"AND WE SHALL FADE, AND LEAVE OUR TASK UNDONE."
Lavendale stayed at his Surrey manor for more than a month, seeing no
one but his old Italian friend and the servants who waited upon him, and
never once going beyond the boundary of his own domain. For some days
after his interview with Herrick Durnford he existed in a kind of
apathy, interested in nothing, but living for the most part in his own
chamber, brooding dreamily upon that luminous form which had shone upon
him out of the midnight shadows, and that spirit voice which had seemed
to him so familiar and yet so strange. In every syllable he had
recognised his mother's tones, and in that faint phantasmal semblance of
life he had beheld the outline of his mother's graceful figure and
classic head. Not for an instant did he doubt that his mother's shade
had been with him in the room where so much of their united lives had
been spent, or that the warning of his early doom had been the emanation
of his mother's mind.
He, the infidel, the student of Toland and Tindale, the friend and
associate of Voltaire, had been at once subjugated by his first
experience of a world beyond the world of sense. He did not accept that
shadowy visitant as an evidence of revealed religion; but it was to him
at least something more than a projection of his own imagination. It was
to him an assurance of a love beyond the grave, of a spiritual link
between those who have loved each other on earth, a sympathy which
corruption cannot destroy or worms devour. Out of darkness and dust his
mother's voice had called to him, "Prepare for death." She who had
taught him the Gospel at her knees now called upon him, who had lived as
an infidel, to die as a Christian.
Not for an instant did he doubt that warning. It was not the first; but
all previous warnings had been purely physical. That sudden agony which
had seized him on two or three occasions at long intervals within the
last three or four years had warned him of organic disease. His heart
had been tortured by that acute anguish which tells of the hardening of
the valves; and though the fit had passed quickly, cured by a medicine
which Vincenti had prepared for him, it had left him weakened and
depressed. He had never cared to question Vincenti as to the cause of
that pain, or to consult any better qualified adviser; but he knew that
the symptom must point to some organic evil, something of which the end
might be death.
And now, having deliberately renounced that which he deemed his final
chance of happiness, he sat alone in that spacious library where he had
seen the vision, and brooded over the past, the fatal irrevocable past,
with all its storm and fury and its small sum of happiness, and
wondered, with a half-apathetic wonder, what his life would have been
like if he had been a good Christian.
"It is hard to argue by analogy, since the type is so rare in the world
I have lived in," he mused. "The good Christian is a modest creature,
who generally hides his light under a bushel, though the Gospel warns
him against such self-extinguishment. I have known sceptics of every
colour, from the Queen, who patronises churchmen and philanders with
philosophers, to Bolingbroke, who fears neither man nor God; but of
Christians how few! There was Addison, whose boasted Christianity was at
best a matter of temperament--nature had given him an easy disposition
and a love of sound Oporto. There was Steele, full of pious aspirations
and pot-house inclinations, always sinning and for ever repenting. There
is our mock Diogenes, Jonathan Swift! Shall I count that supple courtier
and arrogant place-hunter, that bold renegade, a disciple of Him whose
gospel was meekness and whose life was spent in doing good? Shall I call
bluff Walpole a Christian? No; in all true Christianity there must be a
touch of asceticism, and there is nothing of the ascetic in our
fox-hunting Treasurer. Even Atterbury is not altogether free from the
taint of worldliness, and would rather play king-maker amidst the
turmoil of plot and counterplot than educate himself for heaven in the
obscurity of exile. The ideal Christian is an extinct species; and
methinks the most pious man I know is old Vincenti yonder, with his
solemn reverence for that terrible name which the lips of the adept dare
not utter. Only among the votaries of the sacred art is that profound
conception of God--a God whose very name, written within the symbol of
the Trinity, can move mountains, transmute metals, change and overthrow
the four elements. Yes, that is the highest religion I have ever met
with since the childlike faith of my mother. Would I could believe, as
that old man believes, in the mystery of a master mind ruling and
pervading the universe! But to believe only in clay--mere corruptible
flesh, which the worms are to eat within a given number of years--that
means contempt for good and recklessness in evil."
Night after night, through the slow changes of two moons, did Lavendale
watch in the room where he had seen his mother's spirit; but the
luminous shape appeared no more, although the mind of the watcher was
attuned to the supernatural. He had told no one of the thing which he
had seen, not even the Italian, whose researches he had of late been
assisting. He found the only distraction from gloomy thoughts in the
patient watching of experiments, the ministering service of the
laboratory. Here Judith's image haunted him less persistently, here he
could for a while forget all things except the secrets of alchemy.
He had heard several times from Durnford, who was in the thick of
political strife, and was hand in glove with the Treasurer. Lady Judith
had been carried off to Ringwood Abbey as her husband had threatened,
and was queening it there over a distinguished party. Durnford had been
invited, and had gone there at Lavendale's importunate request. "Tell me
that she is not sunk in misery, nor ill-treated by a jealous tyrant," he
wrote. "I am agonised by apprehensions of the evil my folly may have
brought upon her. The monster of jealousy has been awakened, and by my
heedlessness. Should she suffer wrong or contumely, and I not be near to
defend her, I should feel that my sacrifice was all in vain--that it
would have been better to defy Fate and snatch her to this longing
breast. If you will not be my friend in this, if you cannot be my second
self and watch and protect her for me, I will not answer for the
consequences. I cannot command my actions should I find that she is
wretched. See for yourself that all is well with her, and I shall be at
peace."
This, which was not the first adjuration of a like character, impelled
Durnford to accept Mr. Topsparkle's pressing invitation, given at the
St. James's Coffee House, where the gentleman spent an occasional
evening when caprice called him from the country to the town.
"Your hospitality would tempt an anchorite," said Herrick, when
Topsparkle grew urgent; "but I know not how her ladyship will receive
me. I believe she is at heart a Tory, and that my Whiggish principles
inspire her with disgust."
"Pshaw, my dear sir! women know nothing of principles. They believe only
in persons and things. Judith is a Tory because my Lord Bolingbroke has
the tongue of the first tempter, and would lure all the women in England
to his side could he but have their ears as he has Judith's. And then
there is Swift, whose magnetic gray eyes and fierce black brows command
all womankind to think as he wishes. That fiery spirit was in full sway
at Ringwood when I left them t'other day, making jingling rhymes about
everything, and hectoring and domineering over everybody; all rollicking
spirits one hour, all gloom the next. I should never be surprised to
hear of that man as a patient in Bedlam."
"He has need for an occasional gloomy fit," said Durnford, "if he ever
thinks of the woman who died and the woman who is dying of his cruelty."
"O, fie now! they say he is wondrous civil to Mrs. Johnson, and that if
he keeps her somewhat shabbily and has denied her the satisfaction of
marriage, he writes her the prettiest letters imaginable in a kind of
baby-language which is unintelligible to everybody but themselves."
"If his secret language is anything like his occasional verses it must
be exceedingly modest and appropriate for the perusal of a lady," said
Durnford.
"O, the Dean has a somewhat libertine fancy, and is mighty outspoken,"
answered Topsparkle; "but I am told Mrs. Esther can relish a jest, and
even pay our modern Rabelais in his own coin. But you will allow that
'Cadenus and Vanessa,' the poem he wrote in honour of Miss Vanhomrigh,
is modesty itself."
"'Tis the most insidious devilish compliment that was ever penned,"
cried Durnford indignantly. "'Tis sage experienced five-and-forty
gloating over the trusting passion of innocent eighteen. I cannot
restrain my indignation when I remember that warm-hearted impetuous
girl, bold in her ignorance of wrong, whose love he deliberately won and
as deliberately slighted when 'twas won. If ever there was murder done
on this earth, 'twas Swift's assassination of Miss Vanhomrigh. I had the
facts in all their naked cruelty from his bosom friend Sheridan. I
cannot admire the genius of a Titan when it is allied with the heart of
a savage."
"O, damn it, sir! we must bow to genius wherever we find it," said
Topsparkle peevishly; "we have nothing to do with hearts. Swift is the
cleverest man in the three kingdoms, and can make or mar a ministry. He
dined at Chelsea t'other day, and I am told Sir Robert means to give him
the next English bishopric that falls in."
Durnford went to Ringwood, rather to please his friend than for his own
pleasure; though it was to his interest as a rising politician to be a
guest in a house where there were so many notable people.
To his astonishment Lady Judith received him with smiles, gave him an
almost caressing welcome, presented him to her most distinguished
visitors, and let them see she wished him to be favoured. However her
wounds might rankle, she concealed them completely under that smiling
radiant countenance which shed sunlight upon her little world.
"Ausa et jacentem visere regiam
Vultu sereno,"
mused Durnford. "She has all Cleopatra's audacious pride as well as
Cleopatra's power to charm. I cannot wonder that Lavendale adores her."
He told his friend that he need not be uneasy about his divinity. "So
far as seeming can show, her ladyship is happy," he wrote, "and has
forgotten her disappointed love. There is no such chameleon as a woman
of fashion. I left her a heart-broken Ariadne. I find her as gay as
Lady Lurewell. Ah, my dear Jack, would thou couldst transfer those warm
affections of thine to some honourable object, and that I might see thee
as happy as I am in my love for Irene!"
There was some comfort for Lavendale in this letter, or at least the
assurance that Judith had neither abandoned herself to despair nor was
the victim of open tyranny on the part of Mr. Topsparkle. A jealous
husband must needs suppress all rancorous feeling in a house full of
company, and surrounded by a circle of brilliant friends, Judith would
be all-powerful to resist marital oppression, were the gentleman
disposed to be cruel. Lavendale argued that if Topsparkle meant mischief
he would have secluded his wife altogether from that great world in
which she possessed so much influence. He would have carried her off to
the Continent, to some baronial castle in Germany, or to his Venetian
palace, where she would hear nothing by day or night except the lapping
of the water against the stones or the monotonous song of the gondolier.
That she was still in the public eye, still the cynosure of such men as
Bolingbroke and Swift, argued that her liberty was in no peril, her
life subjugated by no vindictive tyranny.
This was well; but was it well that she could live and be gay without
him, that she could surrender the sweet dream they had dreamt, and
recover all her old air of happiness, while for him life was so dull a
burden, and time one long agony of regret? Was it well that some women
should be such light and buoyant creatures, while others break their
hearts so easily?
"She was born so," he said to himself; "a beautiful radiant apparition,
perfection from top to toe, except for the want of a heart. That organ
was omitted in her composition." He tried to distract himself from all
such bitter fancies in the laboratory, where Vincenti was delighted to
have him for pupil and assistant. Lavendale went to work with new
earnestness, and had the air of an adept rather than of a neophyte
merely flirting with science.
Vincenti had recovered from that short sharp touch of fever, which had
been but the perturbation of the overworked brain acting upon a fragile
body. A few days and nights of rest, so complete as to seem almost
suspension of being, had exercised a revivifying effect, and the student
looked and moved and spoke with such a renewal of energy that he might
fairly be said to appear ten years younger than before his illness.
"I told you that I was on the threshold of success," he said, when
Lavendale remarked the change in him; "from the prolongation of life in
easy stages by a few years gained now and then, to the prolongation of
life into infinity, which shall make the adept immortal, is but a
natural sequence; but the day will come when chemistry and Hawksbee's
electric machine will abolish death. What is death but the going out of
a light? and if we can so contrive that the light shall burn for ever--"
"O, horrible contingency, most hideous possibility!" exclaimed
Lavendale. "A world peopled with Wandering Jews--a population of
Barbarossas, with minds worn to one dull level in the dismal experiences
of centuries; with memories over-charged, hearts dead to all warm
affection. If science can bring about such a universe, science must be
an emanation of the devil."
"When you are as old as I am, and the king of terrors is standing at
your shoulder, you may be glad of a weapon with which to strike him
off," said Vincenti.
"I shall not live to be old, friend. My doom is fixed."
"Why do you say that?"
"A dream--a fancy."
"Trust to neither dream nor fancy. Let me cast your nativity. You have
often refused me--for what reason I know not."
"For a very simple one. I have always had a conviction that I was not
born to be fortunate or happy; and evil fortune comes with so sure and
swift a foot that he would be a fool who would add the needless agony of
expectation to the inevitable doom."
"But since you have brooded over a dream, a mere disturbance of the
brain, it were better to consult the stars."
"No, Vincenti. For myself I will seek no further knowledge. 'Tu ne
quæsieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi, finem Di dederint.' But in
this house you may easily discover the hour of my birth, which you have
often asked me when we were abroad, and which I had forgotten. The old
family Bible is in the next room, and in that I know my father recorded
the date and hour of my advent here, as it had been the custom in his
family to record all such events, however insignificant in their
influence upon the world. If you choose to satisfy your own curiosity--"
"To satisfy my own keen interest in your welfare, you should say, my
lord," replied the Italian eagerly. "Yes, if the day and hour are there
correctly entered, I will cast your nativity."
"Do so, but breathe not a word to me of the result; I would not be wiser
than I am."
"I will be dumb."
"The Bible is with other folios in the lowest shelf on the right hand of
the fireplace."
"I will find it."
No more was said upon the subject, but although Lavendale had sternly
forbidden the student to tell him the result of his calculations, the
matter haunted him for a long time after their discussion. He looked
next day to see if the dust which lay thick upon the top of the folio
Bible had been stirred, and he saw that the book had been removed and
replaced again. It was altered in position, and set further back in the
bookcase than it had been the day before.
After this he found himself wondering when and where Vincenti would
trace his horoscope, but for several nights afterwards they were both
engaged till daybreak in the progress of experiments which needed much
time and patience. It did not seem as if Vincenti were eager for an
opportunity to question the stars upon his patron's fate, and Lavendale
was inclined to think that the desire to do so had faded out of his
mind.
For his own part he was determined to seek no further revelation than
that which had been vouchsafed to him, and in which he firmly believed.
From his mother's gentle spirit, and from that source alone, would he
accept the prophecy of his doom.
"To rejoin her, to be at peace with her, to begin a new life at her
knees, to be a little child again, melted to tears at her voice, soothed
by the touch of her hand," he thought, "that were indeed to be in
heaven. My mind can conceive no higher paradise. I am not attuned to the
company of angels and archangels, but I could be superlatively happy in
the companionship of a purified being whom I knew and adored on earth,
and whose unfading presence would in itself constitute my heaven."
One night when their experiments had been more than usually successful,
and Vincenti expanded from his customary reserve, he spoke upon a
subject to which he but rarely alluded. That subject was one of which
Lavendale was keenly anxious to know more--the experimentalist's past
life.
The old man had been speaking of a successful experiment made forty
years ago at Venice.
"How near I seemed to the realisation of my boldest dreams at that
time!" he exclaimed, in a trance of memory; "what mighty mysteries, what
potent secrets seemed within my grasp! yet forty years have gone since
then, and my progress has been by infinitesimal stages! And yet it is
progress. I can look back and count the milestones on the road--only it
is a long road, Lavendale, a long road!"
There was a silence. Vincenti was deep in thought. Lavendale forbore
from any word which could stem the current of memory, for he saw that it
was running in the direction of that period in the experimentalist's
history about which he was keenly curious--the period of his
acquaintance with Vyvyan Topsparkle.
"I had a pupil, too, in those days," he said, "an assistant who was far
beyond you in skill, for he had been educated as a chemist; but O, what
a villain, what a consummate traitor and scoundrel! How I loved that
man, loved him as the incarnation of my own knowledge! I had trained
him, I had illumined that quick receptive mind, which was all darkness
till I opened the book of occult knowledge before his startled eyes! He
had trodden only in beaten tracks, along the level roads of earth, till
then. I took him out upon the mountain-tops of science! I set him face
to face with the stars! And he repaid me! Great Ruler of the universe,
Thou knowest how that devil turned and rent me!"
"He was the man I have most cause to hate--Vyvyan Topsparkle!" Lavendale
cried eagerly, forgetful of everything in his eager curiosity.
"Topsparkle! what do you know of Topsparkle? Ah, I remember. He stole
your betrothed."
"No, friend. He did not steal, he bought her," said Lavendale bitterly.
"Women of fashion are not stolen. They have their price like other
marketable goods; their fathers and mothers are the hucksters. But this
pupil of yours--was he not Vyvyan Topsparkle? He has the air of a man
who has dabbled in magic."
"Vyvyan Topsparkle never passed the threshold of my laboratory. The man
I speak of was his servant and tool, and a darker villain than himself,
surpassing him in all things, in cleverness and craft and unscrupulous
wickedness. Satan himself, not any other devil in hell, could surpass
_him_."
"Do you mean his _âme damnée_, his valet and familiar, Fétis?"
"Yes, Fétis; a man of extraordinary capacity, a man who might have
excelled as a scientific chemist had he been less infamous in character,
a man of unbounded talent, who has perverted every gift to the basest
uses. I was at once his master and his dupe."
"Tell me all you know of him, and let me help you to your revenge if he
ever wronged you," said Lavendale eagerly. "I had good reason for hating
the master, but I had no prejudice against the valet; and yet, from the
moment I first saw him in a London chocolate-house to the last time he
passed me in Topsparkle's hall in Soho Square, I have recoiled
instinctively from that sleek waxen-faced Frenchman, as from some
noisome vermin, whose worst propensities I only guessed at. I loathe him
as I loathe a rat, without knowing why. If he has committed any crime in
the past which can be brought home to him in the present let me help to
bring about retribution."
"There are crimes not easy to prove. I _know_ him to be the vilest of
men, the subtle go-between, the corrupter of innocence. I believe him to
have been a secret poisoner."
"You think he was concerned in the death of Topsparkle's Italian
mistress?"
"I believe him to have been her murderer. He is by far the bolder
villain. His master's self-love would have stopped at murder. He would
not have risked the gallows even in the white heat of jealousy. He might
suggest a crime, but would hardly be bold enough to execute it."
"Tell me all you suspect, and your grounds for suspicion," urged
Lavendale; "you know that you can trust me--you know I am your friend."
"The only friend I have had for more than forty years," answered the old
man, with a look of extreme tenderness, as if all of humanity that
remained in him spoke in those few words. "Yes, you were a friend to old
age, and sickness, and poverty, three things which the selfish worldling
hates. You, the man of pleasure, turned out of your pathway to succour
helplessness, burdened yourself with the fate of a stranger, lengthened
out the days which were so nearly done, renewed the almost expiring
flame. I owe you all I am and all I hope to be. My success, if it ever
come, will be your work."
"Trust me, then; hide nothing from me of that past life of yours with
which Vyvyan Topsparkle was associated. You can do me no greater service
than to help me to the comprehension of that man's character. I thirst
for the knowledge. It can do me no good, perhaps. What can I do to save
my love from the master to whom she is sold in bondage? That tie cannot
be broken, save by her ruin and disgrace! She must wear her golden
fetters to the end. But I want to know--I want to know."
He was speaking in broken sentences, full of passionate excitement,
pacing backwards and forwards across the empty space in front of the
furnaces. The high wide windows were luminous with the first faint glow
of dawn. In that clear light both faces looked wan and haggard; but the
face of the pupil was touched with indications of decay which showed not
in the wrinkled visage of the master. The face of the young man told of
life that had been wasted, health and vigour for ever gone. The face of
the old man told only of time and labour, a parchment mask, lighted by
the flame of hope and expectancy, keen, intent, watchful.
"I will trust you fully," answered Vincenti, after a long pause. "I have
always intended to perpetuate my knowledge of that man's infamy, and of
his instrument in baseness, Louis Fétis. If I have trifled with my
purpose it has been that I have sacrificed all earthly thoughts to the
hope of the discoverer--merged all individual griefs in the anxiety of
the searcher after truth. And then I had been told that Topsparkle was
in a monastery, doing penance for his wicked life--anticipating Divine
Judgment by the scourge and the hair-shirt--and I could afford to let my
revenge sleep. But your description of his renewed youth, his insolence
of wealth and splendour, his triumph in the possession of a handsome
wife and the flattery of the town, was too much for my patience. Yes,
that roused the sleeping lion. I have thought of him much since that
night--I have thought of her who loved and trusted him."
"She was of your own blood!" exclaimed Lavendale; "I guessed as much
even that night when you first spoke of her. You would have scarcely
felt a stranger's wrong so keenly."
"You were right. She was my granddaughter, my only son's only
daughter--the crystallisation of many generations which had been slowly
dwindling to a point. She came of one of the good old families of
Venice, a race as old as the Medicis, and more honourable, for it was
unstained by treachery or crime. Shortly after her father's death, when
the memory of that double murder was still fresh in my mind, when grief
was still at its keenest period, I wrote out a record of the wicked
story, which you shall read."
"At once?"
"Yes, there is no occasion for delay. The paper is in yonder chest, and
I can easily find it for you. Read it, and imprint every word upon your
memory, and then bring me back the manuscript. I have not yet made up my
mind as to its ultimate destination. Vyvyan Topsparkle's guilt is beyond
the reach of the law, but I may at least unmask him."
"True," said Lavendale, "the publication of that story would brand him
with infamy, and all but the very lowest class of fawners and sycophants
must needs fall away from him. But to revive that half-forgotten
slander would be to degrade Lady Judith. As matters now stand she can at
least enjoy the price for which she was bought: splendour, luxury,
modish society, the consideration of the great world. Take from her
those advantages, and she were indeed desolate."
"You blow hot and cold," said Vincenti. "A little while ago you were
eager to be revenged upon the man who stole your sweetheart."
"Yes, if I could strike him without injuring her; but reflection tells
me that I cannot. Her position as a fine lady is her most vulnerable
point. To degrade him were to abase her. But pray let me have your
manuscript. I will restore it in an hour, unless it is much longer than
I suppose."
"No; it is not a long story," answered Vincenti, going over to an old
oak chest which he had filled with books and papers.
The manuscript was in an iron strong-box at the bottom of the chest.
Vincenti had to remove a heap of papers before he arrived at the box,
which he unlocked with a key that hung on his watch-chain. The
manuscript consisted of about half a quire of letter-paper, closely
covered with a small regular penmanship, the ink paled by the passage of
years.
"That record was written forty years ago," said Vincenti, as he gave it
to Lord Lavendale.
"And you were then old enough to have a grown-up granddaughter," said
Lavendale, curious about a subject upon which he had never dared
directly to question his friend.
"I was then seventy years of age. You see that however imperfect my
knowledge may be, I have at least learnt the secret of prolonging life
beyond its ordinary limits."
"You are a wonderful man."
"I have not wasted vital power upon the follies men call pleasure,"
replied Vincenti calmly, as he went back to his alembic, and
concentrated his attention upon the process in hand.
It was in some wise a relief, in some wise a disappointment to the
disciple, to discover the exact measure of the master's existence. He
had half expected to be told of a life stretching backward into the
darkness of past centuries, an existence that had begun in the age of
the earlier experimentalists, while chemistry was still in its infancy;
a memory which could recall the living presence of Albertus Magnus or
Nicolas Flamel. The years which Vincenti claimed to have lived were
beyond the common limit, but were not more than a man of exceptional
vigour and exceptional temperance might contrive to enjoy upon this
planet, spinning out his thread of life by the careful avoidance of
every perilous influence. There was nothing necessarily supernatural in
the fact that Vincenti had reached his hundred and tenth year, and had
but the appearance of seventy-five.