"YET STILL I AM IN LOVE, AND PLEASED WITH RUIN."
It was the noon of next day before Lavendale opened his curtains and
rang for his letters and his chocolate--a glorious summer noontide, with
a flood of sunshine pouring in through the three tall narrow windows in
that front bedchamber in Bloomsbury Square. The Lavendale mansion was a
fine double-house with the staircase in the middle. His lordship's
bedroom, dressing-room, and private writing-closet, or study, occupied
one side of the first floor; on the other were two drawing-rooms, the
white and the yellow, panelled and painted, opening into each other with
high folding-doors after the French manner; and beyond these a small
inner room, where a choice company of three or four kindred spirits
might play high and drink deep, as it were in a sanctuary, remote from
the household. The house had been built by the first Lord Lavendale in
his pride of place and power. Here Somers and Godolphin had been
entertained; here William himself had brought his grim dark visage and
high wig, his hooked nose, and his Dutch favourites, to steep themselves
in the Lavendale Burgundy after a ponderous old English dinner of thirty
or forty dishes. It was a house full of stately memories, a house built
for a statesman and a gentleman. How pleasantly would those panelled
rooms have echoed the merry voices of children, the scampering of little
feet! but all prospect of domesticity was over for Lord Lavendale.
To-morrow the paternal house would be deserted, perhaps for ever; left
to the rats and some grimy caretaker, or sold in a year or two to the
best bidder. To-day the paternal acres would be mortgaged up to the
hilt, since a man who runs away with a woman of fashion must needs have
ready-money. There are a few things in this life that cannot be done
upon credit. Running away with your neighbour's wife is one of them.
Lavendale thought of these things in very idleness of fancy as he
stirred his chocolate, while his valet gathered up scattered garments,
picked up an Alençon cravat from the floor, and reduced the disorder of
the room generally. He thought of his mother, whom he remembered as the
occupant of this bedchamber. The room had seemed sacred and solemn to
him, like a temple, in those early days of his childhood, when he came
in at bedtime to say his prayers at his mother's knee. How she had loved
him! with what heart-whole devotion, with what anxiety! as he knew now,
looking back upon her tenderness, understanding it with the
understanding of manhood. He had not enjoyed his prayers in the
abstract; but he had always liked to be with his mother. She was not one
of the gad-about mothers, who see their children for five minutes in a
powder-closet, look up from a patch-box to kiss little missy or master,
and then airily dismiss the darling to nurse and nursery. She had always
had leisure to love her boy. After those little prayers of his she would
talk to him seriously of the time when he would be a man among other men
in a world full of temptation. She entreated him to be good: to do right
always: to be true, and brave, and pious, obeying God, loving his
fellow-creatures. She warned him against the evil of the world.
Sometimes she spoke to him perhaps almost too gravely for his years; but
he remembered her words now.
"She knew what a vile place this world is, and she warned me against its
infamy," he said to himself. "Vain warning: grave and tender speech
wasted upon an incipient reprobate. Is there some place of spirits in
which she dwells, where she sees and knows my folly, and grieves, as
disembodied souls may grieve, over her guilty son? I, who find it so
hard to believe dogmatic religion, cannot wean myself from the fancy
that there is such a world--that she whom I loved lives yet, and can
feel and care for me--that the last link between mother and son was not
broken when the first clod fell on the coffin."
A footman knocked at the door and handed in a salver with a letter,
which the valet brought to his lordship's bedside.
"From Lady Judith Topsparkle. The messenger waits," said the man.
He had recognised the brown and orange livery, although the footman had
not mentioned his mistress's name.
"The dragon is roused at last," wrote Judith. "Topsparkle has taken
alarm at our familiarity last night. I doubt he was only shamming sleep,
and that he watched us while we whispered at the supper-table. No sooner
were we at home than he burst into a tragic scene--Cato was never more
heroic--taxed me with carrying on an intrigue with you, and using
Bolingbroke as a blind. I laughed at him and defied him; on which he
announced that he should carry me off to Ringwood Abbey directly after
the Guildhall dinner. 'Nothing I should love better,' says I, 'for I am
heart-sick of the town, and you and I were made to bill and coo in
solitude. All the world knows how fond we are of each other.' After this
he became silently savage, white with suppressed wrath. What an evil
face it is, Jack! I think he is capable of murdering me; but you may
trust me to take care of myself, and to touch no potion of his mixing,
between now and to-morrow night. He ordered Zélie to pack my trunks for
the Abbey; the very thing I would have. They are to go off on Thursday
morning, he says. Be sure you send your wagoner on Wednesday evening. So
now, dear love, from such a Bluebeard husband my flight will be a
pardonable sin. I do but run away in self-defence."
"Bring me standish and portfolio," said Lavendale; and with his elbow on
his pillow he wrote hastily:
"Beloved, I will not fail you. I have some business arrangements that
must be made to-day, and to-morrow at dusk I will be with you. If you
have any apprehension or any sense of unhappiness in the mean while,
come to me here at once, and I will defend you. Once within these doors
you shall be safe as in a fortress. But it will be better if we can slip
away quietly. I doubt if Topsparkle will follow us to the South. From
hints I have had about him I take it he is not over-fond of
fighting--would fight, perhaps, if hard driven--but will not court an
encounter; and for your sake I would rather not cross swords with him.
So if _finesse_ and patience can keep matters smooth till to-morrow
night it will be well. Till then, Adored One, adieu. My heart, soul,
mind, being, are in your keeping already. This Lavendale which goes to
and fro, and must needs get through the day's business, is but a
breathing piece of mechanism, a self-acting puppet. The real Lavendale
is sighing on your bosom."
This letter despatched, with a guinea to the gentleman in orange and
brown--guinea which by some curious conjuring trick became a half-guinea
at the bottom of the staircase--his lordship rose and dressed, or
suffered himself to be dressed, very impatiently, and then, without any
more breakfast than his cup of chocolate, walked off to his favourite
Jew.
He knew most of the money-lenders in London; men who would lend at an
hour's notice and on lightest security; men who were slow and cautious.
It was to an enterprising usurer he went to-day.
"I want a thousand pounds immediately, Solomon," he said, flinging
himself into a dusty chair in a dusty office near the Fleet, "and four
thousand to follow."
Then came negotiation. Hitherto Lavendale had refused to mortgage the
Surrey Manor. Other estates were heavily clipped--but the place his
mother had loved, the house in which she died, had been held sacred.
Now, he would stick at nothing. He must have money at any sacrifice. Old
Solomon had itched for a good mortgage on that Surrey Manor. He had a
client who wanted to lend money on land near London, a rich City
tradesman who hardly believed in the validity of any estate that was not
within fifty miles of the metropolis. The client would think himself
well off if he got five per cent for his cash; and Mr. Solomon knew that
he could make Lord Lavendale pay seven per cent, and pocket the
difference. His lordship was in too great a hurry for the money to
consult his own lawyer, would not examine the deeds too closely. He had
the air of a man who was in a fever of impatience to ruin himself.
Solomon promised to have the mortgage-deed engrossed and the money ready
to hand over by two o'clock next day. Lavendale swore he must leave
England at three. The money would be no use to him unless it were his
before that hour.
"You shall have it," protested Solomon, "though the scrivener should
have to work all night. I will go straight off to my client and bid him
prepare his cash."
Lavendale went back to Bloomsbury, and gave orders about the wagon and
the coach-and-four, with a third pair of horses to be ready on the other
side of London Bridge, and relays all along the Dover road. His valet
was as clever as Figaro, and had hitherto proved himself trustworthy.
"I am running away with an heiress, Jevons," said his lordship. "A sweet
young creature of seventeen; a cit's only daughter, worth a plum in her
own right."
Jevons bowed with an air of respectful sympathy, and knew that his
master was lying. The orange and brown livery had appeared too often in
Bloomsbury Square within the last month or so; and Jevons had seen his
lordship in Lady Judith's box, from the pit of the theatre in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, and knew exactly how those two stood towards each other.
"'Tis a bad business," thought Mr. Jevons, "and may end in bloodshed. I
would rather see him running after masks and misses, as he did ten years
ago."
Mr. Jevons was too well trained a servant to disobey orders, were he
even sure they must result in fatality. He would have sharpened his
master's rapier for a duel as coolly as he cleaned his boots. So he went
off and ordered coach, wagon, and horses, and despatched a couple of
mounted grooms to ride to Dover by easy stages. They were to order
relays of post-horses as they went along, and were to make sure that
there should be no hitch in the journey.
"And if you find his lordship is pursued, you are to do your damnable
best to prevent his pursuer getting a change of horses anywhere," said
Mr. Jevons, with his authoritative air, which was more imperious than
his master's.
* * * * *
Lavendale ordered his carriage late in the afternoon, and drove down to
his Surrey Manor in the summer dusk. He wanted to see Vincenti before he
left England, perhaps for ever. He wanted to see that old home which he
might never look upon again. And Durnford was to be at the Manor that
evening, the one friend in whose fidelity he could always confide; to
whom he could confess even his darkest secrets; whose sound sense he
could rely upon when his own feather-brain failed him.
"I must make some plans for _her_ future," he told himself, "for I fear
I am not a long-lived man. Alas! what can I leave her? Three or four
happy years in the South will exhaust my resources, and there will be
nothing left but an estate mortgaged to the hilt."
This was a dark outlook, so he tried to shut his eyes to the future. And
then he remembered what some knowing busybody had told him about Lord
Bramber's cleverness, and the handsome settlement extorted from Mr.
Topsparkle before he was allowed to carry off the lovely Judith.
"So good a settlement," said the gossip, "that her ladyship has but
small inducement to remain constant to a fossil husband. She may elope
whenever she likes, for she will be handsomely provided for even in her
disgrace. Lord Bramber is a man of the world, and able to look ahead."
There was some consolation in the thought that Lady Judith was not to
sacrifice everything in throwing away her reputation. And yet to think
of her enriched by Topsparkle's money was as bad as to see her shining
in Topsparkle's diamonds.
"'Tis so evil a business that nothing can mend it," he said to himself;
which was an ill frame of mind for a lover.
It was dark when he reached the Manor, and Durnford had not arrived. The
coach had brought a letter from him to say that important business in
the House detained him, but that he would ride down next morning.
Chagrined at this disappointment, Lavendale went straight to the
laboratory, where he found Vincenti walking to and fro in an unusual
state of excitement.
"Have you found the great secret?" he asked. "You have a look of
triumph."
"I am nearer than I have ever been," answered the old man, with feverish
eagerness; "so near that I might almost say I have reached the goal. The
universal panacea is all but won. I feel a renewal of strength in every
limb, a fresher life in every vein, and, if not the secret of
immortality, I have at least found the key to an almost indefinitely
prolonged existence. I tell you, Lavendale, there is a medicine that
will prolong life for centuries if a man is but free from organic
disease."
"If!" echoed Lavendale; "that 'if' makes all the difference. If he do
not fall off his horse, or if he be not turned over in a stage-coach, or
drowned 'twixt Dover and Calais. If he do not fall into a crater, like
Empedocles, or if he be not buried in the lava flood, like Pliny, or
murdered in the street, like Tom Thynne, or killed in a duel, like
Hamilton and Mohun. There is a vast variety of 'ifs' to be considered."
Vincenti was not listening to him. He walked to and fro like a man
exalted by a beatific vision. Then he suddenly stopped and went over to
a furnace, upon which there stood a crucible. He peered into this for
some moments, and then resumed his feverish pacings up and down the
spacious floor: anon suddenly tottered, and staggered over to his chair,
like a man who can scarce keep himself from falling.
Lavendale went to him instantly, and put a glass of water to his lips.
His brow was damp with cold perspiration, and he had every appearance
of fainting.
"Is this one of the effects of your panacea," asked Lavendale; "is this
the result of that marvel-working Azoth that Paracelsus believed in?"
"It is nothing--a passing faintness. The reaction was too strong. I gave
myself up too completely to the delight of my discovery--or I may have
taken too powerful a dose. I tell you, my lord, the solution is
infallible. It contains every element of life, every force that can
sustain mind and body, strengthen every nerve, restore the quality of
the blood, wasted with age. Feel my pulse, and say if it is not at once
regular and strong."
"Strong?--yes, too strong for your age; too quick for health.
Regular?--no. You had better go to bed, Vincenti. A basin of broth and a
good night's rest will do more for you than the higher metals."
"Your lordship is mocking me. But I am somewhat exhausted by the
unintermittent watching of the last three days and nights. I will lie
down for an hour or two, if you will be so kind as to assist me to my
room."
Lavendale supported him to an adjoining room with almost womanly
tenderness, and did not leave him till he was lying comfortably in his
bed. He occupied a small apartment next the chapel, a room which had
once been used as a sacristy. Here the student of Nature's secret forces
had a pallet, and a kind of hermit's cell, preferring such scanty
accommodation close to his furnaces and alembics, to the comfortable
bedchamber above-stairs which had been allotted to him at his coming.
"Yonder is a sword that has well nigh worn out its scabbard," thought
Lavendale, as he went back to the library. "Did Albertus Magnus dream
thus to the last, I wonder, and die on the threshold of some tremendous
discovery, or fancy himself near it in his last hours? Is it all an idle
dream, as Herrick says, and is there no undiscovered power that can
prolong the life of man? How feverish was that old man's joy at the idea
of stretching his thin thread of life! And yet one would think existence
could be of little value to one who has survived every earthly passion,
every human tie. But for me--for me, whose days have been so short, so
empty of all real joys; for me, whose heart beats high with fondest
hopes and sweetest anticipations--'tis hard for such as I to know his
days measured, his span of life dwindling fast to the vanishing point.
Life might be prolonged indefinitely, says Vincenti, if there be no
organic disease. That 'if' means so much. There is something tells me
this heart of mine has been worked too hard upon foolish excitements and
frivolous fancies, horse-races, cock-fights, the gambling-table, and the
bear-pit; and that now--now when I would fain feel myself secure of
length of days--the flame that burns so fiercely is but the expiring
flourish of a burnt-out candle."
He struggled against those despondent feelings which had possessed him
all the day; stronger even than triumphant love, which should have
reigned supreme in his breast. He sent for his housekeeper, an elderly
woman who had nursed his mother in her last illness, and upon whose
fidelity he could rely.
"I fear my old Italian friend is very ill, Mrs. Becket," he said, "and I
must depend upon you to get him nursed and duly cared for should his
malady increase. He has the air of a man in a fever."
"Your lordship may depend upon my doing all I can for the poor harmless
old gentleman," replied Mrs. Becket, with a low curtsy. "But your
lordship is looking amiss this evening! Is there nothing I can do for
your lordship--perhaps a mild electuary?" Mrs. Becket's great forte had
always been the still-room, where she had graduated, as a slip of a
girl, under Lavendale's grandmother, a skilful compounder of herbs and
simples, and all household medicines and confectioneries.
"Nay, my good Becket, I have no occasion for your clever prescriptions.
I am perfectly well; only a little tired after my long ride."
"Your lordship's supper will be served in ten minutes, in the red
parlour."
"My good soul, I have no stomach for supper. I dined--no, by the way, I
did not dine, but I ate something before I left town."
"Nay, indeed, if your lordship had no dinner you ought to enjoy a split
pullet and a dish of stewed cheese. I grilled the pullet with my own
hands, to make sure of despatch. And Thomas has taken up a couple of
bottles of your lordship's favourite Burgundy."
"Well, I will taste your pullet with a glass of Burgundy. What is the
hour?"
"Nearly eleven. Your lordship's bedchamber is being prepared."
"I have my wakeful fit on, and shall not retire early. No one need sit
up for me. I shall want nothing after I have supped."
"Your lordship is always considerate."
"And now go, my good Becket, and attend to Vincenti. He is a fit subject
for some of your old-fashioned family medicines."
Lavendale smiled at the thought of handing over the adept to the tender
mercies of his grandmother's pupil--the student of Paracelsus and Roger
Bacon to the household practitioner, learned in the traditions of
village midwives and itinerant herbalists, and the elaborate
prescriptions of ancient ladies handed down from mother to daughter from
the dark night of the Middle Ages, not altogether free from the savour
of witchcraft. He was in a mood to wonder whether Paracelsus and the
Ghebir Arabs were any cleverer than those ancient ladies who spent their
mornings, aproned and bibbed, in the busy seclusion of the still-room.
He repaired to the red parlour, but although he had eaten scarcely
anything since the supper at Vauxhall he had no appetite for Mrs.
Becket's savoury pullet or smoking dish of cheese. His lips were
parched, and food was distasteful to him; but he finished a bottle of
Burgundy before he went back to the library, where he had his papers to
look over and arrange on the eve of an exile that might be long.
The spacious seldom-inhabited room had a desolate aspect, dimly lighted
by two pairs of wax candles in massive silver candlesticks. One pair
stood on a bureau at the end of the room, the other on his lordship's
scrutoire. The long windows were open to the summer night, the moon was
rising, and her faint pale light shone in upon the empty floor.
Lavendale unlocked drawers, and took out papers from secret recesses,
and occupied himself closely for the next hour in a scrutiny of his
affairs, seriously trying, for the first time since his majority, to
discover how much of his inheritance he had wasted, and what amount of
assured income yet remained to him.
His list of rents looked well, but against his rental he had to put the
interest of mortgages; and when these were all told the balance in his
favour was but slender.
"Well, I shall be as nearly a pauper as a man of rank can well be when
these five thousand pounds are gone," he said to himself, "and when I am
dead Judith will have to live upon her settlement. 'Tis an ugly
look-out. She has extravagant tastes, too, and has been accustomed since
her marriage to fling money about at random; to gratify every whim, riot
in every luxury. Will she not curse me years hence when she finds
herself reduced to the narrower limit of her pin-money, which, however
handsome, will hardly allow her to melt pearls, like Cleopatra, or to
venture in every lottery, bid for every Chinese monster and Indian
screen, and entertain a crowd of flatterers at every meal, to say
nothing of ombre and quadrille?" And then he told himself that Judith
had only been extravagant because she was unhappy. That all her follies
had been but the endeavour to stop the pain of an aching heart, with the
anodyne of frivolous pleasures. She had told him once that she would be
true to him in poverty and every ill; told him with her arms round his
neck, that night they swore fidelity to each other in the little Chinese
room at Lady Skirmisham's, when both were free and such vows were
innocent. Had the world so changed her that she would be less
disinterested now, when in the maturity of her womanhood she was to give
herself to him freely, deeming the world well lost for love? "What is
the world that any woman should regret the loss of it?" he thought: "a
raree-show, a kind of modish Bartholomew Fair, where wits and beauties,
politicians and heroes, are all of them as false, and many of them as
thickly painted, as any mummer at Smithfield. No, I will not be such a
fool as to feel remorse at stealing my beloved from such a world as
ours."
He put away his papers and locked his scrutoire with a sigh, finding
himself even poorer than he had thought. And then he began to pace the
room in a reverie. It was nearly midnight, but he had no inclination for
sleep. His brain was a vortex of busy thoughts. His imagination flew
from one subject to another with restless variety--now anticipating
evil, now dreaming of an idyllic bliss, unbroken by a cloud.
Then that shadow of fear, that vague apprehension of unknown evil which
had been upon him all day, seemed suddenly to deepen, until it wrapped
him round like a pall. The absolute silence of the house oppressed his
spirits. He had heard doors locked and bolted, and footsteps retiring an
hour ago. The household was asleep, remote from that spacious library,
which was in a wing apart, ending in the chapel. He could hardly have
been more lonely in the depths of a forest; and to-night, for the first
time within his memory of himself, solitude seemed an evil.
He tried to picture to-morrow night and its feverish joys. At this hour
they would be travelling, as swiftly as six horses could carry them, on
the road to Dover; apprehensive of pursuit, fluttered, anxious, yet
infinitely happy. Yonder waning moon would be shining upon them seated
side by side, their lives linked for ever--the last irrevocable step
taken--the world defied.
"O, happy night, would it were come! would I could lift my soul out of
this gloom by picturing to-morrow's joy!"
He paced slowly up and down the polished floor, on which his footsteps
echoed with a dismal sound. The cold silvery moonbeams trembled upon the
sombre rows of folios and quartos, and the heavy carving of the oak
bookcases. One end of the room was in broad moonlight, the other in
shadow. The candles made only feeble patches of yellow light, scarcely
noticeable against that clearer, brighter light from the moon. Never had
the room looked so desolate or so unhomelike to Lavendale; and yet it
was the one room of all others most familiar to him and dearest from
association. It was here his mother's widowhood had been chiefly spent.
Her studious habits had made this library her chosen retreat. There was
not a book upon yonder shelves which she had not handled; and there
were few of which she had not read much or little. Her favourite authors
were assembled in one particular block, which she had classified and
arranged with her own hands. Lavendale had brought his lessons to her
many a time in this room, to ask her aid in his preparation for his
tutor. And it had been her pride and delight to help her boy in his
studies. It brought mother and son nearer together. And then came tender
counsel, gentle admonition, warning against the indulgence of a wilful
temper, hasty anger, thoughtlessness about other people's feelings--all
those failings to which high-spirited youth is prone.
Yes, he recalled those tender monitions with an aching heart. Not once
had the memory of those words held him back from sin; and yet he had
always remembered, only too late. If in the dim after-world she were
conscious of his follies, of his guilt, how would she look upon this
last sin?
"Has she memory or consciousness in that unknown world?" he asked
himself; "or was that sweet nature but a part of the universal soul
which has been reabsorbed into the infinite from which it came? O God,
could I but know! Has she whom I loved any individual existence beyond
the veil?"
He stood with clasped hands and bent head, recalling those unforgotten
tones, the mother's smile, even the caressing touch of taper fingers
lightly resting on his brow and hair. He stood thus brooding till he was
startled by a faint fluttering sound in the air near him, and looking
suddenly upward he saw a white dove which had flown in at one of the
open windows.
There was nothing particularly strange in such an apparition in the
neighbourhood of woods full of wild pigeons; and yet the sight thrilled
him. He stood watching the bird as it slowly fluttered across the room a
little way above his head, now in moonlight, now in shadow--he
remembered afterwards that the candles seemed at this time to give no
light--and fluttered on till it was lost in the shadows at the further
end of the room.
Then slowly--the bird having vanished--there grew out of the shadows a
vague luminous form, first only a spot of dim tremulous radiance, and
then gradually an appearance as of a woman's shape, faintly outlined--a
white-robed form, dimly defined against darkest shadow. It quivered
there for moments which seemed to that startled gazer a long lapse of
time, and faint as the light was, it dazzled him. He could hardly endure
the strange radiance, yet could not withdraw his gaze.
Faintly, as if from far distance, unlike any sound his ears had ever
heard, there came these words: "Repent, Lavendale, repent! Prepare for
death!"
It was his mother's voice, or a faint echo of what her voice had been in
life. Those unearthly tones were at once strange and familiar--familiar
enough to move him to tears, yet so strange as to overpower him with
terror.
Cold sweat-drops broke out upon his forehead, and he fell swooning to
the ground.