To be a fashionable beauty, with a reputation for intelligence, nay,
even for that much rarer quality, wit; to have been born in the purple;
to have been just enough talked about to be interesting as a woman with
a history; to have a fine house in Soho Square, and a mediaeval abbey in
Hampshire; to ride, dance, sing, play, and speak French and Italian
better than any other woman in society; to have the finest diamonds in
London; to be followed, flattered, serenaded, lampooned, written about
and talked about, and to be on the sunward side of thirty; surely to be
and to have all these good things should fill the cup of contentment for
any of Eve's daughters.
Lady Judith Topsparkle had all these blessings, and flashed gayety and
brightness upon the world in which her lot was cast; and yet there were
those among her intimates, those who sipped their chocolate with her of
a morning before her hair was powdered or her patches put on, who
declared that she was not altogether happy.
The diamonds, the spacious house in Soho Square, with its Turkey carpets
and Boule furniture, its plenitude of massive plate and Italian
pictures, its air of regal luxury and splendor; the abbey near Ringwood,
with its tapestries, pictures, curios, and secret passages, were
burdened with a certain condition which for Lady Judith reduced their
value to a minimum.
All these good things came to her through her husband. Of her own right
she was only the genteelest pauper at the court end of London. Her blood
was of the bluest. She was a younger daughter of one of the oldest
earls; but Job himself, after the advent of the messengers, was not
poorer than that distinguished nobleman. Lady Judith had brought Mr.
Topsparkle nothing but her beauty, her quality, and her pride. Love she
never pretended to bring him, nor liking, nor even respect. His father
had made his fortune in trade; and the idea of a tradesman's son was
almost as repulsive to Lady Judith as that of a blackamoor. She married
him because her father made her marry him, and in her own phraseology
"the matter was not worth fighting about." She had broken just two years
before with the only man she had ever loved, had renounced him in a fit
of pique and passion on account of some scandal about a French
dancing-girl; and from that hour she had assumed an air of recklessness:
she had danced, flirted, talked, and carried on in a manner that
delighted the multitude and shocked the prudes. Bath and Tunbridge Wells
had rung with her sayings and doings; and finally she surrendered
herself, not altogether unwillingly, to the highest bidder.
She was burdened with debt, never knew what it was to have a crown piece
of ready money. At cards she had to borrow first of one admirer and then
of another. She had been able to get plenty of credit for gowns and
trinketry from a harpy class of West End tradespeople, who speculated in
Lady Judith's beauty as they might have done in some hazardous but
hopeful stock; counting it almost a certainty that she would make a
splendid match and recoup them all.
Mr. Topsparkle saw her in the zenith of her audacious charms. He met her
at a masquerade at Bath, followed and intrigued with her all the
evening, and at last, alone in an alcove with her after supper, induced
her to take off her mask. Her beauty dazzled those experienced eyes of
his, and he fell madly in love with her at first sight of that radiant
loveliness: starriest eyes of violet hue, a dainty little Greek nose, a
complexion of lilies and blush-roses, and the most perfect mouth and
teeth in Christendom. No one had ever seen anything more beautiful than
the tender curves of those classic lips, or more delicate than their
faint carmine tinge. In an epoch when almost every woman of fashion
plastered herself with bismuth and ceruse, Lord Bramber's daughter could
afford to exhibit the complexion nature had given her, and might defy
paint to match it. Lady Judith laughed at her conquest when she was told
about it by half a dozen different admirers at the Rooms next morning.
"What, that Topsparkle man!" she exclaimed--"the traveled Cit who has
been exploring all sorts of savage places in Spain and Italy, and
writing would-be witty letters about his travels. They say he is richer
than any nabob in Hindostan. Yes, I plagued him vastly, I believe,
before I consented to unmask; and then he pretended to be dumbfounded at
my charms, for-sooth; dazzled by this sun into which you gentlemen look
without flinching, like young eagles."
"My dear Lady Judith, the man is captivated--your slave forever. You had
better put a ring in his nose and lead him about with you, instead of
that little black boy for whom you sighed the other day, and that his
Lordship denied you. He is quite the richest man in London, three or
four times a millionaire, and he is on the point of buying Lord
Ringwood's place in Hampshire--a genuine mediaeval abbey, with half a
mile of cloisters and a fish-pond in the kitchen."
"I care neither for cloisters nor kitchen."
"Ay, but you have a weakness for diamonds," urged Mr. Mordaunt, an old
admirer, who was very much _au courant_ as to the fair Judith's history
and habits, had lent her money when she was losing at basset, and had
diplomatized with her creditors for her. "Witness that cross the Jew
sold you the other day."
Lady Judith reddened angrily. The same Jew dealer who sold her the
jewel had insisted upon having it back from her when he discovered her
inability to pay for it, threatening to prosecute her for obtaining
goods under false pretenses.
"Mr. Topsparkle's diamonds--they belonged to his mother--are historical.
His maternal grandfather was an Amsterdam Jew, and the greatest diamond
merchant of his time. He had mills where the gems were ground as corn is
ground in our country, and seem to have been as plentiful as corn. Egad,
Lady Judith, how you would blaze in the Topsparkle diamonds!"
"Mr. Topsparkle must be sixty years of age!" exclaimed, the lady, with
sovereign contempt.
"Nobody supposes you would marry him for his youth or his personal
attractions. Yet he is by no means a bad-looking man, and he has had
plenty of adventures in his day, I can assure your Ladyship. _Il a
vécu_, as our neighbors say: Topsparkle is no simpleton. When he set out
upon the grand tour nearly forty years ago, he carried with him about as
scandalous a reputation as a gentleman of fashion could enjoy. He had
been cut by all the strait-laced people; and it is only the fact of his
incalculable wealth which has opened the doors of decent houses for him
since his return."
"I thank you for the compliment implied in your recommendation of him to
me as a husband," said Lady Judith, drawing herself up with that
Juno-like air which made her seem half a head taller, and which
accentuated every curve of her superb torso. "He is apparently a
gentleman whom it would be a disgrace to know,"
"Oh, your Ladyship must be aware that a reformed rake makes the best
husband. And since Topsparkle went on the Continent he has acquired a
new reputation as a wit and a man of letters. He wrote an Assyrian story
in the Italian language, about which the town raved a few years ago--a
sort of demon story, ever so much cleverer than Voltaire's fanciful
novels. Everybody was reading or pretending to read it."
"Oh, was that his?" exclaimed Judith, who read everything. "It was
mighty clever. I begin to think better of your Topsparkle personage."
Five minutes afterwards, strolling languidly amid the crowd, with a
plain cousin at her elbow for foil and duenna, Lady Judith met Mr.
Topsparkle walking with no less a person than her father.
Lord Bramber enjoyed the privilege of an antique hereditary gout, and
came to Bath every season for the waters. He was a man of imposing
figure, at once tall and bulky, but he carried his vast proportions with
dignity and ease. He was said to have been the handsomest man of his
day, and had been admired even by an age which could boast of "Hervey
the Handsome," John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and the irresistible
Henry St. John. Basking in that broad sunshine of popularity which is
the portion of a man of high birth, graceful manners, and good looks,
Lord Bramber had squandered a handsome fortune right royally, and now,
at five-and-fifty, was as near insolvency as a gentleman dare be. His
house in Pulteney Street was a kind of haven, to which he brought his
family when London creditors began to be implacable. He had even
thoughts of emigrating to Holland or Belgium, or to some old Roman town
in the sunny South of France, where he might live upon his wife's
pin-money, which happily was protected by stringent settlements and
incorruptible trustees.
He had married two out of three daughters well, but not brilliantly.
Judith was the youngest of the three, and she was the flower of the
flock. She had been foolish, very foolish, about Lord Lavendale, and a
faint cloud of scandal had hung over her name ever since her affair with
that too notorious rake. Admirers she had by the score, but since the
Lavendale entanglement there had been no serious advances from any
suitor of mark.
But now Mr. Topsparkle, one of the wealthiest commoners in Great
Britain, was obviously smitten with Lady Judith's perfections, and had a
keen air which seemed to mean business, Lord Bramber thought. He had
obtained an introduction to the earl within the last half-hour, and had
not concealed his admiration for the earl's daughter. He had entreated
the honor of a formal introduction to the exquisite creature with whom
he had conversed on sportive terms last night at the Assembly Rooms.
Lady Judith acknowledged the introduction with the air of a queen to
whom courtiers and compliments were as the gadflies of summer. She
fanned herself listlessly, and stared about her while Mr. Topsparkle
was talking.
"I vow, there is Mrs. Margetson," she exclaimed, recognizing an
acquaintance across the crowd: "I have not seen her for a century.
Heavens, how old and yellow she is looking--yellower even than you,
Mattie!" this last by way of aside to her plain cousin.
"I hope you bear me no malice for my pertinacity last night, Lady
Judith," murmured Topsparkle, insinuatingly.
"Malice, my good sir! I protest I never bear malice. To be malicious,
one's feelings must be engaged; and you would hardly expect mine to be
concerned in the mystifications of a dancing-room."
She looked over his head as she talked to him, still on the watch for
familiar faces among the crowd, smiling at one, bowing at another. Mr.
Topsparkle was savage at not being able to engage her attention. At
Venice, whence he had come lately, all the women had courted him,
hanging upon his words, adoring him as the keenest wit of his day.
He was an attenuated and rather effeminate person, exquisitely dressed
and powdered, and not without a suspicion of rouge upon his hollow
cheeks or of Vandyke brown upon his delicately penciled eyebrows. He,
like Lord Bramber, presented the wreck of manly beauty; but whereas
Bramber suggested a three-master of goodly bulk and tonnage, battered
but still weather-proof and seaworthy, Topsparkle had the air of a
delicate pinnace which time and tempest had worn to a mere phantasmal
bark that the first storm would scatter into ruin.
He had hardly the air of a gentleman, Judith thought, watching him
keenly all the while she seemed to ignore his existence. He was too
fine, too highly trained for the genuine article; he lacked that easy
inborn grace of the man in whom good manners are hereditary. There was
nothing of the Cit about him; but there was the exaggerated elegance,
the exotic grace, of a man who has too studiously cultivated the art of
being a fine gentleman; who has learned his manners in dubious paths,
from _petites maîtresses_ and _prime donne_, rather than from statesmen
and princes.
On this, and on many a subsequent meeting, Lady Judith was just uncivil
enough to fan the flame of Vivian Topsparkle's passion. He had begun in
a somewhat philandering spirit, not quite determined whether Lord
Bramber's daughter were worthy of him; but her _hauteur_ made him her
slave. Had she been civil he would have given more account to those old
stories about Lavendale, and would have been inclined to draw back
before finally committing himself. But a woman who could afford to be
rude to the best match in England must needs be above all suspicion. Had
her reputation been seriously damaged she would have caught at the
chance of rehabilitating herself by a rich marriage. Had she been civil
to him Mr. Topsparkle would have haggled and bargained about
settlements; but his ever-present fear of losing her made him accede to
Lord Bramber's exactions with a more than princely generosity, since but
few princes could afford to be so liberal. He had set his heart upon
having this woman for his wife--firstly, because she was the handsomest
and most fashionable woman in London, and secondly, because so far as
burnt-out embers can glow with new fire, Mr. Topsparkle's battered old
heart was aflame with a very serious passion for this new deity.
So there was a grand wedding from the earl's house in Leicester Fields;
not a crowded assembly, for only the very _élite_ of the modish world
were invited. _The Duke_, meaning his Grace of York, honored the company
with his royal presence, and there were the great Sir Robert and a bevy
of Cabinet ministers, and Mr. Topsparkle felt that he had canceled any
old half-forgotten scandals as to his past life, and established himself
in the highest social sphere by this alliance. As Vivian Topsparkle the
half-foreign eccentric, he was a man to be stared at and talked about;
but as the husband of Lord Bramber's daughter he had a footing--by right
of alliance--in some of the noblest houses in England. His name and
reputation were hooked on to old family trees; and those great people
whose kinswoman he had married could not afford to have him maligned or
slighted. In a word, Mr. Topsparkle felt that he had good value for his
magnificent settlements.
Was Lady Judith Topsparkle happy, with all her blessings? She was gay;
and with the polite world gayety ranks as happiness, and commands the
envy of the crowd. Nobody envies the quiet matron whose domestic life
flows onward with the placidity of a sluggish stream. It is the
butterfly queen of the hour whom people admire and envy. Lady Judith,
blazing in diamonds at a court ball, beautiful, daring, insolent, had
half the town for her slaves and courtiers. Even women flattered and
fawned upon her, delighted to be acknowledged as her acquaintance, proud
to be invited to her parties or to dance attendance upon her in public
assemblies.