Roland Cashel Volume Ii Part 63

Roland bowed again.

"In which service, or pretended service, you commanded a slaver?"

"This is untrue," said Cashel, calmly.

"I have it a.s.serted 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 a.s.sent.

"And that to this property you possessed neither right nor t.i.tle?"

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 a.s.sizes 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 pa.s.sport, the ident.i.ty 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 a.s.sociated, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sumed 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 Maritana 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.e 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 coa.r.s.er 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 pa.s.sion; "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 appet.i.te 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 b.l.o.o.d.y hands on his head trying to save it, and screaming out for G.o.d to help him. And what did I get for it? answer me that," yelled he, in accents shrill with pa.s.sion. "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 pa.s.sion," 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 Maritana 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, amba.s.sadors, 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 pa.s.sing 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."