THE CATACOMBS.
At his disappearance, for Sir Richard the air darkened as when, in the
tropics, the sun sets without a twilight, and the silence of an awful
night descended.
It seemed that safety had been so near. He had laid his hand upon it,
and had let it glide ungrasped between his fingers; and now the sky was
black above him, and an unfathomable sea beneath.
Mr. Longcluse was in great spirits. He had grown for a time like the
Walter Longcluse of a year before.
They two dined together, and after dinner Mr. Longcluse grew happy, and
as he sat with his glass by him, he sang, looking over the waves, a
sweet little sentimental song, about ships that pass at sea, and smiles
and tears, and "true, boys, true," and "heaven shows a glimpse of its
blue." And he walks with Sir Richard to the station, and he says, low,
as he leans and looks into the carriage window, of which young Arden was
the only occupant--
"Be true to me now, and we may make it up yet."
And so saying, he gives his hand a single pressure as he looks hard in
his eyes.
The bell had rung. He was remaining there, he said, for another train.
The clapping of the doors had ceased. He stood back. The whistle blew
its long piercing yell, and as the train began to glide towards London,
the young man saw the white face of Walter Longcluse in deep shadow, as
he stood with his back to the lamp, still turned towards him.
The train was now thundering on its course; the solitary lamp glimmered
in the roof. He threw himself back, with his foot against the opposite
seat.
"Good God! what is one to resolve! All men are cruel when they are
exasperated. Might not good yet be made of Longcluse? What creatures
women are!--what fools! How easy all might have been made, with the
least temper and reflection! What d----d selfishness!"
* * * * *
Uncle David was now in Paris. The moon was shining over that beautiful
city. In a lonely street, in a quarter which fashion had long
forsaken--over whose pavement, as yet unconscious of the Revolution, had
passed, in the glare of torchlight, the carved and emblazoned carriages
of an aristocracy, as shadowy now as the courts of the Cæsars--his
footsteps are echoing.
A huge house presents its front. He stops and examines it carefully for
a few seconds. It is the house of which he is in search.
At one time the Baron Vanboeren had received patients from the country,
to reside in this house. For the last year, during which he had been
gathering together his wealth, and detaching himself from business, he
had discontinued this, and had gradually got rid of his establishment.
When David Arden rang the bell at the hall-door, which he had to do
repeatedly, it was answered at last by an old woman, high-shouldered,
skin and bone, with a great nose, and big jaw-bones, and a high-cauled
cap. This lean creature looks at him with a vexed and hollow eye. Her
bony arm rests on the lock of the hall-door, and she blocks the narrow
aperture between its edge and the massive door-case. She inquires in
very nasal French what Monsieur desires.
"I wish to see Monsieur the Baron, if he will permit me an interview,"
answered Mr. Arden in very fair French.
"Monsieur the Baron is not visible; but if Monsieur will,
notwithstanding, leave any message he pleases for Monsieur the Baron, I
will take care he receives it punctually."
"But Monsieur the Baron appointed me to call to-night at ten o'clock."
"Is Monsieur sure of that?"
"Perfectly."
"Eh, very well; but, if he pleases, I must first learn Monsieur's name."
"My name is Arden."
"I believe Monsieur is right." She took a bit of notepaper from her
capacious pocket, and peering at it, spelled aloud, "D-a-v-i-d----"
"A-r-d-e-n," interrupted and continued the visitor, spelling his name,
with a smile.
"A-r-d-e-n," she followed, reading slowly from her paper; "yes, Monsieur
is right. You see, this paper says, 'Admit Monsieur David Arden to an
interview.' Enter, if you please Monsieur, and follow me."
It was a decayed house of superb proportions, but of a fashion long
passed away. The gaunt old woman, with a bunch of large keys clinking at
her side, stalked up the broad stairs and into a gallery, and through
several rooms opening _en suite_. The rooms were hung with cobwebs,
dusty, empty, and the shutters closed, except here and there where the
moonlight gleamed through chinks and seams.
David Arden, before he had seen the Baron Vanboeren in London, had
pictured him in imagination a tall old man with classic features, and
manners courteous and somewhat stately.
We do not fabricate such images; they rise like exhalations from a few
scattered data, and present themselves spontaneously. It is this
self-creation that invests them with so much reality in our
imaginations, and subjects us to so odd a surprise when the original
turns out quite unlike the portrait with which we have been amusing
ourselves.
She now pushed open a door, and said, "Monsieur the Baron here is
arrived Monsieur David d'Ardennes."
The room in which he now stood was spacious, but very nearly dark. The
shutters were closed outside, and the moonlight that entered came
through the circular hole cut in each. A large candle on a bracket
burned at the further end of the room. There the baron stood. A
reflector which interposed between the candle and the door at which
David Arden entered directed its light strongly upon something which the
baron held, and laid upon the table, in his hand; and now that he turned
toward his visitor, it was concentrated upon his large face, revealing,
with the force of a Rembrandt, all its furrows and finer wrinkles. He
stood out against a background of darkness with remarkable force.
The baron stood before him--a short man in a red waistcoat. He looked
more broad-shouldered and short-necked than ever in his shirt-sleeves.
He had an instrument in his hand resembling a small bit and brace, and
some chips and sawdust on his flannel waistcoat, which he brushed off
with two or three sweeps of his short fat fingers. He looked now like a
grim old mechanic. There was no vivacity in his putty-coloured features,
but there were promptitude and decision in every abrupt gesture. It was
his towering, bald forehead, and something of command and savage energy
in his lowering face, that redeemed the _tout ensemble_ from an almost
brutal vulgarity.
The baron was not in the slightest degree "put out," as the phrase is,
at being detected in his present occupation and _deshabille_.
He bowed twice to David Arden, and said, in English, with a little
foreign accent--
"Here is a chair, Monsieur Arden; but you can hardly see it until your
eyes have grown a little accustomed to our _crépuscula_."
This was true enough, for David Arden, though he saw him advance a step
or two, could not have known what he held in the hand that was in
shadow. The sound, indeed, of the legs of the chair, as he set it down
upon the floor, he heard.
"I should make you an apology, Mr. Arden, if I were any longer in my own
home, which I am not, although this is still my house; for I have
dismissed my servants, sold my furniture, and sent what things I cared
to retain over the frontier to my new habitation, whither I shall soon
follow; and this house too, I shall sell. I have already two or three
gudgeons nibbling, Monsieur."
"This house must have been the hotel of some distinguished family,
Baron; it is nobly proportioned," said David Arden.
As his eye became accustomed to the gloom, David Arden saw traces of
gilding on the walls. The shattered frames on which the tapestry was
stretched in old times remained in the panels, with crops of small,
rusty nails visible. The faint candle-light glimmered on a ponderous
gilded cornice, which had also sustained violence. The floor was bare,
with a great deal of litter, and some scanty furniture. There was a
lathe near the spot where David Arden stood, and shavings and splinters
under his feet. There was a great block with a vice attached. In a
portion of the fire-place was built a furnace. There were pincers and
other instruments lying about the room, which had more the appearance of
an untidy workshop than of a study, and seemed a suitable enough abode
for the uncouth figure that confronted him.
"Ha! Monsieur," growls the baron, "stone walls have ears, you say if
only they had tongues; what tales _these_ could tell! This house was one
of Madame du Barry's, and was sacked in the great Revolution. The
mirrors were let into the plaster in the walls. In some of the rooms
there are large fragments still stuck in the wall so fast, you would
need a hammer and chisel to dislodge and break them up. This room was an
ante-room, and admitted to the lady's bed-room by two doors, this and
that. The panels of that other, by which you entered from the stair,
were of mirror. They were quite smashed. The furniture, I suppose, flew
out of the window; everything was broken up in small bits, and torn to
rags, or carried off to the broker after the first fury, and
_sansculotte_ families came in and took possession of the wrecked
apartments. You will say then, what was left? The bricks, the stones,
hardly the plaster on the walls. Yet, Monsieur Arden, I have discovered
some of the best treasures the house contained, and they are at present
in this room. Are you a collector, Monsieur Arden?"
Uncle David disclaimed the honourable imputation. He was thinking of
cutting all this short, and bringing the baron to the point. The old man
was at the period when the egotism of age asserts itself, and was
garrulous, and being, perhaps, despotic and fierce (he looked both), he
might easily take fire and become impracticable. Therefore, on second
thoughts, he was cautious.
"You can now see more plainly," said the baron. "Will you approach?
Concealed by a double covering of strong paper pasted over it, and
painted and gilded, each of these two doors on its six panels contains
six distinct master-pieces of Watteau's. I have known that for ten
years, and have postponed removing them. Twelve Watteaus, as fine as any
in the world! I would not trust their removal to any other hand, and so,
the panel comes out without a shake. Come here, Monsieur, if you please.
This candle affords a light sufficient to see, at least, some of the
beauties of these incomparable works."
"Thanks, Baron, a glance will suffice, for I am nothing of an artist."
He approached. It was true that his sight had grown accustomed to the
obscurity, for he could now see the baron's features much more
distinctly. His large waxen face was shorn smooth, except on the upper
lip, where a short moustache still bristled; short black eyebrows
contrasted also with the bald massive forehead, and round the eyes was a
complication of mean and cunning wrinkles. Some peculiar lines between
these contracted brows gave a character of ferocity to this forbidding
and sensual face.
"Now! See there! Those four pictures--I would not sell those four
Watteaus for one hundred thousand francs. And the other door is worth
the same. Ha!"
"You are lucky, Baron."
"I think so. I do not wish to part with them: I don't think of selling
them. See the folds of that brocade! See the ease and grace of the lady
in the sacque, who sits on the bank there, under the myrtles, with the
guitar on her lap! and see the animation and elegance of that dancing
boy with the tambourine! This is a _chef-d'oeuvre_. I ought not to part
with that, on any terms--no, never! You no doubt know many collectors,
wealthy men, in England. Look at that shot silk, green and purple; and
whom do you take that to be a portrait of, that lady with the
castanets?"
He was pointing out each object, on which he descanted, with his stumpy
finger, his hands being, I am bound to admit, by no means clean.
"If you do happen to know such people, nevertheless, I should not object
to your telling them where this treasure may be seen, I've no objection.
I should not like to part with them, that is true. No, no, _no_; but
every man may be tempted, it is possible--possible, just possible."
"I shall certainly mention them to some friends."
"Wealthy men, of course," said the baron.
"It is an expensive taste, Baron, and none but wealthy people can
indulge it."
"True, and these would be _very_ expensive. They are unique; that lady
there is the _Du Barry_--a portrait worth, alone, six thousand francs.
Ha! he! Yes, when I take zese out and place zem, as I mean before I go,
to be seen, they will bring all Europe together. _Mit speck fangt man
mause_--with bacon one catches mice!"
"No doubt they will excite attention, Baron. But I feel I am wasting
your time and abusing your courtesy in permitting my visit, the
immediate object of which was to earnestly beg from you some information
which, I think, no one else can give me."
"Information? Oh! ah! Pray resume your chair, Sir. Information? yes, it
is quite possible I may have information such as you need, Heaven knows!
But knowledge, they say, is power, and if I do you a service I expect as
much from you. _Eine hand wascht die and're_--one hand, Monsieur, washes
ze ozer. No man parts wis zat which is valuable, to strangers, wisout a
proper honorarium. I receive no more patients here; but you understand,
I may be induced to attend a patient: I may be _tempted_, you
understand."
"But this is not a case of attending a patient, Baron," said David
Arden, a little haughtily.
"And what ze devil _is_ it, then?" said the baron, turning on him
suddenly. "Monsieur will pardon me, but we professional men must turn
our time and knowledge to account, do you see? And we don't give eizer
wizout being paid, and _well_ paid for them, eh?"
"Of course. I meant nothing else," said David Arden.
"Then, Sir, we understand one another so far, and that saves time. Now,
what information can the Baron Vanboeren give to Monsieur David Arden?"
"I think you would prefer my putting my questions quite straight."
"Straight as a sword-thrust, Sir."
"Then, Baron, I want to know whether you were acquainted with two
persons, Yelland Mace and Walter Longcluse."
"Yes, I knew zem bos, slightly and yet intimately--intimately and yet
but slightly. You wish, perhaps, to learn particulars about those
gentlemen?"
"I do."
"Go on: interrogate."
"Do you perfectly recollect the features of these persons?"
"I ought."
"Can you give me an accurate description of Yelland Mace?"
"I can bring you face to face with both."
"By Jove! Sir, are you serious?"
"Mr. Longcluse is in London."
"But you talk of bringing me face to face with them; how soon?"
"In five minutes."
"Oh, you mean a photograph, or a picture?"
"No, in the solid. Here is the key of the catacombs." And he took a key
that hung from a nail on the wall.
"Bah, ha, yah!" exploded the baron, in a ferocious sneer, rather than a
laugh, and shrugging his great shoulders to his ears, he shook them in
barbarous glee, crying--"What clever fellow you are, Monsieur Arden! you
see so well srough ze millstone! _Ich bin klug und weise_--you sing zat
song. I am intelligent and wise, eh, he! gra-a, ha, ha!"
He seized the candlestick in one hand, and shaking the key in the other
by the side of his huge forehead, he nodded once or twice to David
Arden.
"Not much life where we are going; but you shall see zem bose."
"You speak riddles, Baron; but by all means bring me, as you say, face
to face with them."
"Very good, Monsieur; you'll follow me," said the baron. And he opened a
door that admitted to the gallery, and, with the candle and the keys, he
led the way, by this corridor, to an iron door that had a singular
appearance, being sunk two feet back in a deep wooden frame, that threw
it into shadow. This he unlocked, and with an exertion of his weight and
strength, swung slowly open.