The Trail of the Serpent by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

WHILE Mr. Peters, assisted by Richard's sincere friend, the young surgeon, made the visit above described, Daredevil Dick counted the hours in London. It was essential to the success of his cause, Gus and Peters urged, that he should not show himself, or in any way reveal the fact of his existence, till the real murderer was arrested. Let the truth appear to all the world, and then time enough for Richard to come forth, with an unbranded forehead, in the sight of his fellow-men. But when he heard that Raymond Marolles had given his pursuers the slip, and was off, no one knew where, it was all that his mother, his friend Percy Cordonner, Isabella Darley, and the lawyers to whom he had intrusted his cause, could do, to prevent his starting that instant on the track of the guilty man. It was a weary day, this day of the failure of the arrest, for all. Neither his mother's tender consolation, nor his solicitor's assurances that all was not yet lost, could moderate the young man's impatience. Neither Isabella's tearful prayers that he would leave the issue in the hands of Heaven, nor Mr. Cordonner's philosophical recommendation to take it quietly and let the "beggar" go, could keep him quiet. He felt like a caged lion, whose ignoble bonds kept him from the vile object of his rage. The day wore out, however, and no tidings came of the fugitive. Mr. Cordonner insisted on stopping with his friend till three o'clock in the morning, and at that very late hour set out, with the intention of going down to the Cherokees -- it was a Cheerful night, and they would most likely be still assembled -- to ascertain, as he popularly expressed it, whether anything had "turned up" there. The clock of St. Martin's struck three as he stood with Richard at the street-door in Spring Gardens, giving friendly consolation between the puffs of his cigar to the agitated young man.

"In the first place, my dear boy," he said, "if you can't catch the fellow, you can't catch the fellow -- that's sound logic and a mathematical argument; then why make yourself unhappy about it? Why try to square the circle, only because the circle's round, and can't be squared? Let it alone. If this fellow turns up, hang him! I should glory in seeing him hung, for he's an out-and-out scoundrel, and I should make a point of witnessing the performance, if the officials would do the thing at a reasonable hour, and not execute him in the middle of the night and swindle the respectable public. If he doesn't turn up, why, let the matter rest; marry that little girl in there, Darley's pretty sister -- who seems, by the bye, to be absurdly fond of you -- and let the question rest. That's my philosophy."

The young man turned away with an impatient sigh; then, laying his hand on Percy's shoulder, he said, "My dear old fellow, if everybody in the world were like you, Napoleon would have died a Corsican lawyer, or a lieutenant in the French army. Robespierre would have lived a petty barrister, with a penchant for getting up in the night to eat jam tarts and a mania for writing bad poetry. The third state would have gone home quietly to its farmyards and its merchants' offices; there would have been no Oath of the Tennis Court, and no Battle of Waterloo."

"And a very good thing, too," said his philosophical friend; "nobody would have been a loser but Astley's -- only think of that. If there had been no Napoleon, what a loss for image boys, Gomersal the Great, and Astley's. Forgive me, Dick, for laughing at you. I'll cut down to the Cheerfuls, and see if anything's up. The Smasher's away, or he might have given us his advice; the genius of the P. R. might have been of some service in this affair. Good night! " He gave Richard a languidly affectionate shake of the hand, and departed.

Now, when Mr. Cordonner said he would cut down to the Cherokees, let it not be thought by the simple-minded reader that the expression "cut down," from his lips, conveyed that degree of velocity which, though perhaps a sufficiently vague phrase in itself, it is calculated to carry to the ordinary mind. Percy Cordonner had never been seen by mortal man in a hurry. He had been known to be too late for a train, and had been beheld placidly lounging at a few paces from the departing engine, and mildly but rather reproachfully regarding that object. The prospects of his entire life may have hinged on his going by that particular train; but he would never be so false to his principles as to make himself unpleasantly warm, or in any way disturb the delicate organization with which nature had gifted him. He had been seen at the doors of the Opera-house when Jenny Lind was going to appear in the _Figlia_, and while those around him were afflicted with a temporary lunacy, and trampling one another wildly in the mud, he had been observed leaning against a couple of fat men as in an easy-chair, and standing high and dry upon somebody else's boots, breathing gentlemanly and polyglot execrations upon the surrounding crowd, when, in swaying to and fro, it disturbed or attempted to disturb his serenity.