"FORGET, RENOUNCE ME, HATE WHATE'ER WAS MINE."
Mr. Topsparkle had gone to the City dinner, and Lady Judith had closed
her doors against the butterfly acquaintance whose visiting hours could
scarce be kept within reasonable limits, so eminently social was that
age in which ladies of quality met every evening to ruin each other at
cards or dice.
The sun was setting, and Judith was alone in her favourite parlour, a
fine panelled room on the first floor, with three tall narrow windows
facing westward; a room fit for a palace, with ceiling and doors painted
by Gillot, and with a chimney-piece by Grinling Gibbons, crowded with
rarest Indian cups and platters, and innumerable monsters and gods in
jade and ivory, ebony, bronze, and porcelain. The sofa and chairs were
of Gobelin tapestry, brought over by Mr. Topsparkle, and were the exact
copy of a set that had been made for Madame de Montespan. Everywhere
appeared evidences of wealth and taste. The Princess of Wales had no
such apartment. The Duchess of Kendal would have sold the curios and
rich furniture, had they been hers to turn into cash. Lady Judith
scorned her surroundings as if they had been dirt. She had always talked
contemptuously of her husband's rage for the arts, but the town took
that air of hers for suppressed pride. But of late she had felt
something worse than scorn for these costly treasures; she had felt
absolute hatred for every object associated with the man she loathed.
"Why could I not have married Lavendale, to live in a hut or a gipsy's
van?" she thought; and it seemed to her as if all the luxuries in which
she had rioted, the cup of pleasure which she had drained to the dregs,
had been odious to her from the very beginning. It was a phase of
ingratitude, perhaps, to which runaway wives are subject.
"Thank God, I shall be far away from this rubbish to-morrow," she said
to herself, pacing up and down the room, impatient for the hour which
should bring her freedom. "How my soul pants for solitude and
simplicity--that sweet solitude of two who in heart and mind are as one!
O, the delight of the long, careless journey to the sunny South! The
rapture of strange inns, where no one will know me as Lady Judith
Topsparkle; the fortune of the road, good or ill; bad dinners, sour
wines, garrulous landlords, changing landscapes, sea, mountain, wood,
valley--and my beloved always by my side--in sunlight and moonlight, in
calm and in storm!"
She looked at the Sèvres timepiece on the mantelshelf. How slowly the
hands moved! She almost thought they must have stopped, and went across
to listen for the beat of the pendulum. Yes, the clock was going
regularly enough: it was she whose life went so fast. No swing of the
pendulum could keep pace with that passionate heart of hers.
The sun was down; the western sky had reddened to blood colour. Hark!
there was a step on the stairs. His, of course. She stood with throbbing
heart, ready to sink into his arms.
No, it was not his step. It was firm, and light, and quick--a young
man's step, but not _his_. There was no melody she had known all her
life more familiar to her ear than Lavendale's footstep. She could not
be mistaken in that.
A footman opened the door and announced Mr. Durnford.
Lady Judith turned with an air of haughty interrogation. Her frown and
the angry flash from her dark eyes asked plainly by what right he
approached her at such an hour. And then she remembered the closeness of
the friendship between Durnford and Lavendale, and her heart sank with a
sudden fear.
"Is his lordship ill?" she asked eagerly, as if the world knew but one
lordship.
"No, madam; but I come from him. I am the bearer of a letter."
He took a sealed letter from his breast-pocket and handed it to her.
She snatched it from him, and turned to the window, where there was just
light enough to read it, her bosom heaving, her cheeks whitening to the
hue of her powdered hair.
The letter was all tenderness: a letter of renunciation and farewell,
eloquent with saddest feeling: a letter which to a less imperious
nature might have been salvation. But Judith wanted to go to perdition
her own way; and on a woman bent upon losing her soul for her lover, all
unselfish reasoning must needs be wasted.
"Have _I_ counted the cost?" she asked herself, "and if not I, why
should he be so punctilious? Lavendale! Lavendale, whose very name is a
synonym for dissipation and debauchery--for _him_ to turn mentor and
lecture me! O, it is too much!" and then, turning fiercely upon
Durnford, she exclaimed,
"This is your work, sir."
"Indeed, no, madam."
"Indeed, yes, sir. You know all about this letter. You stood by his
elbow while he wrote--you dictated it. 'Tis _your_ new-fledged sobriety
that has come between my love and me. What, after his letter of
yesterday, burning with passion, he writes to-day like a schoolmaster,
and preaches of repentance and the fear of a lifelong remorse. What is
my remorse to him, if it ever came, when he has my love--my soul's
devoted illimitable love? Why, I would hang upon the wheel beside him,
hang there and suffer. I would endure the torments that slew Ravaillac,
the tortures Brinvilliers suffered, for his sake; and shall I fear the
scorn of a little world in which there are scarce half a dozen virtuous
women? Mr. Durnford, to speak freely, since you doubtless know all that
has passed between his lordship and me--I can tell you that I _have_
counted the cost, and esteem it a _bagatelle_. So I pray you take back
my lord's letter, which your virtue has inspired, and bid him come to me
at once. I want to see him, and not wise sentences dictated by another."
"I can assure your ladyship I had no part in that letter. 'Twas my
friend's own impulse moved him to write. It is by his wish I am here to
bring you his farewell."
"Pshaw! I tell you, sir, I see through it all. Your protestations are
useless. Go and send his lordship to me this instant."
"That were not easy, madam. Lord Lavendale is at his place in Surrey,
thirty miles from London."
"He is thirty miles off, when I have been expecting him here every
moment, when I have made all my plans--looked my last at this hateful
house--was ready to fling on my cloak and go with him. O, the trickster,
the poltroon, to play fast and loose with the woman who loves him! Tell
your master, sir, that he is no gentleman, or he would never have penned
that letter."
"I have no master, madam; and I protest, my friend Lavendale was never a
truer gentleman than when he renounced a lady whom he adores."
"I do not believe in his adoration. He has basely lied to me. It was a
caprice--a transient fancy--an amusement--a wager, perhaps. Yes, a
wager, like his affair with Chichinette. He has wagered a thousand or so
that he would bring me to the brink of an elopement, and now he and his
friends are laughing at me."
"You know his heart too well to suspect him of such baseness, madam.
Believe me that it is in your interest alone that letter was written.
Lord Lavendale's absence to-night is the highest proof he can give you
of his love--a self-sacrificing love."
"He is a coward--a coward to strike such a blow! He knows how I love
him." She burst into tears, and fell sobbing upon her sofa, her face
hidden, her hands clasped above her head, all her body shaken by the
vehemence of her grief.
O, bright dream that she had dreamt--never to be realised! That glorious
vision of life in sunny lands, a life that should have been an endless
love-song--gay, flowing, melodious as a ballad by Suckling or Prior. The
journey, whose every stage fancy had pictured; the fetterless existence,
unoppressed by the restraints of ceremony, or the formalities of a
Court--life lived for its own sake, not to please the public eye. And he
baulked her every hope; he flung her back upon the husband she
loathed--the splendour of which she was sick unto death. He told her
that for her sake it was best they should part; that reputation is the
jewel of a woman's life; that he had reflected in solitude and silence
upon the sacrifice she had been about to make for him; and that
reflection had convinced him he would be a scoundrel to accept such a
sacrifice. Loving her passionately, devoted to her with all his heart,
honour constrained him to bid her adieu for ever.
"Coward, coward, coward!" she hissed between her clenched teeth, when
there came a lull in her storm of grief.
Then she rose in her wrath, tall as Juno, straight as a dart, and faced
Herrick with a sardonic smile.
"Well, sir, we have played out our comedy (his lordship and I), and the
play is somewhat shorter than I fancied it would be; the curtain is
down, and the candles are out; the spectators can all go home again. If
'twas not a wager on his lordship's side, 'twas almost as pretty a
device any way. I acknowledge that you and he are winners: you have had
the best of me."
She made him a low curtsy, one of those graceful sweeping curtsies of
the patch and powder period which are an extinct art. She swept the
ground with her brocade train and rose again, swan-like, or like a new
Venus rising from billows of silk and lace. She had dashed the tears
from her cheeks, and when the footman came in presently to light the
candles in the sconces, there was no sign of grief upon her face, save
its unnatural pallor, and the hectic spot on each cheek which
intensified that livid whiteness.
"Is it an impertinence to wish you good-night, Mr. Durnford?" she asked,
when the servant had retired.
"Nay, Lady Judith, I would not trespass on your courtesy for another
moment." He bowed, and was departing, when she stopped him.
"There was a wagon to carry my trunks to New Cross," she said. "It will
look foolish if my luggage is diverted that way while I--"
"The wagon has been stopped, madam. I saw to that an hour ago."
"Then there is no more to be said, and his lordship need apprehend no
ill-consequences from his--jest."
"Lady Judith, I am convinced you know better than--"
"I know nothing, sir, except that I have been fooled," she answered, her
eyes flashing angry fire at him from under the darkly-pencilled brows.
"Why are you such ages in taking your leave? Good-night, sir,
good-night."
She pulled a bell-rope with an impetuous hand, which sent a loud ringing
through the silent house. Two lacqueys flew to answer her summons,
thinking there was something amiss.
"The door!" she said. "Show Mr. Durnford to his chair."
The moment he was gone she flung herself upon her sofa, tore down the
elaborate edifice of powdered locks, plucked open her bodice, and
abandoned herself to a fit of hysteria. She lay, face downwards, on the
sofa in her disorder and dejection, like Cleopatra after Actium, when
Cæsar's swift galleys had come down upon her, and all the intoxication
of false hope was over.
She lay thus for about a quarter of an hour--a long agony--and then rose
suddenly and hurried to her dressing-room, which was the adjoining
apartment.
Here she changed her brocade for an Indian silk nightgown, bathed her
swollen eyelids with scented water, and gathered up her streaming locks
before she rang for her maid.
"I have changed my mind, Zélie," she said; "I shall go to Lady Townley's
drum. My headache is cured."
Zélie expressed herself enchanted, despatched messengers right and left
for her ladyship's hair-dresser and her ladyship's chairmen, lighted the
candles in her ladyship's powdering-closet, brought forth jewel-cases,
satin trains, brocaded sacques, embroidered petticoats, for choice.
"I will wear white," said Judith, without so much as a side-glance at
that heap of finery; "nothing but white. I have a foolish fancy, Zélie.
I should like to look a bride."
"Her ladyship has always a bridal air, a fresh young beauty which shines
out amidst all other faces," protested the Frenchwoman.
"Fresh! Young!" cried Judith. "Don't mock me, girl! I feel like the
Witch of Endor. But for sport I'll dress as a bride."
And so, dazzling in white satin and white velvet, with a string of
priceless pearls twisted amidst her powdered hair, and a plume of snowy
ostrich feathers drooping upon her ivory shoulders, Lady Judith
Topsparkle appeared at Lady Townley's drum, which was an assemblage of
all the best people in town. Chesterfield was there, big with his
mission to the Hague, and his successes among burgomasters' fat wives.
Hervey and his beautiful young wife were among the gayest spirits; and
Pulteney, punning in Greek, flushed with his fourth bottle; and
Bolingbroke, whose easy equability no potations could ever disturb.
The bucks and beaux all gathered round that radiant creature, whose
insolence charmed them more than the amiability of other women, and who
could keep them all at a distance, yet draw them as the magnet draws
iron; could have them fluttering about her and following her from room
to room, yet never say too kind a word or return too ardent a glance. To
one only had she been kind; for one only had those brilliant eyes melted
to softness.
To-night she was at her gayest. Every one noticed her vivacity; the
women with malevolent shrewdness.
"Lady Judith must have been losing at cards," said one. "There is an
affectation in that arrogant mirth of hers which hides some secret
agony."
"She may have been backing race-horses at Newmarket," replied another.
"I have heard her betting with Chesterfield."
"Or she may have quarrelled with Lavendale," hazarded a cantankerous
mother of three plain daughters.
"What, is that affair begun again?"
"It began the day he came back to England, I believe. They took up the
story at the very page where they left off. The only difference was Mr.
Topsparkle, and he seems the essence of good-nature."
Durnford looked in late at the party, after a stormy sitting in the
House, where Walpole was fighting for his Excise Bill, and he was
astounded at beholding Lady Judith the centre of an adoring circle. He
had left a Niobe, he found a Juno, flaming in all the glory of her
peacock car. Mr. Topsparkle came on from Soho Square when he heard his
wife had changed her mind and had gone to Lady Townley's. She could not
be too frivolous or too expensive for his humour, though he drew the
line at gambling debts. It was when she was grave that he suspected her.
And he had suspected her the other night at Vauxhall. That disappearance
in the dark walks with Lavendale had roused his ire, for at heart he
had always been jealous of that old lover; and then under a feigned
somnolence he had watched those two whispering together at the
supper-table in the King's Head arbour, and he had made up his mind that
there was mischief. He had hinted his suspicions to his wife that night
after their return to Soho, and injured innocence had taken the most
vehement form in that offended lady. Recriminations of the bitterest
kind had followed: he had reproached her with her extravagance, her
passion for dice, cards, lotteries, and race-horses; he had taunted her
with the poverty of her girlhood, her concealed eagerness to trap a rich
husband.
"Was I eager for you?" she asked insultingly. "Did you not kneel at my
feet, amidst the other dirt, before I would have you?"
"O, you played your part cleverly," he answered; "you knew that a man of
my stamp was to be won by seeming independence. You were too old a
huckster not to know your market."
"Sell me again," she cried, "if you think you bought me too dear! Sell
me to the highest bidder. There is not a man in town to whom I would
not sooner belong than to you."
"To your old lover Lavendale, for instance."
"Ay, to Lavendale. I would rather be his slave than your queen."
"But I have not quite done with you yet. You had better be patient, and
wait till you are my widow." The argument grew more and more
acrimonious, and finally Mr. Topsparkle announced his intention of
carrying off his wife to Ringwood.
"You can play the queen there within narrower bounds," he said.
"You mean that it will be easier to watch me?"
"That is just what I mean. You are too wild a bird to fly without a
string."
After this Mr. Topsparkle had a little conversation with his ancient, M.
Fétis, who, in London, oscillated between Soho Square and his own
particular establishment in Poland Street, where he had a plump French
wife, who carried on the business in his absence: a native of Périgord,
with a fine eye and nose for truffles, and who was said to cook certain
dishes better than any _chef_ at the Court end of the town. M. Fétis
undertook to keep his eye on her ladyship. She was not the first sultana
he had guarded for his sultan. 'Twas he who met Mr. Topsparkle as he
alighted from his chair after the Guildhall dinner, with the
intelligence that Lady Judith had recovered her spirits and had gone to
Lady Townley's assembly.
"Has she had any visitors since I went out?" asked Topsparkle.
"Only Mr. Durnford. He came at dusk and stayed about half an hour."
"_About_ half an hour!" echoed his master testily. "You have a watch,
sir, and might have timed the gentleman accurately."
Topsparkle had his wig recombed and his complexion revived before he
went on to Golden Square, and appeared there as white as Lord Hervey,
and radiant with smiles.
"How our City Croesus grins!" exclaimed Pulteney to a friend, "and
what a death's-head grin it is!
'Quin et Ixion Tityosque vultu
Risit invito--'
One could imagine a shade in Tartarus with just such a ghastly smile.
And how lovely his young wife looks to-night, lovely enough to keep that
poor old atomy in perpetual torment!"