The laughing Seine, whose midnight flood
Shrouds many a deed of crime and blood!
Warren.
They alone who have passed much of their lives on the Continent of
Europe can estimate the amount of excitement caused by such an incident
as that we have just related. So much of life is centred in the theatre,
so many interests revolve around it, engrossing, as it does, so much of
the passions and the prejudices of those whose existence seldom rises
above the pursuit of pleasure, that anything which might interrupt “the
scene,” which should disturb its progress, or mar its effect, is sure
to evoke the loudest evidence of public indignation. Where a high
cultivation of the arts is employed to gloss over the corruptions of a
vicious system, it may be easily conceived how men would be judged more
leniently for crimes than for those minor offences which rebel against
the usages of good society.
The “Ballet interrupted in its most interesting moment,” “La Ninetta
carried away fainting at the very commencement of her most attractive
movement,” insulted--so it was rumored--“by some offensive epithet of a
Spaniard,” were enough to carry indignation to the highest pitch, and
it needed the protection of the guard to screen him from the popular
vengeance.
After a night of feverish anxiety, where hopes and fears warred and
conflicted with each other, Cashel was early on the following morning
conducted before the chief commissary of the police. His passport
represented him as a Spaniard, and he adhered to the pretended
nationality to avoid the dreaded notoriety of his name.
While he answered the usual questions as to age, religion, and
profession, an officer deposited a sealed paper in the hands of the
prefetto; who, opening it, appeared to study the contents with much
care.
“You have called yourself Il Señor Roland da Castel, sir?” said the
official, staring fixedly upon him. “Have you always gone by this name?”
“In Mexico and the New World I was ever known as such. In England men
called me Roland Cashel.”
“Which is your more fitting appellation--is it not?”
“Yes.”
“You are then an English, and not a Spanish subject?”
He nodded assent.
“You were, however, in a South American service?” said the prefetto,
reading from his paper.
Roland bowed again.
“In which service, or pretended service, you commanded a slaver?”
“This is untrue,” said Cashel, calmly.
“I have it asserted here, however, by those of whose statements you have
already acknowledged the accuracy.”
“It is not the less a falsehood.”
“Perhaps you will allow more correctness to the next allegation? It is
said that, under the pretended right to a large inheritance, you visited
England, and succeeded in preferring a claim to a vast estate?”
Roland bent his head in assent.
“And that to this property you possessed neither right nor title?”
Roland started: the charge involved a secret he believed unknown, save
to himself, Hammond, and Linton, and he could not master his surprise
enough to reply.
“But a weightier allegation is yet behind, sir,” said the prefetto,
sternly. “Are you the same Roland Cashel whose trial for murder occupied
the assizes of Ennis in the spring of the year 18--?”
“I am,” said Cashel, faintly.
“Your escape of conviction depended on the absence of a material witness
for the prosecution, I believe?”
“I was acquitted because I was not guilty, sir.”
“On that point we are not agreed,” said the prefetto, sarcastically;
“but you have admitted enough to warrant me in the course I shall pursue
respecting you--the fact of a false name and passport, the identity with
a well-known character admitted--I have now to detain you in custody
until such time as the consul of your country may take steps for your
conveyance to England, where already new evidence of your criminality
awaits you. Yes, prisoner, the mystery which involved your guilt is at
length about to be dissipated, and the day of expiation draws nigh.”
Roland did not speak. Shame at the degraded position he occupied, even in
the eyes of those with whom he had associated, overwhelmed him, and he
suffered himself to be led away without a word.
Alone in the darkness and silence of a prison, he sat indifferent to
what might befall him, wearied of himself and all the world.
Days, even weeks passed on, and none inquired after him; he seemed
forgotten of all, when the consul, who had been absent, having returned,
it was discovered that the allegations respecting the murder were not
sufficient to warrant his being transmitted to England, and that the
only charge against him lay in the assumed nationality,--an offence it
was deemed sufficiently expiated by his imprisonment. He was free then
once more,--free to wander forth into the world where his notoriety
had been already proclaimed, and where, if not his guilt, his shame was
published.
Of Maritaña all that he could learn was that she had left Venice without
again appearing in public; but in what direction none knew accurately.
Cashel justly surmised that she had not gone without seeing him once
more had it not been from the compulsion of others; and if he grieved
to think they were never to meet more, he felt a secret consolation on
reflecting how much of mutual shame and sorrow was spared them. Shame
was indeed the predominant emotion of his mind; shame for his now
sullied name--his character tarnished by the allegations of crime; and
shame for her, degraded to a _ballarina_.
Had fortune another reverse in store for him? Was there one cherished
hope still remaining? Had life one solitary spot to which he could now
direct his weary steps, and be at rest? The publicity which late events
had given to his name rendered him more timid and retiring than ever.
A morbid sense of modesty--a shrinking dread of the slights to which he
would be exposed in the world--made him shun all intercourse, and live a
life of utter seclusion.
Like all men who desire solitude, he soon discovered that it is alone
attainable in great cities. Where the great human tide runs full and
strong, the scattered wrecks are scarcely noticeable.
To Paris, therefore, he repaired; not to that brilliant Paris where
sensuality and vice costume themselves in all the brilliant hues derived
from the highest intellectual culture, but to the dark and gloomy Paris
which lies between the arms of the Seine,--“the Ile St. Louis.” There,
amid the vestiges of an extinct feudalism, and the trials of a
present wretchedness, he passed his life in strict solitude. In a mean
apartment, whose only solace was the view of the river, with a few
books picked up on a neighboring stall, and the moving crowd beneath his
window to attract his wandering thoughts, he lived his lonely life. The
past alone occupied his mind; for the future he had neither care
nor interest, but of his bygone life he could dream for hours. These
memories he used to indulge each evening in a particular spot; it was an
old and ruinous stair which descended to the river, from a little wooden
platform, near where he lived. It had been long disused, and suffered to
fall into rot and decay. Here he sat, each night, watching the twinkling
lights that glittered along the river, and listening to the distant hum
of that great hive of pleasure that lay beyond it.
That the neighborhood about was one of evil repute and danger, mattered
little to one who set small store by his life, and whose stalwart figure
and signs of personal prowess were not unknown in the quarter. The
unbroken solitude of the spot was its attraction to him, and truly none
ever ventured near it after nightfall.
There he was sitting one night, as usual, musing, as was his wont. It
was a period when men's minds were stirred by the expectation of some
great but unknown event; a long political stagnation--the dead sea of
hopeless apathy--was beginning to be ruffled by short and fitful blasts
that told of a coming hurricane. Vague rumors of a change--scattered
sentences of some convulsion, whence proceeding, or whither tending,
none could guess--were abroad. The long-sleeping terrors of a past time
of blood were once more remembered, and men talked of the guillotine
and the scaffold, as household themes. It was the summer of 1830--that
memorable year, whose deeds were to form but the prologue of the great
drama we are to-day the spectators at. Roland heard these things as he
who wanders along the shore at night may hear the brooding signs of a
gathering storm, but has no “venture on the sea.” He thought of them
with a certain interest, too--but it was with that interest into which
no personal feeling enters; for how could great convulsions of states
affect _him_ How could the turn of fortune raise or depress him?
He sat, now pondering over his own destiny, now wondering whither the
course of events to come was tending, when he heard the plash of
oars, and the rushing sound of a boat moving through the water in the
direction of the stair. The oars, which at some moments were plied
vigorously, ceased to move at others; and, as well as Cashel could
mark, the course of the boat seemed once or twice to be changed. Roland
descended to the lowest step of the ladder, the better to see what this
might portend. That terrible river, on whose smiling eddies the noonday
sun dances so joyously, covers beneath the shadow of night crimes the
most awful and appalling.
As Cashel listened, he perceived that the rowing had ceased, and two
voices, whose accents sounded like altercation, could be heard.
The boat, drifting meanwhile downward on the fast current, was now
nearly opposite to where he sat, but only perceptible as a dark speck
upon the water. The night was calm, without a breath of wind, and on the
vapor-charged atmosphere sounds floated dull and heavily; still Cashel
could hear the harsh tones of men in angry dispute, and to his amazement
they spoke in English.
“It's the old story,” cried one, whose louder voice and coarser accents
bespoke him the inferior in condition--“the old story that I am sick of
listening to--when you have luck! when you have luck!”
“I used not to have a complaint against Fortune,” said the other.
“Before we met, she had treated me well for many a year.”
“And 'twas me that changed it, I suppose,” said the first, in the same
insolent tone as before; “do you mean that?”
“The world has gone ill with me since that day.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Partly yours,” said the other, in a slow, deliberate voice, every
syllable of which thrilled through Cashers heart as he listened. “Had
you secured the right man, it was beyond the power of Fortune to hurt
either of us. That fatal, fatal mistake!”
“How could I help it?” cried the other, energetically; “the night was
as dark as this--it was between two high banks--there was nothing to be
seen but a figure of a man coming slowly along--you yourself told me
who it would be--I did n't wait for more; and troth!”--here he gave a
fiendish laugh--“troth! you'll allow the work was well done.”
“It was a most determined murder,” said the other, thoughtfully.
“Murder! murder!” screamed the first, in a voice of fierce passion; “and
is it you that calls it a murder?”
“No matter how it is called. Let us speak of something else.”
“Very well. Let us talk about the price of it. It is n't paid yet!”
“Is it nothing that I have taken you from abject, starving misery--from
a life of cold, want, and wretchedness, to live at ease in the first
city of the universe? Is it no part of the price that you spend your
days in pleasure and your nights in debauch?--that, with the appetite
of the peasant, you partake of the excesses of the gentleman? Is it no
instalment of the debt, I say, that you, who might now be ground down to
the very earth as a slave at home, dare to lift your head and speak thus
to _me?_”
“And is it _you_ dares to tell me this?” cried the other, in savage
energy; “is it you, that made me a murderer, and then think that I can
forget it because I'm a drunkard? But I don't forget it! I 'll never
forget it! I see him still, as he lay gasping before me, and trying to
beg for mercy when he could n't ask for it. I see him every day when I
'm in a lonely place; and, oh! he's never away from me at night, with
his bloody hands on his head trying to save it, and screaming out for
God to help him. And what did I get for it? answer me that,” yelled
he, in accents shrill with passion. “Is it my wife begging from door to
door--is it my children naked and hungry--is it my little place, a ruin
and a curse over it--or is it myself trying to forget it in drink, not
knowing the day nor the hour that it will rise up against me, and that
I 'll be standing in the dock where I saw _him_ that you tried to murder
too?”
“There is no use in this passion,” said the other, calmly; “let us be
friends, Tom; it is our interest to be so.”
“Them's the very words you towld Mr. Phillis, and the next day he was
taken up for robbery, and you had him transported.”
“Phillis was a fool, and paid the penalty of a fool; but you are a
shrewd fellow, who can see to his own advantage. Now listen to me
calmly: were it not for bad luck, we might all of us have had more money
now than we could count or squander. Had Maritaña continued upon the
stage, her gains would by this time have been enormous. The bank, too,
would have prospered; her beauty would have drawn around us all that
was wealthy and dissipated in the world of fashion; we could have played
what stake we pleased. Princes, ambassadors, ministers of state would
have been our game. Curses be on his head who spoiled this glorious
plan! From that unhappy night at Venice she never would appear again,
nor could she. The shock has been like a blight upon her. You have seen
her yourself, and know what it has made her.”
The artifice by which the speaker contrived to change the topic, and
withdraw the other from a painful subject to one of seeming confidence,
was completely successful; and in the altered tone of voice might be
read the change which had come over him.
“You wish to go to America, Tom?” continued he, after a pause.
“Ay; I never feel safe here. I 'm too near home.”
“Well, if everything prospers with us, you shall have the money by
Tuesday--Wednesday at farthest. Rica has at last found a clew to old
Corrigan, and, although he seems in great poverty, his name upon a bill
will still raise some hundreds.”
“I don't care who pays it, but I must get it,” said the other, whose
savage mood seemed to have returned. “I 'll not stay here. 'T is little
profit or pleasure I have standin' every night to see the crowds that
are passing in, to be cheated out of their money,--to hear the clink of
the goold I 'm never to handle,--and to watch all the fine livin' and
coortin' that I 've no share in.”
“Be satisfied. You shall have the money; I pledge my word upon it.”
“I don't care for your word. I have a better security than ever it was.”
“And what may that be?” said the other, cautiously.
“Your neck in a halter, Mr. Linton,” said he, laughing ironically. “Ay,
ye don't understand me,--poor innocent that ye are! but I know what I 'm
saying, and I have good advice about it besides.”
“How do you mean good advice, Tom?” said Linton, with seeming kindliness
of manner. “Whom have you consulted?”
“One that knows the law well,” said Tom, with all the evasive shrewdness
of his class.
“And he tells you--”
“He tells me that the devil a bit betther off you'd be than
myself,--that you are what they call an 'accessory'--that's the word; I
mind it well.”
“And what does that mean?”
“A chap that plans the work, but has n't the courage to put hand to it.”
“That's an accessory, is it?” said the other, slowly.
“Just so.” He paused for a few seconds, then added,
“Besides, if I was to turn 'prover, he says that _I'd_ only be
transported, and 't is _you_ would be hanged”--the last word was
uttered in a harsh and grating tone, and followed by a laugh of insolent
mockery--“so that you see 'tis better be honest with me, and pay me my
hire.”
“You shall have it, by G----!” said Linton, with a deep vehemence; and,
drawing a pistol from his bosom, he fired. The other fell, with a loud
cry, to the bottom of the boat. A brief pause ensued, and then Linton
raised the body in his arms to throw it over. A faint struggle showed
that life was not extinct, but all resistance was impossible. The
lightness of the boat, however, made the effort difficult; and it
was only by immense exertion that he could even lift the heavy weight
half-way; and at last, when, by a great effort, he succeeded in laying
the body over the gunwale, the boat lost its balance and upset. With
a bold spring, Linton dashed into the current, and made for shore; but
almost as he did so, another and a stronger swimmer, who had thrown off
his clothes for the enterprise, had reached the spot, and, grasping the
inert mass as it was about to sink, swam with the bleeding body to the
bank.
When Casbel gained the stairs, he threw the wounded man upon his
shoulder, for signs of life were still remaining, and hastened to a
cabaret near. A surgeon was soon procured, and the bullet was discovered
to have penetrated the chest, cutting in its passage some large
blood-vessel, from which the blood flowed copiously. That the result
must be fatal it was evident; but as the bleeding showed signs of
abatement, it seemed possible life might be protracted some hours. No
time was therefore to be lost in obtaining the dying man's declaration,
and a Juge d'Instruction, accompanied by a notary, was immediately on
the spot. As the surgeon had surmised, a coagulum had formed in the
wounded vessel, and, the bleeding being thus temporarily arrested, the
man rallied into something like strength, and with a mind perfectly
conscious and collected. To avoid the shock which the sight of Cashel
might occasion, Roland did not appear at the bedside.
Nor need we linger either at such a scene, nor witness that fearful
straggle between the hope of mercy and the dread consciousness of its
all but impossibility. The dying confession has nothing new for the
reader; the secret history of the crime is already before him, and it
only remains to speak of those events which followed Keane's flight from
Ireland. As Linton's servant he continued for years to travel about the
Continent, constantly sustained by the hope that the price of his crime
would one day be forthcoming, and as invariably put off by the excuse
that play, on which he entirely depended for means, had been unlucky,
but that better times were certainly in store for him. The struggles and
difficulties of an existence thus maintained; the terrible consciousness
of an unexpiated crime; the constant presence of one who knew the secret
of the other, and might at any moment of anger, or in some access of
dissipation, reveal it, made up a life of torture to which death would
be a boon; added to this, that they frequently found themselves in the
same city with Cashel, whom Linton never dared to confront. At Messina
they fell in with Rica, as the proprietor of a gaming-table which Linton
continually frequented. His consummate skill at play, his knowledge of
life, and particularly the life of gamblers, his powers of agreeability,
soon attracted Rica's notice, and an intimacy sprang up which became a
close friendship--if such a league can be called by such a name.
By the power of an ascendancy acquired most artfully, and by persuasive
flatteries of the most insidious kind, he induced Rica to bring Maritaña
on the stage; where her immense success had replenished their coffers
far more rapidly and abundantly than play. At Naples, however, an
incident similar to what happened at Venice was nigh having occurred.
She was recognized by a young Spaniard who had known her in Mexico; and
as the whole assumed history of her noble birth and Sicilian origin was
thus exposed to contradiction, they took measures to get rid of this
unwelcome witness. They managed to hide among his effects some dies and
moulds for coining,--an offence then, as ever, rife at Naples. A
police investigation, in which bribery had its share, was followed by a
mock-trial, and the young fellow was sentenced to the galleys for seven
years, with hard labor.
Their career from this moment was one of unchanging success. Maritaña's
beauty attracted to the play-table all that every city contained of
fashion, wealth, and dissipation. In her ignorance of the world she was
made to believe that her position was one the most exalted and enviable.
The homage she received, the devotion exhibited on every side, the
splendor of her life, her dress, her jewels, her liveries, dazzled
and delighted her. The very exercise of her abilities was a source of
enthusiastic pleasure to one who loved admiration. Nor had she perhaps
awoke from this delusion, had not the heart-uttered cry of Roland burst
the spell that bound her, and evoked the maiden's shame in her young
heart. Then--with a revulsion that almost shook reason itself--she
turned with abhorrence from a career associated with whatever could
humiliate and disgrace. Entreaties, prayers, menaces--all were
unavailing to induce her to appear again; and soon, indeed, her altered
looks and failing health rendered it impossible. A vacant unmeaning
smile, or a cold impassive stare, usurped the place of an expression
that used to shine in joyous brilliancy. Her step, once bounding and
elastic, became slow and uncertain. She seldom spoke; when she did, her
accents were heavy, and her thoughts seemed languid, as though her mind
was weary. None could have recognized in that wan and worn face, that
frail and delicate figure, the proud and beautiful Maritaña.
She lived now in total seclusion. None ever saw her, save Rica, who used
to come and sit beside her each day, watching, with Heaven alone knows
what mixture of emotion! that wasting form and decaying cheek. What
visions of ambition Linton might yet connect with her none knew or
could guess; but he followed the changing fortunes of her health with an
interest too deep and earnest to be mistaken for mere compassion. Such,
then, was her sad condition when they repaired to Paris, and, in one of
the most spacious hotels of the Rue Richelieu, established their “Bank
of Rouge et Noir.” This costly establishment vied in luxury and splendor
with the most extravagant of those existing in the time of the Empire.
All that fastidious refinement and taste could assemble, in objects
of art and _virtu_, graced the _salons_. The cookery, the wines, the
service of the different menials, rivalled the proudest households of
the nobility.
A difficult etiquette restricted the admission to persons of
acknowledged rank and station, and even these were banded together by
the secret tie of a political purpose, for it was now the eve of
that great convulsion which was to open once more in Europe the dread
conflict between the masses and the few.
While Linton engaged deep in play, and still deeper in politics, “making
his book,” as he called it, “to win with whatever horse he pleased,”
one dreadful heartsore never left him: this was Keane, whose presence
continually reminded him of the past, and brought up besides many a
dread for the future.
It would have been easy at any moment for Linton to have disembarrassed
himself of the man by a sum of money; but then came the reflection,
“What is to happen when, with exhausted means and dissolute habits, this
fellow shall find himself in some foreign country? Is he not likely, in
a moment of reckless despair, to reveal the whole story of our guilt?
Can I even trust him in hours of convivial abandonment and debauch?
Vengeance may, at any instant, overrule in such a nature the love of
life,--remorse may seize upon him. He is a Romanist, and may confess
the murder, and be moved by his priest to bring home the guilt to
the Protestant.” Such were the motives which Linton never ceased
to speculate on and think over, always reverting to the one same
conviction, that he must keep the man close to his person, until the
hour might come when he could rid himself of him forever.
The insolent demeanor of the fellow; his ruffian assurance, the evidence
of a power that he might wield at will--became at last intolerable.
Linton saw this “shadow on his path” wherever he wandered. The evil
was insupportable from the very fact that it occupied his thoughts when
great and momentous events required them. It was like the paroxysm
of some painful disease, that came at moments when health and calm of
spirit were most wanted. To feel this, to recognize it thoroughly, and
to resolve to overcome it, were, with Linton, the work of a moment. “His
hour is come,” said he, at length; “the company at La Morgue to-morrow
shall be graced by a guest of my inviting.”
Although to a mind prolific in schemes of villany the manner of the
crime could offer no difficulty, strange enough, his nature revolted
against being himself the agent of the guilt It was not fear, for he was
a man of nerve and courage, and was, besides, certain to be better armed
than his adversary. It was not pity, nor any feeling that bordered on
pity, deterred him; it was some instinctive shrinking from an act of
ruffianism; it was the blood of a man of birth that curdled at the
thought of that which his mind associated with criminals of the lowest
class,--the conventional feeling of Honor surpassing all the dictates of
common Humanity.
Nothing short of the pressing emergency of the hour could have overcome
these scruples, but Keane's insolence was now in itself enough to
compromise him, and Linton saw that but one remedy remained, and that
it could not be deferred. Constant habits of intercourse with men of a
dangerous class in the Faubourgs and the Cite gave the excuse for the
boating excursion at night. The skiff was hired by Keane himself, who
took up Linton at a point remote from where he started, and thus no clew
could be traced to the person who accompanied him. The remainder is in
the reader's memory, and now we pursue our story.
The surgeon who examined Keane's wound not only pronounced it inevitably
fatal, but that the result must rapidly ensue. No time was, therefore,
to be lost in obtaining the fullest revelations of the dying man, and
also in taking the promptest measures to secure the guilty party.
The authorities of the British Embassy lent a willing aid to Cashel in
this matter, and an express was at once despatched to London for the
assistance of a police force, with the necessary warrant for Linton's
arrest Meanwhile Keane was watched with the narrowest vigilance; and so
secretly was everything done, that his very existence was unknown beyond
the precincts of the room he inhabited.