The Trail of the Serpent/Book 4/Chapter 3
Chapter III.
The Emperor bids adieu to Elba.
On this same day, but at a later hour in the afternoon, Richard Marwood, better known as the Emperor Napoleon, joined the inmates of the county asylum in their daily exercise in the grounds allotted for that purpose. These grounds consisted of prim grass-plots, adorned with here and there a bed in which some dismal shrubs, or a few sickly chrysanthemums held up their gloomy heads, beaten and shattered by the recent heavy rains. These grass-plots were surrounded by stiff straight gravel-walks; and the whole was shut in by a high wall, surmounted by a chevaux-de-frise. The iron spikes composing this adornment had been added of late years; for, in spite of the comforts and attractions of the establishment, some foolish inhabitants thereof, languishing for gayer and more dazzling scenes, had been known to attempt, if not to effect, an escape from the numerous advantages of their home. I cannot venture to say whether or not the vegetable creation may have some mysterious sympathy with animated nature; but certainly no trees, shrubs, flowers, grass, or weeds ever grew like the trees, shrubs, flowers, grass, and weeds in the grounds of the county lunatic asylum. From the gaunt elm, which stretched out two great rugged arms, as if in a wild imprecation, such as might come from the lips of some human victim of the worst form of insanity, to the frivolous chickweed in a corner of a gravel-walk, which grew as if not a root, or leaf, or fibre but had a different purpose to its fellow, and flew off at its own peculiar tangent, with an infantine and kittenish madness, such as might have afflicted a love-sick miss of seventeen; from the great melancholy mad laurel-bushes that rocked themselves to and fro in the wind with a restlessness known only to the insane, to the eccentric dandelions that reared their disordered heads from amidst the troubled and dishevelled grass—every green thing in that great place seemed more or less a victim to that terrible disease whose influence is of so subtle a nature, that it infects the very stones of the dark walls which shut in shattered minds that once were strong and whole, and fallen intellects that once were bright and lofty.
But as a stranger to this place, looking for the first time at the groups of men and women lounging slowly up and down these gravel-walks, perhaps what most startles you, perhaps even what most distresses you, is, that these wretched people scarcely seem unhappy. Oh, merciful and wondrous wise dispensation from Him who fits the back to bear the burden! He so appoints it. The man, whose doubts or fears, or wild aspirings to the misty far-away, all the world's wisdom could not yesterday appease, is to-day made happy by a scrap of paper or a shred of ribbon. We who, standing in the blessed light, look in upon this piteous mental darkness, are perhaps most unhappy, because we cannot tell how much or how little sorrow this death-in-life may shroud. They have passed away from us; their language is not our language, nor their world our world. I think some one has asked a strange question—Who can tell whether their folly may not perhaps be better than our wisdom? He only, from whose mighty hand comes the music of every soul, can tell which is the discord and which the harmony. "We look at them as we look at all else—through the darkened glass of earth's uncertainty.
No, they do not seem unhappy. Queen Victoria is talking to Lady Jane Grey about to-day's dinner, and the reprehensible superabundance of fat in a leg-of-mutton served up thereat. Chronology never disturbs these good people; nobody thinks it any disgrace to be an anachronism. Lord Brougham will divide an unripe apple with Cicero, and William the Conqueror will walk arm-in-arm with Pius the Ninth, without the least uneasiness on the score of probability; and when, on one occasion, a gentleman, who for three years had enjoyed considerable popularity as Cardinal Wolsey, all of a sudden recovered, and confessed to being plain John Thomson, the inmates of the asylum were unanimous in feeling and expressing the most profound contempt for his unhappy state.
To-day, however, Richard is the hero. He is surrounded immediately on his appearance by all the celebrities and a great many of the non-celebrities of the establishment. The Emperor of the German Ocean and the Chelsea Waterworks in particular has so much to say to him, that he does not know how to begin; and when he does begin, has to go back and begin again, in a manner both affable and bewildering.
Why did not Richard join them before, he asks—they are so very pleasant, they are so very social; why, in goodness-gracious' name (he opens his eyes very wide as he utters the name of goodness-gracious, and looks back over his shoulder rather as if he thinks he may have invoked some fiend), why did not Richard join them?
Richard tells him he was not allowed to do so.
On this, the potentate looks intensely mysterious. He is rather stout, and wears a head-dress of his own manufacture—a species of coronet, constructed of a newspaper and a blue-and-white bird's-eye pocket-handkerchief. He puts his hands to the very furthest extent that he can push them into his trousers-pockets; plants himself right before Richard on the gravel-walk, and says, with a wink of intense significance, "Was it the Khan?"
Richard says, he thinks not.
"Not the Khan!" he mutters thoughtfully. "You really are of opinion that it was not the Khan?"
"I really am," Richard replies.
"Then it lies between the last Duke of Devonshire but sixteen and Abd-el-Kader: I do hope it wasn't Abd-el-Kader; I had a better opinion of Abd-el-Kader—I had indeed."
Richard looks rather puzzled, but says nothing.
"There has evidently," continued his friend, "been some malignant influence at work to prevent your appearing amongst us before this. You have been a member of this society for, let me see, three hundred and sixty-three years—be kind enough to set me right if I make a mis-statement—three hundred and—did I say seventy-twelve years?—and you have never yet joined us! Now, there is something radically wrong here; to use the language of the ancients in their religious festivals, there is 'a screw loose.' You ought to have joined us, you really ought! We are very social; we are positively buoyant; we have a ball every evening. Well, no, perhaps it is not every evening. My ideas as to time, I am told, are vague; but I know it is either every ten years, or every other week. I incline to thinking it must be every other week. On these occasions we dance. Are you a votary of Terp—what-you-may-call-her, the lady who had so many unmarried sisters? Do you incline to the light fantastic?" By way of illustration, the Emperor of the Waterworks executed a caper, which would have done honour to an elderly elephant taking his first lesson in the polka.
There was one advantage in conversing with this gentleman. If his questions were sometimes of rather a difficult and puzzling nature, he never did anything so under-bred as to wait for an answer. It now appeared for the first time to strike him, that perhaps the laws of exclusiveness had in some manner been violated, by a person of his distinction having talked so familiarly to an entire stranger; he therefore suddenly skipped a pace or two backwards, leaving a track of small open graves in the damp gravel made by the impression of his feet, and said, in a tone of voice so dignified as to be almost freezing—
"Pray, to whom have I the honour to make these observations?"
Richard regretted to say he had not a card about him, but added—"You may have heard of the Emperor Napoleon?"
"Buonaparte? Oh, certainly; very frequently, very frequently: and you are that worthy person? Dear me! this is very sad. Not at your charming summer residence at Moscow, or your pleasant winter retreat on the field of Waterloo: this is really distressing, very."
His pity for Richard was so intense, that he was moved to tears, and picked a dandelion with which to wipe his eyes.
"My Chelsea property," he said presently, "is fluctuating—very. I find a tendency in householders to submit to having their water cut off, rather than pay the rate. Our only plan is to empty every cistern half an hour before tea-time. Persevered in for a week or so, we find that course has a harassing effect, and they pay. But all this is wearing for the nerves—very."
He shook his head solemnly, rubbed his eyes very hard with the dandelion, and then ate that exotic blossom.
"An agreeable tonic," he said; "known to be conducive to digestion. My German Ocean I find more profitable, on account of the sea-bathing."
Richard expressed himself very much interested in the commercial prospects of his distinguished friend; but at this moment they were interrupted by the approach of a lady, who, with a peculiar hop, skip, and jump entirely her own, came up to the Emperor of the Waterworks and took hold of his arm.
She was a gushing thing of some forty-odd summers, and wore a bonnet, the very purchase of which would have stamped her as of unsound intellect, without need of any further proof whatever. To say that it was like a coal-scuttle was nothing; to say that it resembled a coal-scuttle which had suffered from an aggravated attack of water on the brain, and gone mad, would be perhaps a little nearer the mark. Imagine such a bonnet adorned with a green veil, rather bigger than an ordinary table cloth, and three quill pens tastefully inserted in the direction in which Parisian milliners are wont to place the plumage of foreign birds—and you may form some idea of the lady's head-gear. Her robes were short and scanty, but plentifully embellished with a species of trimming, which to an ordinary mind suggested strips of calico, but which amongst the inmates passed current as Valenciennes lace. Below these robes appeared a pair of apple-green boots—boots of a pattern such as no shoemaker of sound mind ever in his wildest dreams could have originated, but which in this establishment were voted rather recherché than otherwise. This lady was no other than the damsel who had suggested an elopement with Richard some eight years ago, and who claimed for her distinguished connections the Pope and the muffin-man.
"Well," she said to the Emperor of the Waterworks, with a voice and manner which would have been rather absurdly juvenile in a girl of fifteen,—"and where has its precious one been hiding since dinner? Was it the fat mutton which rendered the most brilliant of mankind unfit for general society; or was it that it 'had a heart for falsehood framed?' I hope it was the fat mutton."
"It's precious one" looked from the charmer at his side to Richard, with rather an apologetic shrug.
"The sex is weak," he said, "conqueror of Agincourt—I beg pardon, Waterloo. The sex is weak: it is a fact established alike by medical science and political economy. Poor thing! she loves me."
The lady, for the first time, became aware of the presence of Richard. She dropped a very low curtesy, in the performance of which one of the green boots described a complete circle, and said,
"From Gloucestershire, sir?" interrogatively.
"The Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte," said the proprietor of the German Ocean. "My dear, you ought to know him."
"The Emperor Nap-o-le-on Bu-o-na-parte," she said very slowly, checking off the syllables on her fingers, "and from Gloucestershire? How gratifying! All our great men come from Gloucestershire. It is a well-known fact—from Gloucestershire? Muffins were invented in Gloucestershire by Alfred the Great. Did you know our dear Alfred? You are perhaps too young—a great loss, my dear sir, a great loss; conglomerated essence of toothache on the cerebral nerves took him off in fourteen days, three weeks, and one month. We tried everything, from dandelions"—(her eyes wandered as if searching the grounds for information as to what they had tried)—from dandelions to chevaux-de-frise—"
She stopped abruptly, staring Richard full in the face, as if she expected him to say something; but as he said nothing, she became suddenly interested in the contemplation of the green boots, looking first at one and then at the other, as if revolving in her mind the probability of their wanting mending.
Presently she looked up, and said with great solemnity—
"Do you know the muffin-man?"
Richard shook his head.
"He lives in Drury Lane," she added, looking at him rather sternly, as much as to say, "Come, no nonsense! you know him well enough!"
"No," said Richard, "I don't remember having met him."
"There are seventy-nine of us who know the muffin-man in this establishment, sir—seventy-nine; and do you dare to stand there and tell me that you"
"I assure you, madam, I have not the honour of his acquaintance."
"Not know the muffin-man!—you don't know the muffin-man! Why, you contemptible stuck-up jackanapes"
What the lady might have gone on to say, it would be difficult to guess. She was not celebrated for the refinement of her vocabulary when much provoked; but at this moment a great stout man, one of the keepers, came up, and cried out—
"Holloa! what's all this!"
"He says he doesn't know the muffin-man!" exclaimed the lady, her veil flying in the wind like a pennant, her arms akimbo, and the apple-green boots planted in a defiant manner on the gravel-walk.
"Oh, we know him well enough," said the man, with a wink at Richard, "and very slack he bakes his muffins." Having uttered which piece of information connected with the gentleman in question, the keeper strolled off, giving just one steady look straight into the eyes of the lively damsel, which seemed to have an instantaneous and most soothing effect upon her nerves.
As all the lunatics allowed to disport themselves for an hour in the gardens of the establishment were considered to be, upon the whole, pretty safe, the keepers were not in the habit of taking much notice of them. Those officials would congregate in little groups here and there, talking among themselves, and apparently utterly regardless of the unhappy beings over whom it was their duty to watch. But let Queen Victoria or the Emperor Nero, Lady Jane Grey or Lord John Russell, suffer themselves to be led away by their respective hobbies, or to ride those animals at too outrageous and dangerous a pace, and a strong hand would be laid upon the rider's shoulder, accompanied by a recommendation to "go in-doors," which was very seldom disregarded.
As Richard was this afternoon permitted to mix with his fellow-prisoners for the first time, the boy from Slopperton was ordered to keep an eye upon him; and a very sharp eye the boy kept, never for one moment allowing a look, word, or action of the prisoner to escape him.
The keepers this afternoon were assembled near the portico, before which the gardens extended to the high outer wall. The ground between the portico and the wall was a little less than a quarter of a mile in length, and at the bottom was the grand entrance and the porter's lodge. The gardens surrounded the house on three sides, and on the left side the wall ran parallel with the river Sloshy. This river was now so much swollen by the late heavy rains that the waters washed the wall to the height of four feet, entirely covering the towing-path, which lay ordinarily between the wall and the waterside.
Now Richard and the Emperor of the Waterworks, accompanied by the gushing charmer in the green boots, being all three engaged in friendly though rather erratic conversation, happened to stroll in the direction of the grounds on this side, and consequently out of sight of the keepers.
The boy from Slopperton was, however, close upon their heels. This young gentleman had his hands in his pockets, and was loitering and lounging along with an air which seemed to say, that neither man nor woman gave him any more delight than they had afforded the Danish prince of used-up memory. Perhaps it was in utter weariness of life that he was, as if unconsciously, employed in whistling the melody of a song, supposed to relate to a passage in the life of a young lady of the name of Gray, christian name Alice, whose heart it was another's, and consequently, by pure logic, never could belong to the singer.
Now there may be something infectious in this melody; for no sooner had the boy from Slopperton whistled the first few bars, than some person in the distance outside the walls of the asylum gardens took up the air and finished it. A trifling circumstance this in itself; but it appeared to afford the boy considerable gratification; and he presently came suddenly upon Richard in the middle of a very interesting conversation, and whispered in his ear, or rather at his elbow, "All right, general!" Now as Richard, the Emperor of the Waterworks, and the only daughter of the Pope all talked at once, and all talked of entirely different subjects, their conversation might, perhaps, have been just a little distracting to a short-hand reporter; but as a conversation, it was really charming.
Richard—still musing on the wild idea which was known in the asylum to have possessed his disordered brain ever since the day of his trial—was giving his companions an account of his escape from Elba.
"I was determined," he said, taking the Emperor of the Waterworks by the button, "I was determined to make one desperate effort to return to my friends in France"
"Very creditable, to be sure," said the damsel of the green boots; "your sentiments did you honour."
"But to escape from the island was an enterprise of considerable difficulty," continued Richard.
"Of course," said the damsel, "considering the price of flour. Flour rose a halfpenny in the bushel in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, which, of course, reduced the size of muffins"
"And had a depressing effect upon the water-rates," interrupted the gentleman.
"Now," continued Richard, "the island of Elba was surrounded by a high wall"
"A very convenient arrangement; of course facilitating the process of cutting off the water from the inhabitants," muttered the Emperor of the German Ocean.
The boy Slosh again expressed his feelings with reference to Alice Gray, and some one on the other side of the wall coincided with him.
"And," said Richard, "on the top of this wall was a chevaux-de-frise."
"Dear me," exclaimed the Emperor, "quite a what-you-may-call-it. I mean an extraordinary coincidence; we too have a chevaux-de-thing-a-me, for the purpose, I believe, of keeping out the cats. Cats are unpleasant; especially," he added, thoughtfully, "especially the Tom-sex—I mean the sterner sex."
"To surmount this wall was my great difficulty."
"Naturally, naturally," said the damsel, "a great undertaking, considering the fall in muffins—a dangerous undertaking."
"There was a boat waiting to receive me on the other side," said Richard, glancing at the wall, which was about a hundred yards distant from him.
Some person on the other side of the wall had got a good deal nearer by this time; and, dear me, how very much excited he was about Alice Gray.
"But the question," Richard continued, "was how to climb the wall,"—still looking up at the chevaux-de-frise.
"I should have tried muffins," said the lady.
"I should have cut off the water," remarked the gentleman.
"I did neither," said Richard; "I tried a rope."
At this very moment, by some invisible agency, a thickly knotted rope was thrown across the chevaux-de-frise, and the end fell within about four feet of the ground.
"But her heart it is another's, and it never can be mine."
The gentleman who couldn't succeed in winning the affections of Miss Gray was evidently close to the wall now.
In a much shorter time than the very greatest master in the art of stenography could possibly have reported the occurrence, Richard threw the Emperor of the Waterworks half-a-dozen yards from him, with such violence as to cause that gentleman to trip-up the heels of the only daughter of the Pope, and fall in a heap upon that lady as on a feather bed; and then, with the activity of a cat or a sailor, clambered up the rope, and disappeared over the chevaux-de-frise.
The gentleman outside was now growing indifferent to the loss of Miss Gray, for he whistled the melody in a most triumphant manner, keeping time with the sharp plash of his oars in the water.
It took the Emperor and his female friend some little time to recover from the effects of the concussion they had experienced, each from each; and when they had done so, they stood for a few moments looking at one another in mute amazement.
"The gentleman has left the establishment," at last said the lady.
"And a bruise on my elbow," muttered the gentleman, rubbing the locality in question.
"Such a very impolite manner of leaving too," said the lady. "His muffins—I mean his manners—have evidently been very much neglected."
"He must be a Chelsea householder," said the Emperor. "The householders of Chelsea are proverbial for bad manners. They are in the habit of slamming the door in the face of the tax-gatherer, with a view to injuring the tip of his nose; and I'm sure Lord Chesterfield never advised his son to do that."
It may be as well here to state that the Emperor of the Waterworks had in early life been collector of the water-rate in the neighbourhood of Chelsea; but having unfortunately given his manly intellect to drinking, and being further troubled with a propensity for speculation (some people pronounced the word without the first letter), which involved the advantageous laying-out of his sovereign's money for his own benefit, he had first lost his situation and ultimately his senses.
His lady friend had once kept a baker's shop in the vicinity of Drury Lane, and happening, in an evil hour, at the ripe age of forty, to place her affections on a young man of nineteen, the bent of whose genius was muffins, and being slighted by the youth in question, she had retired into the gin-bottle, and thence had been passed to the asylum of her native country.
Perhaps the inquiring reader will ask what the juvenile guardian of Richard is doing all this time? He has been told to keep an eye upon him; and how has he kept his trust?
He is standing, very coolly, staring at the lady and gentleman before him, and is apparently much interested in their conversation.
"I shall certainly go," said the Emperor of the Waterworks, after a pause, "and inform the superintendent of this proceeding—the superintendent ought really to know of it."
"Superintendent" was, in the asylum, the polite name given the keepers. But just as the Emperor began to shamble off in the direction of the front of the house, the boy called Slosh flew past him and ran on before, and by the time the elderly gentleman reached the porch, the boy had told the astonished keepers the whole story of the escape.
The keepers ran down to the gate, called to the porter to have it opened, and in a few minutes were in the road in front of it. They hurried thence to the river-side. There was not a sign of any human being on the swollen waters, except two men in a punt close to the opposite shore, who appeared to be eel-spearing.
"There's no boat nearer than that," said one of the men; he never could have reached that in this time if he had been the best swimmer in England."
The men took it for granted that they had been informed of his escape the moment it occurred.
"He must have jumped slap into the water," said another; "perhaps he's about somewhere, contriving to keep his head under."
"He couldn't do it," said the first man who had spoken; "it's my opinion the poor chap's drowned. They will try these escapes, though no one ever succeeded yet."
There was a boat moored at the angle of the asylum wall, and one of the men sprang into it.
"Show me the place where he jumped over the wall," he called to the boy, who pointed out the spot at his direction.
The man rowed up to it.
"Not a sign of him anywhere about here!" he cried.
"Hadn't you better call to those men?" asked his comrade; "they must have seen him jump."
The man in the boat nodded assent, and rowed across the river to the two fishermen.
"Holloa!" he said, "have you seen any one get over that wall?"
One of the men, who had just impaled a fine eel, looked up with a surprised expression, and asked—
"Which wall?"
"Why the asylum, yonder, straight before you."
"The asylum! Now, you don't mean to say that that's the asylum; and I've been taking it for a gentleman's mansion and grounds all the time," said the angler (who was no other than Mr. Augustus Darley), taking his pipe out of his mouth.
"I wish you'd give a straight answer to my question," said the man; "have you seen any one jump over that wall; yes, or no?"
"Then, no!" said Gus; "if I had, I should have gone over and picked him up, shouldn't I, stupid?"
The other fisherman, Mr. Peters, here looked up, and laying down his eel-spear, spelt out some words on his fingers.
"Stop a bit," cried Gus to the man, who was rowing off, "here's my friend says he heard a splash in the water ten minutes ago, and thought it was some rubbish shot over the wall."
"Then he did jump! Poor chap, I'm afraid he must be drowned."
"Drowned?"
"Yes; don't I tell you one of the lunatics has been trying to escape over that wall, and must have fallen into the river?"
"Why didn't you say so before, then?" said Gus. "What's to be done? Where are there any drags?"
"Why, half a mile off, worse luck, at a public-house down the river, the 'Jolly Life-boat.'"
"Then I'll tell you what," said Gus, "my friend and I will row down and fetch the drags, while you chaps keep a look-out about here."
"You're very good, sir," said the man; "dragging the river's about all we can do now, for it strikes me we've seen the last of the Emperor Napoleon. My eyes! won't there be a row about it with the Board!"
"Here we go," says Gus; "keep a good heart; he may turn up yet;" with which encouraging remarks Messrs. Darley and Peters struck off at a rate which promised the speedy arrival of the drags.