CHAPTER X. THE RATTLE OF THE SNAKE.
The progress of affection between natures like those of Percival andHelen, favoured by free and constant intercourse, was naturally rapid.It was scarcely five weeks from the day he had first seen Helen, and healready regarded her as his plighted bride. During the earlier days ofhis courtship, Percival, enamoured and absorbed for the first timein his life, did not hasten to make his mother the confidante of hishappiness. He had written but twice; and though he said briefly, in thesecond letter, that he had discovered two relations, both interestingand one charming, he had deferred naming them or entering intodetail. This not alone from that indescribable coyness which all haveexperienced in addressing even those with whom they are most intimate,in the early, half-unrevealed, and mystic emotions of first love, butbecause Lady Diary's letters had been so full of her sister's declininghealth, of her own anxieties and fears, that he had shrunk from givingher a new subject of anxiety; and a confidence full of hope and joyseemed to him unfeeling and unseasonable. He knew how necessarily uneasyand restless an avowal that his heart was seriously engaged to one shehad never seen, would make that tender mother, and that his confessionwould rather add to her cares than produce sympathy with his transports.But now, feeling impatient for his mother's assent to the formalproposals which had become due to Madame Dalibard and Helen, and takingadvantage of the letter last received from her, which gave more cheeringaccounts of her sister, and expressed curiosity for further explanationas to his half disclosure, he wrote at length, and cleared his breast ofall its secrets. It was the same day in which he wrote this confessionand pleaded his cause that we accompany him to the house of his sweetmistress, and leave him by her side, in the accustomed garden. Within,Madame Dalibard, whose chair was set by the window, bent over certainletters, which she took, one by one, from her desk and read slowly,lifting her eyes from time to time and glancing towards the young peopleas they walked, hand in hand, round the small demesnes, now hid by thefading foliage, now emerging into view. Those letters were the earlylove-epistles of William Mainwaring. She had not recurred to them foryears. Perhaps she now felt that food necessary to the sustainment ofher fiendish designs. It was a strange spectacle to see this being, sofull of vital energy, mobile and restless as a serpent, condemned tothat helpless decrepitude, chained to the uneasy seat, not as in theresigned and passive imbecility of extreme age, but rather as one whomin the prime of life the rack has broken, leaving the limbs inert,the mind active, the form as one dead, the heart with superabundantvigour,--a cripple's impotence and a Titan's will! What, in that drearyimprisonment and amidst the silence she habitually preserved, passedthrough the caverns of that breast, one can no more conjecture thanone can count the blasts that sweep and rage through the hollows ofimpenetrable rock, or the elements that conflict in the bosom of thevolcano, everlastingly at work. She had read and replaced the letters,and leaning her cheek on her hand, was gazing vacantly on the wall, whenVarney intruded on that dismal solitude.
He closed the door after him with more than usual care; and drawing aseat close to Lucretia, said, "Belle-mere, the time has arrived for youto act; my part is wellnigh closed."
"Ay," said Lucretia, wearily, "what is the news you bring?"
"First," replied Varney, and as he spoke, he shut the window, as ifhis whisper could possibly be heard without,--"first, all this businessconnected with Helen is at length arranged. You know when, agreeably toyour permission, I first suggested to her, as it were casually, that youwere so reduced in fortune that I trembled to regard your future; thatyou had years ago sacrificed nearly half your pecuniary resources tomaintain her parents,--she of herself reminded me that she was entitled,when of age, to a sum far exceeding all her wants, and--"
"That I might be a pensioner on the child of William Mainwaring andSusan Mivers," interrupted Lucretia. "I know that, and thank her not.Pass on."
"And you know, too, that in the course of my conversation with the girlI let out also incidentally that, even so, you were dependent on thechances of her life; that if she died (and youth itself is mortal)before she was of age, the sum left her by her grandfather would revertto her father's family; and so, by hints, I drew her on to ask if therewas no mode by which, in case of her death, she might insure subsistenceto you. So that you see the whole scheme was made at her own prompting.I did but, as a man of business, suggest the means,--an insurance on herlife."
"Varney, these details are hateful. I do not doubt that you have doneall to forestall inquiry and elude risk. The girl has insured her lifeto the amount of her fortune?"
"To that amount only? Pooh! Her death will buy more than that. As no onesingle office will insure for more than 5,000 pounds, and as it was easyto persuade her that such offices were liable to failure, and that itwas usual to insure in several, and for a larger amount than the sumdesired, I got her to enter herself at three of the principal offices.The amount paid to us on her death will be 15,000 pounds. It will bepaid (and here I have followed the best legal advice) in trust to me foryour benefit. Hence, therefore, even if our researches fail us, if noson of yours can be found, with sufficient evidence to prove, againstthe keen interests and bought advocates of heirs-at-law, the right toLaughton, this girl will repay us well, will replace what I havetaken, at the risk of my neck, perhaps,--certainly at the risk of thehulks,--from the capital of my uncle's legacy, will refund what we havespent on the inquiry; and the residue will secure to you an independencesufficing for your wants almost for life, and to me what will purchasewith economy," and Varney smiled, "a year or so of a gentleman's idlepleasures. Are you satisfied thus far?"
"She will die happy and innocent," muttered Lucretia, with the growl ofdemoniac disappointment.
"Will you wait, then, till my forgery is detected, and I have no powerto buy the silence of the trustees,--wait till I am in prison, and ona trial for life and death? Reflect, every day, every hour, of delayis fraught with peril. But if my safety is nothing compared to therefinement of your revenge, will you wait till Helen marries PercivalSt. John? You start! But can you suppose that this innocent love-playwill not pass rapidly to its denouement? It is but yesterday thatPercival confided to me that he should write this very day to hismother, and communicate all his feelings and his hopes; that he waitedbut her assent to propose formally for Helen. Now one of two things musthappen. Either this mother, haughty and vain as lady-mothers mostlyare, may refuse consent to her son's marriage with the daughter ofa disgraced banker and the niece of that Lucretia Dalibard whom herhusband would not admit beneath his roof--"
"Hold, sir!" exclaimed Lucretia, haughtily; and amidst all the passionsthat darkened her countenance and degraded her soul, some flash of herancestral spirit shot across her brow. But it passed quickly, and sheadded, with fierce composure, "You are right; go on!"
"Either-and pardon me for an insult that comes not from me--eitherthis will be the case: Lady Mary St. John will hasten back in alarmto London; she exercises extraordinary control over her son; shemay withdraw him from us altogether, from me as well as you, and theoccasion now presented to us may be lost (who knows?) forever,--or shemay be a weak and fond woman; may be detained in Italy by her sister'sillness; may be anxious that the last lineal descendant of the St. Johnsshould marry betimes, and, moved by her darling's prayers, may consentat once to the union. Or a third course, which Percival thinks the mostprobable, and which, though most unwelcome to us of all, I had wellnighforgotten, may be adopted. She may come to England, and in order tojudge her son's choice with her own eyes, may withdraw Helen from yourroof to hers. At all events, delays are dangerous,--dangerous, puttingaside my personal interest, and regarding only your own object,--maybring to our acts new and searching eyes; may cut us off from thehabitual presence either of Percival or Helen, or both; or surroundthem, at the first breath of illness, with prying friends and formidableprecautions. The birds now are in our hands. Why then open the cage andbid them fly, in order to spread the net? This morning all the finaldocumen
ts with the Insurance Companies are completed. It remains for mebut to pay the first quarterly premiums. For that I think I am prepared,without drawing further on your hoards or my own scanty resources, whichGrabman will take care to drain fast enough."
"And Percival St. John?" said Madame Dalibard. "We want no idlesacrifices. If my son be not found, we need not that boy's ghost amongstthose who haunt us."
"Surely not," said Varney; "and for my part, he may be more useful tome alive than dead. There is no insurance on his life, and a rich friend(credulous greenhorn that he is!) is scarcely of that flock of geesewhich it were wise to slay from the mere hope of a golden egg. PercivalSt. John is your victim, not mine; not till you give the order would Ilift a finger to harm him."
"Yes, let him live, unless my son be found to me," said Madame Dalibard,almost exultingly,--"let him live to forget yon fair-faced fool, leaningnow, see you, so delightedly on his arm, and fancying eternity inthe hollow vows of love; let him live to wrong and abandon her byforgetfulness, though even in the grave; to laugh at his boyishdreams,--to sully her memory in the arms of harlots! Oh, if the dead cansuffer, let him live, that she may feel beyond the grave his inconstancyand his fall. Methinks that that thought will comfort me if Vincent beno more, and I stand childless in the world!"
"It is so settled, then," said Varney, ever ready to clinch the businessthat promised gold, and relieve his apprehensions of the detectionof his fraud. "And now to your noiseless hands, as soon as may be, Iconsign the girl; she has lived long enough!"