"AND ALL YOUR HONOUR IN A WHISPER LOST."
The great house in Soho Square was alive with movement and light, the
going and coming of guests, the setting down of chairs and squabbles of
coachmen and running footmen, the flare of torches in the autumn dusk.
The Topsparkles were in town again, everybody of importance had come to
town, to be present at the coronation, from old Duchess Sarah and her
bouquet of Duchess daughters, and her wild grandsons and lovely
granddaughters, and the mad Duchess of Buckingham, and Mary Wortley
Montagu, otherwise Moll Worthless, and the wits and beaux and Italian
singers--all the little great world of brilliant personalities,
card-playing, dicing, intriguing, dancing, masquerading, duelling,
running away with other men's wives or beating their own. The wild
whirlpool of town life was at its highest point of ebullition, all the
wheels were going madly round, and the devil and his imps had their
hands full of mischief and iniquity.
It was the first winter season of the new reign. Caroline was triumphant
in her assurance of a well-filled purse; in her security of dominion
over a dull, dogged, self-willed little husband, who was never more her
slave than when he affected to act and think for himself; happy too in
the knowledge that she had two of the cleverest men in England for her
prime minister and her chamberlain; scornfully tolerant of a rival who
helped her to bear the burden of her husband's society; indulgent to all
the world, and proud of being admired and loved by the cleverest men in
her dominions. King George was happy also after his sober fashion,
oscillating between St. James's and Richmond, with a secret hankering
for Hanover, hating his eldest son, and with no passionate attachment to
any other member of his numerous progeny. Amidst the brilliant Court
circle there were few ladies whom the Queen favoured above Judith
Topsparkle. She had even condescended so far as to wear the famous
Topsparkle diamonds at her coronation; for of all Queen Anne's jewels
but a pearl necklace or so descended to Queen Caroline, and it was
generally supposed that his late Majesty had ransacked the royal
jewel-caskets for gems to adorn his German mistresses, the fat and the
lean; while perchance his later English sultana, bold Miss Brett, may
have decked her handsome person with a few of those kingly treasures. At
any rate, there was but little left to adorn Queen Caroline, who was
fain to blaze on her coronation-day with a borrowed lustre.
It was November; the Houses were sitting, and Lavendale, after a period
of complete seclusion and social extinguishment, had startled the town
in a new character, as politician and orator. Perchance his friend's
success in the Lower House may have stimulated his ambition, or his
appearance in the senate may have been a whim of the moment in one whose
actions had been too often governed by whim; but whatever the motive,
Lord Lavendale startled the peers by one of the finest speeches that had
been made in that august assembly for some time; and the House of Lords
in the dawn of the Hanoverian dynasty was an assembly which exercised a
far more potent influence for good or evil than the Upper House of that
triply reformed Parliament which we boast of to-day.
People talked about Lord Lavendale's speech for at least a fortnight. It
was not so much that the oration itself had been really fine and had
vividly impressed those who heard it, but it was rather that such
dignified opposition, such grave invective, and sound logic came from a
survivor of the Mohawk and of the Calf's Head Clubs, a notorious rake
and reveller, a man whose name five years ago had been a synonym for
modish profligacy. It was as when Lucius Junius Brutus startled the
Roman Forum; it was as when Falstaff's boon companion, wild Prince Hal,
flung off his boyish follies and stood forth in all his dignity as the
warrior king; it was a transformation that set all the town wondering;
and Lavendale, who had plunged again into the whirlpool of society,
found himself the fashion of the hour, a man with a new reputation.
Yes, he had gone back to the bustling crowded stage of Court life: he
had emerged from the hermit-like seclusion of laboratory and library,
from the wild walks and woodland beauties of Lavendale Manor. He was of
the town again, and seemed as eager for pleasure as the youngest and
gayest of the bloods and beaux of Leicester Fields and St. James's. He
attended half a dozen assemblies of an evening, looked in nightly at
opera or playhouse, gambled at White's, talked at Button's, dawdled away
an occasional morning at Dick's, reading the newest pamphlet for or
against the Government. He was seen everywhere.
"Lavendale has been in Medea's cauldron," said Captain Asterley. "He
looks ten years younger than when I saw him last summer."
"I believe the man is possessed," replied Lady Polwhele; "he has an
almost infernal gaiety. There is a malignant air about him that is
altogether new. He used to be a good-natured rake, who said malicious
things out of pure light-heartedness; but now there is a lurking devilry
in every word he utters."
"He is only imitating the mad Irish parson," said Asterley. "Your most
fashionable wit, nowadays, is a mixture of dirt and malignity such as
the Dean affects. Everybody tries to talk and write like Cadenus, since
it has been discovered that to be half a savage and more than half a
beast is the shortest road to a woman's favour."
"I believe all you men are jealous of the Dean," retorted her ladyship,
"and that is why his influential friends have conspired to keep him on
the other side of the Irish Channel. He is a fine personable man, and if
he has his savage gloomy moods, be sure he has his melting moments, or
that poor Miss Vanhomrigh would not have made such a fool of herself. I
saw her once at an auction, and thought her more than passable, and with
the manners of a lady."
* * * * *
There had been no more spurts of jealousy on the part of Mr. Topsparkle.
His wife and he had lived on the most courteous terms since last
midsummer, Lavendale's disappearance from the scene had appeased the
husband's anger. He concluded that his remonstrances had been taken in
good part, and that Lady Judith had dismissed her flirt. That Lavendale
had been anything more than her flirt Mr. Topsparkle did not believe;
but from flirt to lover is but a swift transition, and there had
assuredly been an hour of peril.
Mr. Topsparkle also had a rejuvenised air when he came up to town and
made his reappearance in distinguished circles; but what in Lavendale
was a caprice of nature, an erratic flash and sparkle of brilliancy in a
waning light, was in Topsparkle the result of premeditated care and the
highest development of restorative art. He had vegetated for the last
three months at Ringwood Abbey, leaving his wife to do all the hard work
of entertaining visitors, and sleeping through the greater portion of
his existence; and now he reappeared in London full of energy and
vivacity, and with an air of superiority to most of the younger men, who
were content to show themselves in their true colours as exhausted
debauchees, men who had drained the cup of sensual pleasure to the
dregs, and whose jaded intellects were too feeble to originate any new
departure in vicious amusements.
Though in society Mr. Topsparkle affected to be only the connoisseur,
dilettante, and man of fashion, there was a leaven of hard-hearted
commercial sagacity in his mind, an hereditary strain which marked his
affinity to the trading classes. Keen though he was as a collector of
pictures and curios, he was still keener as a speculator on 'Change, and
knew every turn in the market, every trick of the hour.
He loved London because it brought him nearer to the money market,
brought him, as it were, face to face with his millions, which were for
the most part invested in public securities, Alderman Topsparkle having
had no passion for adding field to field at two and a half per cent per
annum. The alderman put out his wealth safely, in the New River Company
and in the best National securities.
Vyvyan Topsparkle had done nothing to hazard those solid investments or
to jeopardise his hereditary income; but he liked to trifle with the
surplus thousands which accumulated at his banker's, and which even
Judith's extravagance could not exhaust; he liked to sail his light bark
over the billows of speculation, fanned by the summer winds of chance
and change, and glorying in his skill as a navigator. Ombre and
quadrille had very little excitement for him, but he loved to watch the
fluctuations of a speculative stock, and to sell out at the critical
moment when a bubble was on the point of bursting. He had been either
wonderfully clever or wonderfully lucky; for he had contrived with but
few exceptions to emerge from every risky enterprise with a profit. Such
trivial speculations were but playing with money, and made no tangible
impression upon the bulk of his wealth: but as the miser loves to hoard
his guineas in a chest under his bed and to handle and toy with them, so
Mr. Topsparkle loved to play at speculation, and to warm the dull blood
of age with the fever of the money market.
He was sitting before a boule bureau, with three rows of pigeon-holes
stuffed with papers in front of him, and a litter of papers on his desk,
when Fétis entered, carrying his master's periwig. The room was
spacious, half dressing-room and half study, with panelled walls richly
adorned with old Italian pottery, and a fireplace in an angle of the
room, with a mantelpiece carried up to the ceiling by narrow shelves
and quaint divisions, all filled with curios; delf and china, India
monsters, Dutch teapots, German chocolate-pots, jars, and tea-cups. In
one window stood the toilet-table, a veritable laboratory, before which
Mr. Topsparkle sat for an hour every morning while his complexion was
composed for the day. In the corner opposite the fireplace was the
triangular closet in which Mr. Topsparkle's full-bottomed wig was
besprinkled with maréchale powder. The atmosphere of the room was loaded
with various perfumes, including a faint suggestion of burnt rappee, a
kind of snuff which had been fashionable ever since a fire at a famous
tobacconist's, which had thrown a large quantity of scorched snuff upon
the market, and had given the bucks a new sensation and a new taste.
Fétis put the wig on a stand near the dressing-table, adjusted the
feathery curls carefully with delicate finger-tips, fell a step or two
back to contemplate his work, gazing at it dreamily as at the perfection
of beauty, suggesting the august countenance of its wearer, who was
looking over a sheaf of documents and seemed preoccupied.
His valet watched him deferentially for some minutes, and then coughed
gently as if to attract attention.
Topsparkle looked up suddenly. He had not heard the cautious opening of
the door or the velvet tread of his slave.
"Your wig is quite ready, sir."
"I am not ready for it yet."
"Could I speak with you, sir, for a minute?"
"Of course, you can always speak with me. What do you want?"
Mr. Topsparkle laid down his papers, and faced about as he asked the
question.
"I am sorry to say, sir, that fortune has been against me since I came
back to London. I have lost heavily at basset, and I am in sore need of
money."
"Again!" exclaimed Topsparkle impatiently; "you are everlastingly a
loser. What right has a fellow of your quality to gamble? Dice and cards
are a diversion for gentlemen, sir."
"Fellows of my quality are human, sir, and have minds that are subject
to temptation and example. We can but imitate our betters. As for cards
and dice, I am drawn into play by gentlemen who come to my house and are
gracious enough to invite my company."
"They should know their position better than to associate with a
lodging-house keeper."
"O sir, these are gentlemen of rank; dukes, marquises, earls, who have
no fear of derogating by low company. They stand secure in a nobility
three and four centuries old. My society cannot degrade _them_."
"How much do you want?" asked Topsparkle, with suppressed rage.
He took some papers out of the pigeon-hole labelled F, and turned them
over with a hand that shook a little, till he came to one which he drew
out and unfolded. It was a list of figures, headed by the name of Fétis,
and against each amount there was a date.
"If you would oblige me with a paltry thousand, sir, I could set myself
right. I have the honour to owe seven hundred and fifty to his grace the
Duke of Bolton."
"A thousand pounds! Egregious insolence. Do you know that you had three
thousand, in sums of five hundred, from me last winter? Four thousand a
year! Was ever valet paid such wages since the world began?"
"Nay, sir, it is not every valet who has the honour to serve a gentleman
in whose exorbitant income thousands count as hundreds do with meaner
men. Nor do I rank with the common herd of servants; I have been your
secretary and your confidant, often your nurse, and sometimes even your
physician. I have prescribed for you in some of the most difficult
occasions of your life--and successfully. I have made an end of your
trouble."
"You are a villain," said Topsparkle, sitting in a brooding attitude,
staring at the carpet.
"I do not pretend--never have pretended--to be a saint. A man of rigid
principles would not have served you as I have done. I have been useful
to your loves and to your antipathies. I do not expect to be paid as a
common servant. I have a claim upon your fortune inferior to none."
"O, you are a vastly clever person, and no doubt think you have been
useful to me. Well, I will advance this money--mind, as I advanced the
last, on your note of hand. It must be a loan."
"I have no objection, sir."
There had been many such transactions. Fétis thought that this loan
theory was a salve to his employer's wounded pride. He would not suppose
himself completely under the influence of his servant. He would assert
an independent position, play the patron, hug himself with the idea of
power over his slave.
"He would never dare to sue me for the money," Fétis told himself. "It
can be no more than an empty form."
And with this sense of security Fétis signed anything that was offered
to him for signature. He had lived a good many years in London, but was
still a thorough Frenchman in his profound ignorance of English law, and
he had, moreover, a somewhat exaggerated estimate of his influence over
his master. He had never yet failed in his attacks upon Mr. Topsparkle's
purse, and he thought his resources in that direction were almost
unlimited. This had encouraged him in extravagance, and had fostered
the habit of reckless gaming, which was the open vice of the age.
"You ought to be making a fortune, not losing one, Fétis, with such a
house as yours," said Topsparkle, counting over a bundle of bank-notes
after the note of hand had been duly executed. "I am told that the most
fashionable men in town patronise your supper-room, and build their
occasional nests upon your upper floors, where you have bachelor
quarters, as I understand, for gentlemen who are in town for too short a
season to disturb the desolation of their family mansions."
"The business is not unprofitable," replied Fétis deprecatingly, "and my
patrons are among the flower of the aristocracy. But I have an expensive
wife."
"What can we expect, my good fellow, when at our age we marry reigning
beauties," asked Topsparkle lightly. "Your lady was a dancer at the
Opera House, as I am told, and a toast among the bloods who frequent the
green-room. Did you think she would transform herself into a Dutch
housewife, tuck up her sleeves and peel vegetables in the kitchen,
because you chose to marry her?"
"Unhappily she has caught the infection of that accursed house, and
plays as deep as a lady of fashion," said Fétis ruefully.
"My good Fétis, a young woman must have some kind of diversion. If she
does not gamble, she will play you a worse turn. See how indulgent I am
to her ladyship on that score. 'Tis only when her losses become
outrageous that I venture a gentle remonstrance. And so your pretty
little French wife has learnt the trick of the town, and dreams of
spadillo and codille, like a woman of fashion. By the way, I hear Lord
Lavendale is in London again. Pray does he ever use your house?"
"No, sir, I have never seen him there. He is not in my set."
"And yet I take it your set is a wild one, and likely to suit his
lordship."
"Nay, sir, they tell me Lavendale has sobered down since his return from
the Continent, and neither drinks nor plays as deep as he did before he
went abroad."
"Is it so? Well, he is a mighty pretty fellow, and a prime favourite
with the women. Some one told me the other day that he was in a
consumption. You may begin to dress my head. Is that true, d'ye think?"
"The consumption, sir. Nay, I fancy 'tis an idle story got up by his
lordship to make him more interesting to the sex. Women love a man who
is reported to be dying. I have known men whose lives have been
despaired of for ten years at a stretch, and who have wound up by
marrying fortunes, having very little but their bad health to recommend
them. A fellow who has no other capital may marry a rich widow on the
strength of a consumption or a heart complaint."
"I am told Lord Lavendale is looking younger and handsomer than ever,"
pursued Topsparkle; "but I thought it might be the hectic of disease
which imparted a delusive beauty."
"I doubt, sir, the fellow is well enough, and will outlive us all," said
Fétis, with a malicious pleasure in blighting his master's hopes.
He finished his work of art upon Topsparkle's countenance, putting in
every minute touch as carefully as a miniature painter. He fitted the
stately wig upon the bald pate, and then Mr. Topsparkle put his head
into the powdering closet for the last sprinkle of maréchale, and
emerged therefrom in all the perfection of artificial grace and court
fashion. His coat and waistcoat were marvels of the tailor's and
embroideress's art; his cravat was a miracle of Roman point worked by
Ursuline nuns in a convent amidst the Apennines; his diamond
shoe-buckles were of an exquisite neatness and elegance; his red-heeled
shoes set off to perfection the narrow foot and arched instep.
The delicate duties of this elaborate toilet completed, Fétis was free
till the evening. Mr. Topsparkle had meaner hirelings who attended to
his lesser wants and waited upon him all day long. Fétis was the artist
in chief, the high-priest in the temple, and his ministrations were
confined to the sacred and secret hours in which youth and good looks
were elaborated from age and decay.
To-day Fétis was inwardly impatient to be gone, yet was far too well
bred to betray his impatience by the faintest indication. He seemed
rather to linger, as if loth to depart, arranged the gold and ivory
fittings of the _nécessaire_ with nicest care, gave a finishing touch to
patch and pulvilio boxes, perfume bottles, and tortoiseshell combs, and
it was only when Mr. Topsparkle dismissed him that he gave a sliding bow
and glided gracefully from the room, as elegant in every detail of his
costume as his master, but with the subdued and sober colouring which
implied gravity of manners and humility of station.
When he was gone, Mr. Topsparkle rose from the sofa where he had been
reclining in an attitude of luxurious repose, and began to pace the
room, full of thought.
"I don't like the rascal's manner," he said to himself. "He is too bold,
presumes too much upon his usefulness in the present, and"--after a
thoughtful pause--"in the past. He has become a horse leech, bleeds me
of thousands with an insufferable audacity. Yet, after all, 'tis hardly
worth troubling about. The mere amount in itself is scarce worth a
thought to a man of my means, though I might endow a bishopric on a less
income, and get some credit for my generosity. To maintain a profligate
and gamester, a pander to fashionable follies, only because he has the
art of laying on a cosmetic and pencilling an eyebrow to a higher degree
than anyone else! Yet after all 'tis something to have one's toilet
performed skilfully, and a blunderer would put me in a fever every time
he touched me. Why should I grudge the fellow his wages? he is as
necessary to me as Dubois was to the Duke, and _he_ would accept no
lesser recompense than to be prime minister, and have all the threads of
state intrigue in his hands. This fellow of mine is an unambitious,
innocuous scoundrel. He only preys upon my purse."
He rang for his footman, one of those splendid functionaries being
always in attendance in a three-cornered lobby or ante-room outside Mr.
Topsparkle's study. This chamber was an oak-panelled well, lighted from
a skylight, cold in winter and suffocating in summer; but the lacquey,
sitting on a velvet-covered bench with his silken legs stretched out
before him, was supposed to enjoy a life of luxurious idleness.
"My chocolate and the papers," ordered Mr. Topsparkle. "Stay, you can
put on some logs before you go. 'Tis odiously cold this morning."
He went back to his sofa, which was in front of the fire. The chocolate
was brought almost immediately, as if by magic, most of Mr. Topsparkle's
desires being divined beforehand and duly prepared for, lest he should
complain, like the late French King, that he had "almost waited."
The footman wheeled a little table beside the sofa, and arranged his
master's pillows, while a second attendant spirit brought the
silver-gilt chocolate service and the fashionable journals, those thin
and meagre papers which in the absence of parliamentary debates eked out
their scanty public news with much private scandal, announcements of
intended marriages that never came off, hints at reported elopements
under the thin veil of initials, theatrical criticism, and quotations
from some lordling's satiric poem, for in those days almost all
lordlings had an itch for satire, and fancied they could write. If the
verses appeared anonymously, were fairly metrical and particularly
spiteful, they were generally debited to Pope or Lady Mary, and the
anonymous lordling went about for a week or two rubbing his hands and
chuckling and telling all the town under the seal of secrecy that he was
the author of that remarkable lampoon which had just convulsed society.
Mr. Topsparkle sipped his chocolate, and tried to read his papers: but
this morning he found himself in no humour for public news--the last
letter from the Continent--the last highway robbery in Denmark Street,
St. Giles--or even for the more appetising private scandal, about the
Lady at Richmond Court who had suddenly retired from society, but was
_not_ in a wasting sickness, or the celebrated Duchess, once a famous
beauty, whose housemaids had left her in a body because the ducal board
wages were two shillings a week under the customary allowance. Mr.
Topsparkle's mind was too intently occupied upon his own business to
compassionate the Richmond lady or to speculate whether the anonymous
duchess was the mighty Sarah of Blenheim, or her mad Grace of
Buckinghamshire, both alike notorious for pride and parsimony.
He flung the journals aside with an oath.
"These scribblers are the stupidest scoundrels alive," he muttered,
"there is not an ounce of wit in the whole fraternity. O, for the days
of Steele and Addison, when one was sure of pleasant reading with one's
breakfast! Their trumpery imitators give the outward form of the essay
without its inward spirit."
The footman appeared
"A lady is below, sir, who says she will be mightily obliged if you will
allow her ten minutes' conversation."
"Pray, who is the lady who calls at such an extraordinary hour, before a
gentleman's day has begun?"
"She gave no name, sir."
"Go ask who she is."
The man retired, and returned to say the lady was a stranger to Mr.
Topsparkle, and asked an interview as a favour.
"So! That sounds mysterious," said Topsparkle. "Pray, what manner of
personage is she? Does she look like a genteel beggar, elderly and
shabby, in a greasy black-silk hood and mantle, eh, my man?"
"No, sir, the person is young and handsome. She looks rather like one of
the foreign singing-women your honour is pleased to patronise."
"Singing women! Why, do you know, block-head, that those singing women,
as you call them, are the beloved of princes, and have the salaries of
prime ministers? Singing women, forsooth! And this stranger is young and
pretty, you say?"
"Yes, sir."
"And a foreigner?"
"I am sure of that, sir."
"You can show her up."
Mr. Topsparkle composed himself into an attitude on the sofa, like Louis
XIV. Flatterers told him that he resembled that superb monarch, as he
did in the fact that much of his dignity and splendour was derived from
costume. Seated upon his cut velvet sofa, with the skirts of his coat
spreading wide, his jewelled rapier at his side, he had certainly an
almost regal air, calculated to overawe a nameless foreign woman, who
was in all probability an adventuress whose audacity was her only
passport to that stately mansion.
The footman threw open the door, and announced "A lady to wait upon your
honour," whereupon there came tripping in a plump little woman in a
quilted satin petticoat, and short tucked-up gown, fluttering all over
with cherry-coloured bows, and with a cherry-coloured hood setting off
but in no wise concealing a mass of unpowdered black hair which
clustered about a low forehead, and agreeably shaded the brightest black
eyes Mr. Topsparkle had seen for a long time, eyes brimming with
coquetry, and not without a lurking craftiness of expression which set
the admiring gentleman upon his guard.
The lady's nose was _retroussé_, her lips were too thick for beauty, but
of a carmine tint which was accentuated by the artful adjustment of
patches; the lady's complexion was not quite so artificial as Mr.
Topsparkle's, but it revealed an acquaintance with some of the highest
branches of the face-painting art. The lady in general effect looked
about three-and-twenty. Mr. Topsparkle put her down for
eight-and-thirty.
"My dear madam, I beg you to be seated," said Topsparkle, waving his
attenuated hand graciously towards a chair, and admiring his rings and
point lace ruffle as he did so. "You honour me vastly by this pleasant
impromptu visit. May I offer you a cup of chocolate?"
"You are too condescending, sir. I took my chocolate before I left
home," replied the cherry-coloured intruder, sinking gracefully into a
chair, and rounding her plump white arms as she adjusted her cherry
satin muff. "I venture to call at this early hour, before the great
world has begun to besiege your lordship's door, because I have an
appeal to make to your generous heart."
"I thought as much," said Mr. Topsparkle within himself. "This
cherry-coloured personage has come to beg."
He was so used to be begged of that his heart had hardened itself, was
adamant against all such petitions; but he did not object when the
mendicant was a pretty woman, with whom he might indulge in half an
hour's innocent persiflage at the cost of a few guineas.
"Dearest madam, I am all ears," he murmured languidly.
"Sir, you behold a deeply-injured woman," said the lady, with a tragic
air, and the announcement sounded like the beginning of a very long
story.
"Say not so, I beseech you, madam; the character is so odiously common,"
protested Mr. Topsparkle. "That piquant countenance, those brilliant
eyes, bespeak originality. Such a face is designed only to injure, the
mission of such beauty is to destroy."
"Ah, sir, there was a day when I knew my power and used it; you who are
a frequenter of the opera may perhaps remember the name and person of
Coralie Legrand."
"Your person, madam, once seen can never be forgotten; and if I had
heard you sing in the opera--"
"Sir, I was a dancer, not a singer," exclaimed the lady, with a wounded
air.
"Was, madam; nay, speak not of yourself in the past, '_Fuit Ilium_;'
say not that such charms are for ever withdrawn from the public
eye--that the flame of the candles no longer shines upon that
beauty--that some selfish churl, some avaricious hoarder of loveliness,
has appropriated so fair a being for his own exclusive property."
"It is true, sir. I who had once half the town at my feet am now mewed
up in a stuffy parlour, and scolded if I venture to exchange half a
dozen sentences with some aristocratic pretty fellow, or to venture a
guinea or so at ombre."
"Soho!" exclaimed Topsparkle, becoming suddenly intent. "Your name,
madam, your name, I entreat."
"I was Coralie Legrand, leading dancer in the first division of the
ballet at the Royal Haymarket Opera. I am Mrs. Fétis, your valet's
ill-used wife; and it is on my husband's account that I venture--"
"Madam, you have the strongest claim upon me. Fétis is an old servant--"
"He is an old servant. If I had known how old before I married him--"
"O, madam, he is not a septuagenarian; Fétis is my junior."
"He looks your lordship's senior; but it is not so much his age I object
to. I would forgive him for being ninety if he were only indulgent and
generous."
"Is he capable of meanness to so bewitching a wife?"
"Yes, sir, he is horribly stingy. At this hour I am being dunned to
death by my next-door neighbour, to whom I owe a paltry fifteen guineas.
She is Madame Furbelow, the Court milliner, a person of some ton, and
she and I were dearest friends till this money trouble parted us--but
'tis shocking not to be able to pay one's debts of honour. Yet, to my
certain knowledge, Fétis has lost hundreds in a single night to some of
his fine gentlemen customers, who fool him by pretending to treat him as
a friend. There was the wild Duke of Wharton, for instance, and his club
of intriguers, the Schemers they called themselves, a committee of
gallants, who used to hold their meetings at our house and plot mischief
against poor innocent women--how to carry off silly heiresses and to
conquer rich widows. His Grace had a bank at faro, and that foolish
husband of mine was a frequent loser."
"He must have won sometimes, madam. He must have had his lucky nights,
like the rest of us."
"Then he kept his good luck to himself, sir; I never heard of it. He
said he ought to have the devil's luck in love since he was so cursedly
unlucky at cards and dice. And then, though he has the effrontery to
deny me a few guineas, I have heard him boast that he has claims upon
you which you must always honour, that your purse was a golden stream
which could never run dry."
"O, he has boasted, has he, the poor foolish fellow, boasted of his
power over me?"
"Nay, sir, I did not presume to mention the word 'power.' He has bragged
of his services to you--long and faithful services such as no other man
in Europe would have rendered to a master. He has curious fits at
times--but I did not come hither to betray his secrets, poor creature; I
came in the hope that your lordship, who has been ever so bountiful to
my husband, could perhaps grant some small pecuniary favour to a poor
woman in distress--"
"Madam, my purse is at your service," exclaimed Topsparkle eagerly,
taking out a well-filled pocket-book, and selecting a couple of
bank-notes. "Here is a trifling sum which will enable you to pay your
neighbour and leave a surplus for some future transactions of the same
kind, or for another hood like that which becomes you so admirably.
Pray, never hesitate to call upon me for any petty assistance of this
kind."
The fair Coralie cooed her thanks with a gentle murmuring as of a
wood-pigeon, and ventured so far as to imprint her rosy lips upon her
benefactor's lean hand, a kiss which Mr. Topsparkle received as a
compliment, although he stealthily wiped his hand with his cambric
handkerchief the next minute.
"And you say that my poor Louis is odd at times," he said caressingly.
"I hope he does not drink?"
"I think not, sir. There is a terrible deal of drinking goes on in our
house, but I doubt if my husband is ever the worse for liquor. But he
has strange fits sometimes of a night, cannot sleep, or sleeps but for
five minutes at a time, and then starts up from his bed and walks up and
down the room, saying that he is haunted, haunted by the souls he has
ruined. He says there is a ghost in _this_house."
"Indeed," cried Mr. Topsparkle, looking around him, and assuming his
airiest manner, "and yet I do not fancy this looks like the habitation
of ghosts. There are no cobwebs festooning the walls, no bats and owls
flitting across the ceiling, no dirt, decay, or desolation."
"Nay, sir, it is a splendid house, full of beautifulest things. Yet I
have heard my husband on those sleepless nights of his when he has
talked more to himself than to me--I have heard him say that he has
rushed out of this house at twilight with the cold sweat pouring down
his face."
"Then, my dear lady, I fear there is no room to doubt that your husband
has taken to drink. The symptoms you depict are precisely those of a
drunkard's disease known to all medical men. The sleepless nights--the
imagination of ghosts and phantoms--the cold sweat--these are as common
and as plain as the pustules that denote smallpox or the spots that
indicate scarlet fever. If your husband does not drink openly, be
assured he drinks deep in secret. You had better get him away from
London. What say you to returning to your native country?"
Mrs. Fétis shrugged her shoulders with a doubtful air. She often talked
rapturously of La Belle France, raved of her sunny south, that gracious
city of Périgord where she had been born and reared to the age of
fifteen. Yet for all the common purposes of life she had liked London a
great deal better.
"There is nothing I should love so much," she protested. "But 'twould be
madness to leave a house in which we have sunk all our means and our
labour with the hope of getting our reward by a competence in our old
age. Indeed, sir, we could not afford to leave Poland Street."
"Not if you were amply provided for elsewhere?" asked Topsparkle.
"Ah, sir, to be provided for by others--by a kind of pension from a
wealthy benefactor for instance," looking at him searchingly, as if she
were measuring his capacity for generosity, "that is all very well for
poor-spirited people--the English lower classes have no pride. But my
husband and I are of an independent mind. We would rather have our
liberty even in poverty than be pensioners upon any one's bounty, which
might be withdrawn at a day's notice."
"Nay, a pension of that kind to be useful must be assured to
you--something in the way of an annuity in the public funds, for
instance--dependent on your own lives, and not upon any one else's frail
thread of existence."
Mrs. Fétis looked interested, and almost convinced.
"'Twould be a delicious life and free from care; but Fétis has a passion
for London, and all whom I love in my own country are dead. It would be
but to go back to their graves."
Mr. Topsparkle said no more. He did not want to appear over anxious to
banish his old servant, yet the man's tone to-day and the wife's
revelations had intensified a feeling he had entertained for a long
time, a feeling that the hour had come when it would be very agreeable
to get rid of his _âme damnée_. He would suffer considerable
inconvenience undoubtedly from the loss of a valet who so thoroughly
understood his complexion; but anything was better than the everlasting
vicinity of a servant who knew too much.
He dismissed the Frenchwoman with a compliment, escorted her to the
ante-room, and kissed her hand with a finished courtesy before he
committed her to the care of the footman, and then he went back to his
sofa, warmed his feet at the log-fire, and gave himself up to a serious
thought.
"The man is getting dangerous," he thought; "he always was a creature of
excitable temper, and now he has drunk or gamed himself into a kind of
mental fever, from which perhaps the next stage would be madness. Better
so! Nobody believes a madman. And if he were to make any revelations
about the remote past, who is there to confirm him? No one. The old
Venetian must long since have been numbered with his ancestors. The
apothecary disappeared thirty years ago and left no trace behind him.
If it had not been for that damnable scandal at the time, set on foot
and fostered by that villain Churchill, I could laugh any accusation of
Fétis to scorn; but there are a few of my contemporaries malicious
enough to have long memories, and I would do much to avoid a revival of
that hellish outcry which drove me from the hustings and from the
country. I have not forgotten. That hateful scene at Brentford is as
vivid in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. And he has begun to
talk, to get up in the middle of the night and to rave about being
haunted. And this loquacious wife of his will repeat his ravings to all
her gossips. Yes, there is danger, were it ever so slight. A man of my
importance is a target for every venomous arrow. Fétis, you must be
silenced."
He rose and paced the room slowly, meditating upon the position in all
its aspects, and with all its possibilities of evil. There was his wife,
of whose loyalty he was ever doubtful. What if that ancient scandal were
to reach her ears? Would she not use it as a weapon against him, ally
herself with her old lover for his destruction? The very thought made
that magnificent periwig of his tremulous as if with a palsy.
The man must be got out of the way somehow. If he did not snap at the
bait of a handsome annuity and accept retirement to his native land,
there might be other means, nearer, shorter, of disposing of him.
Yes, there was one way, short and easy, as it seemed to Mr. Topsparkle;
a way of making Louis Fétis safe for ever: but that way would leave the
wife at liberty--and she might be dangerous.
"No, she can be bought," thought Topsparkle, "she is vain and
empty-headed. I can manage her--but he--I have been an idiot to keep him
about me so long--and yet he has been useful. I have leant upon
him--never knowing when I might need his help. I believed in his
discretion, thought him secret as the grave; and now he has begun to
blab to that silly wife of his, my confidence is destroyed for ever--all
sense of security is gone."