THE HORRORS OF DELIRIUM TREMENS.
No letter came from Richard Thornton. Eleanor was seized with a kind of
panic as the days went by, and there was no answer from the young man,
the faithful friend, without whose help she felt herself so powerless.
Eleanor had addressed her letter to the Pilasters, enclosed in an
envelope directed to Signora Picirillo, with a few hurried lines
requesting that it might be immediately forwarded to the scene-painter.
He was in Scotland still, very likely, and some days must elapse before
he could respond to Eleanor’s summons. She felt assured that he would
come to her. There are some friends whose goodness we no more doubt
than we doubt the power of God; and Richard Thornton was one of these.
But the week passed, and no reply came to Eleanor’s appeal for help;
so she began to feel that she stood alone, and must act for herself.
She must act for herself, since to think of getting any assistance
from either the major or his wife in this business, which demanded
foresight, coolness, and diplomacy, would have been about as reasonable
as to apply to one of the children playing under the trees in the
gardens of the Tuileries.
As far as sympathy went, Major and Mrs. Lennard were all that the most
exacting individual could require. The major offered to do anything
in a muscular way on behalf of his wife’s friend. Should he punch the
head of that scoundrelly Frenchman? Should he go over to England and
horsewhip Launcelot Darrell, and bring Gilbert Monckton to reason, and
play up old gooseberry altogether? This good-natured Hercules was ready
to hit out right and left in the defence of poor Eleanor.
But the one friend whom Mrs. Monckton wanted in this crisis was Richard
Thornton. Richard, the clear-sighted, even-tempered, unprejudiced
young man, who was ready to go through fire and water for the sake of
his beautiful adopted sister, without noise or bluster; and when the
Tuesday, the day appointed by the Frenchman for Eleanor’s visit to his
apartments, came, and Richard Thornton did not come with it, the lonely
girl almost gave way to despair.
She felt that she had to encounter a wretch who was utterly without
honour or honesty, and who, seeing the value which she set upon the
possession of Maurice de Crespigny’s will, would be all the more
exacting in his demands. And she had nothing to bribe him with; nothing.
She had been too proud to appeal to her husband. For ever impulsive,
for ever inconsiderate, she had not stopped to think that he of all
others was the most fitting person to stand by her in this crisis. At
first the thought of writing to Gilbert Monckton had indeed flashed
across her mind, but in the next moment she had remembered the bitter
humiliation of her last failure.
She could not endure another such degradation; and she had seen
treachery and dishonour so long triumph over the simple force of
truth, that she had began to think that wrong was stronger than right,
and always must be victorious.
“It I were to write and ask Gilbert to come to me, this Frenchman would
perhaps disappear before my husband could arrive; or he would be afraid
of Gilbert, very likely, and would deny any knowledge of the will, and
I should appear a convicted trickster, who had heaped up one falsehood
upon another, in the weak attempt to justify herself. No, Gilbert
Monckton shall hear nothing of me until I can go to him with Maurice de
Crespigny’s will in my hands.”
But in the meantime this helpless girl’s anxiety grew every hour more
intense. What reliance could she place upon the words of the Frenchman?
She had encountered him while he was still smarting under the sense
of his wrongs, and in that stage of his feelings, revenge had seemed
even sweeter to him than gain. But this state of things might not
endure very long. The commercial traveller might listen to the dictates
of reason rather than to the fiery promptings of passion, and might
begin to think that a substantial recompense in the shape of money was
better than any sugar-plum in the way of revenge. He had said that
Launcelot Darrell would be willing to give him ten times a thousand
pounds for the genuine will. What more likely than that Monsieur Victor
Bourdon should have thought better of his original design, and opened
negotiations with the new master of Woodlands?
Monsieur Bourdon would in all probability have done precisely this,
had he not been hindered by one of those unlooked-for and purely
providential circumstances which so often help single and simple-minded
Truth in her encounters with versatile and shifty Falsehood.
At half-past six o’clock upon the appointed evening, Eleanor Monckton
left the Hôtel du Palais, escorted by Major Lennard, on her way to the
Frenchman’s lodging. She had waited until the last moment in the hope
of Richard Thornton’s arrival, but he had not come; and she had been
fain to accept the aid of this good-natured overgrown schoolboy, who
still persisted that the immediate punching of Victor Bourdon’s head
would be the best and surest means of getting possession of the will.
“Let me punch the feller’s head, Miss Vil—beg pardon, Mrs. Monckton.
The idea of your being married to old Monckton! He ain’t any older than
me, you know; but I always call him old Monckton. Let me punch this
damn Frenchman’s head; that’ll bring the feller to book in next to no
time, and then we can do what we like with him.”
But Eleanor impressed upon her stalwart protector that there must be no
muscular demonstration, and that the conduct of the interview was to be
left entirely to her.
“I don’t in the least hope that he’ll give up the will without a
bribe,” Eleanor said; “he is the last man upon earth to do that.”
“I’ll tell you what, then, Mrs. Monckton,” exclaimed the major; “I
haven’t any _ready_ money; I never had, since I borrowed sixpences of
a sucking bill-discounter at the first school I ever went to; but I’ll
give you my acceptance. Let this fellow draw upon me for a thousand at
three months, and give up the document for that consideration. Monckton
will enable me to meet the bill, no doubt, when he finds I was of
service to you in this business.”
Eleanor looked at the major with a gleam of hope in her face. But
that transient gleam very quickly faded. She had only a vague idea of
the nature and properties of accommodation bills; but she had a very
positive notion of Victor Bourdon’s character, and, though this plan
_sounded_ feasible enough, she did not think it would succeed.
“You are very good to me, Major Lennard,” she said, “and believe me,
I appreciate your kindness; but I do not think that this Frenchman
will consent to take anything but ready money. He could get that from
Launcelot Darrell, remember, at any time.”
Eleanor’s only hope was the one chance that she might induce Victor
Bourdon to accept her promise of a reward from Gilbert Monckton _after_
the production of the will.
The neighbourhood in which the commercial traveller lived, whenever he
made Paris his head-quarters, was one of the dingiest localities in
the city. Major Lennard and Eleanor, after making numerous inquiries,
and twice losing their way, found themselves at last in a long narrow
street, one side of which was chiefly dead-wall, broken here and
there by a dilapidated gateway or a dingy window. At one corner there
was a shop for the sale of unredeemed pledges; a queer old shop, in
whose one murky window obsolete scraps of jewellery, old watch-keys,
impossible watches with cracked enamel dials and crippled hands that
pointed to hours whose last moments had passed away for half a century;
mysterious, incomprehensible garments, whose fashion was forgotten,
and whose first owners were dead and gone; poor broken-down clocks, in
tawdry ormolu cases, that had stood upon lodging-house mantelpieces,
indifferently telling the wrong time to generations of lodgers; an old
guitar; a stringless violin; poor, frail, cracked cups and saucers,
that had been precious once, by reason of the lips that had drunk out
of them; a child’s embroidered frock; a battered christening cup; a
tattered missal; an odd volume of “The Wandering Jew;” amid a hundred
other pitiful relics which poverty barters for a crust of bread, faded
in the evening sunlight, and waited for some eccentric purchaser to
take a fancy to them. Next door to this sarcophagus of the past, there
was an eating-house, neat and almost cheerful, where one could have a
soup, three courses, and half a bottle of wine for fivepence. The whole
neighbourhood seemed to be, somehow or other, overshadowed by churches,
and pervaded by the perpetual tramp of funerals; and, lying low and out
of the way of all cheerful traffic, was apt to have a depressing effect
upon the spirits of frivolous people.
Eleanor, leading the major—who was of about as much use to her as
a blind man is to his dog—succeeded at last in finding the house
which boasted Monsieur Victor Bourdon amongst its inhabitants. I
say “amongst” advisedly; for as there was the office of a popular
bi-weekly periodical upon the first floor, a greengrocer in the
_rez-de-chaussée_, a hairdresser, who professed to cut and friz the
hair, on the second story, and a mysterious lady, whose calling was
represented by a faded pictorial board, resident somewhere under the
roof, the commercial traveller was a very unimportant inhabitant, an
insignificant nomad, replaced to-day by a student _en droit_, to-morrow
by a second-rate actor at a fifth-rate theatre.
Eleanor found this when she came to make inquiries of the portress
as to the possibility of seeing Monsieur Bourdon. This lady, who was
knitting, and whose very matronly contour made it impossible for her
to see her knitting-needles, told Eleanor that Monsieur Bourdon was
very unlikely to be at home at that time. He was apt to return late at
night, upon the two hours, in effect, between two wines, and at those
times he was enough abrupt, and was evidently by no means a favourite
with madame the portress. But on looking into a dusky corner where
some keys were hanging upon a row of rusty nails, madame informed
Eleanor that Monsieur Bourdon _was_ at home, as his key was not amongst
the rest, and it was his habit to leave it in her care when he went
out. The portress seemed very much struck by this discovery, for she
remarked that the last time she had seen Monsieur Bourdon go out had
been early in the morning of Sunday, and that she did not remember
having seen him reenter.
But upon this a brisk young person of twelve or thirteen, who was busy
getting up fine linen in the recesses of the lodge, cried out in a
very shrill voice that Monsieur Bourdon had returned before mid-day on
Sunday, looking a little ill, and dragging himself with a fatigued air.
He was at home, then, the portress exclaimed; at least she did not
utter any equivalent to our English word home, and in that evinced
considerable wisdom, since a French lodging is a place so utterly
unhomelike, that the meanest second-floor at Islington or Chelsea,
presided over by the most unconscionable of British landladies, becomes
better than all the pleasures and palaces we can roam amidst—and it
is not everybody who has the chance of roaming amidst pleasures and
palaces—by the very force of comparison. Monsieur was _chez lui_, the
portress said, and would madame ascend? Monsieur’s apartment was on the
entresol, with windows giving upon the street. Madame would see a black
door facing her upon the first landing.
Eleanor went up a short flight of steps, followed by the major. She
knocked upon the panel of the black door—once, twice, three times; but
there was no answer.
“I’d lay a fiver the feller’s gone out again,” the major exclaimed;
“that jabbering Frenchwoman didn’t seem to know what she was talking
about.”
But Eleanor knocked a fourth time, and very much louder than she had
knocked before. There was no answer even this time; but a voice was
heard within, blaspheming aloud with horrible French execrations that
seemed to freeze Eleanor’s blood as she listened to them.
She did listen to them involuntarily, as people often listen in a
crowded thoroughfare to the obnoxious clamour of a drunken man,
paralyzed for the moment by the horror of his hideous oaths.
Eleanor turned very pale, and looked despairingly at the major.
“Hark!” she whispered; “he is quarrelling with some one.”
The big soldier deliberately turned himself into a convenient position
for listening, and flattened his ear against the keyhole.
“No, he ain’t quarrellin’ with any one,” the major said, presently. “I
can’t make much out of his lingo, but there’s only one voice. He’s all
alone, and goin’ on like a madman.”
The major opened the door softly as he spoke. Monsieur Bourdon’s
apartment was divided into two low-roofed chambers, a little larger
than comfortable pigeon-holes; and in the inner and smaller chamber
Eleanor and her companion saw the commercial traveller wandering
backwards and forwards in his obscure den, only dressed in his trousers
and shirt, and gesticulating like a madman.
Mrs. Monckton clung to the soldier’s arm. She had some cause for fear,
for in the next moment the Frenchman descried his visitors, and, with a
howl of rage, rushed at the major’s throat.
The most intellectual and diplomatic individual in Christendom would
have been of very little service to Eleanor at that moment, if he had
been also a coward. Major Lennard lifted the commercial traveller in
his arms, as easily as if that gentleman had been a six months’ old
baby, carried him into the next room, where there was a narrow little
bedstead, flung him on to the mattress, and held him there.
“You’ll find a silk handkerchief in my pocket, my dear,” he said
to Eleanor, “if you’ll be so kind as to pull it out. Voulez-vous
gardez-vous trangkeel, dong, vous—scoundrel!” he exclaimed, addressing
himself to the struggling Frenchman.
Mrs. Monckton obeyed. She fell into her place quite naturally, giving
way before the major. He was the hero of the moment. Frédéric Soulié
has said that the meanest actor who ever trod the boards of a theatre,
has some inspired moment in which he is great. I fancy it must be
pretty much the same in the drama of life. This was the major’s moment;
and he arose out of his normal inanity, resplendent with unconscious
grandeur.
The silk handkerchief was a large one, and Major Lennard used it very
dexterously about Monsieur Bourdon’s wrists; then he found another
handkerchief in another pocket, and used it as a bandage for the
Frenchman’s ankles; and having done this he sat down by the bedside and
contemplated his handiwork complacently, puffing and blowing a little
while he did so.
Victor Bourdon lay very still, glaring at the ponderous soldier with
eyes that were like those of a wild beast.
“I know thee,” he exclaimed; “thou hast been with me all the night,
thou hast sat upon my chest; ah, Grêdin! thou art the biggest of all
the demons that torment me. Thou breathest the fire and the sulphur,
and thy breath burns me, and now thou hast attached my hands with bands
of iron, white hot, and thou hast tied my ankles with living scorpions!”
Eleanor stood at a few paces from the bed, listening with horror to the
man’s delirious ravings.
“What is it?” she asked, in a subdued voice. “Is it a fever that makes
him like this. Or has he gone mad?”
The major shook his head.
“I think I can guess pretty well what’s the matter with the poor
devil,” he said: “he’s been going it a little too fast. He’s got a
touch of del. trem.”
“Del. trem.!”
“Delirium tremens, my dear,” answered the major. “Yes, you can hear
his teeth chattering now this minute. I had it once when I was up the
country, and our fellers took to living upon brandy pawnee. I had
rather a sharp time of it, while it lasted; used to fancy the tent was
on fire; wanted to go out tiger-hunting in the middle of the night;
tried to set the bed-clothes alight to cure myself of the hiccough: and
ran after Meg with a razor early one morning. This man has got a touch
of it, Mrs. Monckton, and I don’t think we shall get much reason out of
him to-night.”
The conduct of Monsieur Victor Bourdon, who was at that moment holding
a very animated discourse with a dozen or so of juvenile demons
supposed to be located in the bed-curtains, went very far towards
confirming the major’s assertion.
Eleanor sat down at the little table, upon which the dirty litter of
the Frenchman’s last meal was huddled into a heap and intermixed with
writing materials; an ink-bottle, and a mustard-pot, a quill pen, and a
teaspoon lying side by side. The girl’s fortitude had given way before
this new and most cruel disappointment. She covered her face with her
hands and sobbed aloud.
Major Lennard was very much distressed at this unexpected collapse upon
the part of his chief. He was very big, and rather stupid; but he had
one of those tender childish natures which, never learn to be hard and
unmerciful. He was for ever patting the shock heads of dirty pauper
children, for ever fumbling in his pockets for copper coin, always open
to the influence of any story of womanly distress, and quite unable to
withstand the dingiest female, if she could only produce the merest
phantom of a tear to be wiped away furtively from one eye, while the
other looked round the corner to see if the shot went home.
He looked piteously at Eleanor, as she sat sobbing passionately, half
unconscious of his presence, forgetful of everything except that this
last hope had failed her.
“I thought that he might leave Paris, and go back to Launcelot
Darrell,” she said, in a broken voice, “but I never thought of anything
like this.”
“Sh-sh-sh-sh!” cried Monsieur Bourdon from the bed. “Ftz! Cats, cats!
Sh-sh-sh-sh! Chase those cats, somebody! There’s the girl Faust saw
upon the Bracken with the little rat running out of her mouth! There,
sitting at the table! Go then, Voleuse, Gueuse, Infâme!” screamed the
Frenchman, glaring at Eleanor.
The girl took no notice of him. Her sobs grew every moment louder and
more hysterical. The major looked at her helplessly.
“Don’t,” he said, “my good creature, don’t now. This is really
dreadful, ’pon my soul, now. Come, come, now; cheer up, my dear, cheer
up. You won’t do anything by giving way, you know. I always tell
Margaret that, when she thinks she can catch the train by sitting on
the ground and crying because her portmanteaus won’t shut. Nobody ever
did, you know, and if you don’t put your shoulder to the wheel——”
The major might have rambled on in this wise for some time; but the
sobbing grew louder; and he felt that it was imperatively necessary
that something energetic should be done in this crisis. A bright
thought flashed upon him as he looked hopelessly round the room, and in
another moment he had seized a small white crockery-ware jug from the
Frenchman’s toilet table, and launched its contents at Eleanor’s head.
This was a second master-stroke. The girl looked up with her head
dripping, but with her courage revived by the shock her senses had
received.
She took off her wet bonnet, and pushed the drenched hair from her
forehead.
“Oh, major,” she said, “I know I have been very silly. But I was so
taken by surprise. It seems so cruel that this should happen. I shall
never get the will now.”
“Stuff and nonsense, my dear,” exclaimed Major Lennard. “What’s to
prevent your getting it?”
“What do you mean?
“What’s to prevent _your taking it_? We’re not going to stand upon
ceremony with such a feller as this, are we, Mrs. Monckton? He stole
the will from you, and if you can get the chance, you’ll return the
compliment by stealing it from him. Fair play’s a jewel, my dear Mrs.
M., and nothing could be fairer than that. So we’ll set to work at
once; and I hope you’ll excuse the cold water, which was meant in
kindness, I assure you.”
Eleanor smiled, and gave the major her hand.
“I’m sure it was,” she said. “I scarcely liked the idea of your coming
with me, major, for fear you should do some mischief by being a little
too impetuous. But I don’t know what I should have done without you.”
Major Lennard shrugged his shoulders with a deprecating gesture.
“I _might_ have been useful to you, my dear,” he said, “if the feller
had been all right and I could have punched his head; but one can’t get
any credit out of a chap when he’s in that state,” added the major,
pointing to the commercial traveller, who was taking journeys on his
own account into the horrible regions of an intemperate man’s fancy.
“Now, the first thing we shall want, Mrs. Monckton,” said the major,
“is a candle and a box of lucifers. We must have a light before we can
do anything.”
It was not dark yet; but the twilight was growing greyer and greyer,
and the shadows were gathering in the corners of the room.
Victor Bourdon lay glaring at his two visitors through the dusk, while
the major groped about the mantelpiece for a box of lucifers. He was
not long in finding what he wanted. He struck a little waxen match
against the greasy paper of the wall, and then lighted an end of candle
in a tawdry cheap china candlestick.
“Ease her, ease her!” cried the Frenchman; “I see the lights ahead off
Normandy, on this side of the wind. She’ll strike upon a rock before we
know where we are. What are they about, these English sailors? are they
blind, that they don’t see the light?”
Major Lennard, with the candle in his hand, set to work to look for the
missing document. He did not look very systematically, but as he pulled
out every drawer and opened every cupboard, and shook out the contents
of every receptacle, flinging them remorselessly upon the floor, he
certainly looked pretty effectually. Eleanor, kneeling on the ground
amongst the chaotic heap of clothes and papers, tattered novels, broken
meerschaum pipes and stale cigar ends, examined every pocket, every
book, and every paper separately, but with no result. The drawers had
been ransacked, the cupboards disembowelled, a couple of portmanteaus
completely emptied. Every nook and corner of the two small rooms had
been most thoroughly searched, first by the major in a slap-dash and
military manner; afterwards by Eleanor, who did her work with calmness
and deliberation, though her heart was beating, and the hot blood
surging in her over-excited brain. Every possible hiding-place in the
two rooms had been examined, but the will had not been found.
Every possible hiding-place had been examined; except the pockets of
Victor Bourdon’s trousers, and the bed upon which he lay.
The major stopped to scratch his head in despair, and stood staring
hopelessly at the unhappy victim of his own vices, who was still
raving, still remonstrating with invisible demons. But Eleanor aroused
her friend from this state of stupefaction.
“He may have the will about him, major,” she said.
“Aha!” cried the soldier, “if he has, I’ll have it out of him. Give it
me, you unconscionable blackguard,” he exclaimed, pouncing upon the
delirious Frenchman. “I’ll have it out of you, you scoundrel. Tell me
where it is directly. _Dites-moi où il est, dong!_ What have you done
with it, sir? What have you done with Maurice de Crespigny’s will?”
The familiar name aroused a transitory gleam of consciousness in Victor
Bourdon.
“Ha, ha!” he cried, with a malicious chuckle. “Maurice de Crespigny,
the old, the parent of that Long—cellotte; but I will have my revenge;
but he shall not enjoy his riches. The will, the will; that is mine; it
will give me all.”
He raised himself by a great effort into a sitting posture, and made
frantic endeavours to disengage his hands.
“He is thinking of the will,” cried Eleanor; “loosen his wrists, major!
Pray, pray, do, before the thought leaves him.”
Major Lennard obeyed. He loosened the knot of the silk handkerchief,
but before he could remove it, Victor Bourdon had pulled his hands
through the slackened noose, and clutched at something in his breast.
It was a folded paper which he snatched out of the bosom of his shirt,
and waved triumphantly above his head.
“Aha, Monsieur Long—cellotte!” he screamed. “I will pay thee for thy
insolence, my friend.”
But before the Frenchman’s uplifted arm had described a second circle
in the air above his head, the major swooped down upon him, snatched
away the paper, handed it to Eleanor, and resecured Monsieur Bourdon’s
wrists with the silk handkerchief.
So brief had been the interval of semi-consciousness, that the
commercial traveller had already forgotten all about Launcelot Darrell
and his own wrongs, and had rambled off again into impotent execrations
against the imaginary demons amongst the bed-curtains.
Eleanor unfolded the paper, but she only read the first few words, “I,
Maurice de Crespigny, being at this time, &c.,” for before she could
read more, the door of the outer room was suddenly opened, and Richard
Thornton hurried through into the bed-chamber.
But not Richard only; behind him came Gilbert Monckton, and it was he
into whose outstretched arms Eleanor flung herself.
“You will believe me now, Gilbert,” she cried. “I have found the proof
of Launcelot Darrell’s guilt at last.”