with his shoulder; for it was long since he had tasted absinthe, and he was even then reflecting that the absinthe had been a misconception. Not that he regretted excess on such a glorious day, but he made a mental memorandum to beware; he must not, a second time, become the victim of a deleterious habit. He had his wine out of the cellar in a twinkling; he arranged the sacrificial vessels, some on the white table-cloth, some on the sideboard, still crusted with historic earth. He was in and out of the kitchen, plying Anastasie with vermouth, heating her with glimpses of the future, estimating their new wealth at ever larger figures; and before they sat down to supper, the lady’s virtue had melted in the fire of his enthusiasm, her timidity had disappeared; she, too, had begun to speak disparagingly of the life at Gretz; and as she took her place and helped the soup,
her eyes shone with the glitter of prospective diamonds.