“Whenever I get into the sponging-house, the odds are I shall be kicked out again for want of funds to make me worth keeping. Your sponging-house, kept by some dirty Jew, and waited on by a drab, is the most expensive hotel in London.”
“Then they’ll put you among the poor prisoners, and let you fetch and carry for those that are better off. ‘Twill be a sorry end for Buck Chambers, the man who used to keep two servants to attend to his jackboots.”
“Hang it! ’twas no superfluity of service. No man can be expected to do more than look after three horses or six pairs of boots.”
“If they do nab you, Bob,” said another friend, who had been attracted from a neighbouring table as the conversation grew louder, Mr. Topsparkle sipping his chocolate silently all the while, and listening in a half-abstracted mood, only reflecting within himself much as Romeo did about the apothecary, that here was a fellow who would do anything for gold; “if the limbs of the law do get you in their clutches, let us hope, for the sake of a world that could scarce exist pleasurably without you, that they won’t put you into Marjory’s.”
“Marjory’s! What, the sponging-house in Shoe Lane!” cried Chambers; “’tis an execrable den, but not a whit worse than their other holes. I have hobbed and nobbed with my friends in most of their rat-traps, and know the geography of them. I’d as lief be at Marjory’s as anywhere else, if I must needs have the key turned upon me.”
“Not just now, Bob; for there was an honest fellow — an Exeter tradesman up in London for a holiday, and arrested by mistake for another — who died of smallpox at Marjory’s only yesterday morning; and they say the disease rages in the house, and has done for the last ten days.”
The Captain sprang to his feet in a fury.
“And yet they go on taking prisoners there,” he cried; “poor innocent wretches, whose only crime is to have lived like gentlemen! What a vile world we live in!”
“A vile world with a vengeance. Marjory’s is a gold-mine for Bambridge. He claps all his prisoners into that hell, and makes them pay heavily before he allows them to be removed to the purgatory of another house, or the paradise of prison and chummage. This poor wretch from Exeter had not a stiver about him, so they refused to shift him. He was put in a room with three other men, one of whom was just recovering from the disease. The Exeter man took it badly, and died off-hand.”
The Captain put on his hat.
“Farewell, friends,” he said; “I’m off by to-night’s fast coach to Bristol, and from thence to the wilds of Connemara. I was not born to be carrion for the vulture Bambridge.”
He pulled himself together with a debonair movement, and staggered gaily out of the house, amidst the laughter of his friends.
“Was there ever such a good-humoured hardened villain?” exclaimed Middleton; “’tis a perpetual conundrum to me how he keeps out of gaol.”
“He will get there some day,” said a gentleman of clerical aspect; “our friend will have his pennyworth of prison, with a noose to follow.”
Mr. Topsparkle paid his score, and sauntered away.
Not a word had he heard, nor had he made any inquiry, about madhouses, public or private; yet it seemed to him that he was wiser than when he entered the chocolate house, and that he knew all he wanted to know.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SMILES OF NATURE AND THE CHARMS OF ART.
Mr. Fétis slept until late in the afternoon, and awoke restored to his senses and so far recovered in his health as to be able to dress himself and go down-stairs. He was taking a cup of coffee strengthened with cognac in his wife’s parlour when the Topsparkle orange and brown livery again enlivened the doorstep, and a note was handed in at the door.
It was a somewhat urgent summons from Fétis’s patron and master.
“If you are well enough to come to me this afternoon, I should like to see you,” wrote Mr. Topsparkle; “my messenger will get you a chair.”
Fétis told the footman that he was able to walk, and would wait upon Mr. Topsparkle almost immediately. He followed the footman in about five minutes, and was at once admitted to his master’s dressing-room, where he found Mr. Topsparkle sitting before the fire, in slippers and a crimson brocade négligé.
“My good Fétis, pray think me not inhuman in sending for you,” he exclaimed, in his airiest manner, “but if you have vital power enough to put my head and complexion in order for the evening, it will be a real benevolence on your part. I am to go to an assembly at Henrietta’s, and I don’t want to look older than poor Mr. Congreve, who has the aspect of a sickly Methuselah.”
“I do not believe her Grace thinks so, sir,” said Fétis, going over to the toilet-table and beginning to arrange his arsenal of little china pots and crystal bottles, brushes and sponges, and hare’s-feet.
“O, for her he is always Adonis. But he grows daily more wrinkled and mummified, and he paints as badly as Kneller at his worst, which is saying much,” replied Topsparkle, seating himself in front of the glass, a Venetian mirror, framed in filagree silver, which ought to have reflected beauty as young and fresh as Belinda’s. “And so, my poor friend,” he continued with a sympathetic air, “you have been very ill. May I ask the nature of your malady?”
“I was as near death as I could be, I believe, sir,” answered Fétis gloomily, still occupied with cosmetics and paint-brushes, and going on with his work as he spoke. “You will laugh at me doubtless when I tell you the cause of my indisposition, for you have a lighter nature than mine, or you could scarce live contentedly in this house.”
“I have less education, and more philosophy, Fétis. That is the secret of my easier temper.”
“I saw a ghost last night, sir,” said Fétis, beginning his operations on his master’s complexion.
“Indeed, my dear Fétis, I am told they swarm in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury, where I hear you spent last midnight in most patrician society.”
“How did you know where I spent my evening?” gasped Fétis.
“A little bird, my dear friend, a sweet little singing bird. Our London groves are vocal with such airy songsters. Pray keep your hand steady. God’s curse, fellow, that wash of yours is revolting when ’tis not laid on smoothly. You are too thick over the right temple.”
There was a pause, during which Fétis finished his ground-colour and outlined an eyebrow with a miniature-painter’s pencil.
“And so you saw a ghost last night. Was it in Denmark Street, St. Giles’s, as you reeled homewards after your orgy?”
“No, sir, ’twas before I left Lord Lavendale’s house. I had supped with his lordship and Mr. Durnford—”
“A fellow I hate!” interrupted Topsparkle; “a sinister, prying knave!”
“We had played cards for an hour or so, and I had been sole winner. I was in excellent spirits, elated, rejuvenated by my good luck. I had to pass through a suite of cold and empty rooms, dark except for the candle carried by my companion, Durnford, and a gleam of light from a lamp on the staircase beyond. It was in this semi-darkness I saw the shape of her whose death we compassed, in that room yonder, forty years ago!”
He pointed to the door opening into Topsparkle’s bedchamber.
“My good Fétis, you were drunk,” said his master, without moving a muscle. “His lordship had plied you with wine till your highly imaginative mind was on the alert for phantoms. An effect of light and shade in a dusky room, a white curtain perchance, an optical delusion of some kind. I should have given you credit for more sense and less superstition.”
“I tell you ’twas she, Margharita Vincenti. It was her face, sad, reproachful, as it has looked upon me many a time in this house. It was her figure, her attitude, standing there before me in the light of Mr. Durnford’s uplifted candle, with all the reality of life.”
“And yet in a trice the vision vanished, melted before your eyes?”
“Indeed I know not, sir, for terror overcame my senses, and I swooned.”
“My good Fétis, you are in a very ba
d state of health. You need to be monstrously careful of yourself. These signs and wonders of yours presage lunacy. Give me the hand-mirror. No, your eyebrows are not so successful as usual. There is a gouty line in the arch of the left, and you have given me a scintilla too much rouge. Pray tone down that rosy-apple appearance to a more delicate peach bloom. I think you are falling off in the composition of your red. There is a purple tinge that is too conspicuously artificial. You are a chemist, and should know more of the amalgamation of colours. You should try to imitate nature, my good Fétis. And you tell me you saw my poor Margharita’s ghost, and that ’twas Mr. Durnford who held the candle that lighted the vision?”
“It was just as I have told you.”
“To be sure. And pray do you happen to remember a certain young lady, an heiress, who came to the Abbey last winter, and who was the living image of my poor Margharita — whom you must remember I indulged and treated with all possible kindness so long as she was faithful to me — and on whose account you might therefore spare me your reproaches.”
“I cannot forget my crime, nor who prompted it.”
“Plague take you, Fétis, why use hard words? ’Twas but a sleeping draught made a thought too powerful, so that the sleep became eternal. ’Twas euthanasia. Had that girl lived her fate would have been an evil one. She was on the downward slope when death stopped her. She had ceased to care for me, and was passionately in love with Churchill. Do you suppose he would have remained true to her when the vanity of conquest was over and her monotony of sweetness began to pall? Deserted by him, she would have fallen a prey to some coarser profligate, and then the side boxes, and the hospital or Bridewell. Faithless to me, there was nothing but death that could save her.”
“You might have made her your wife.”
“Because I found her false and fickle as a mistress! A pretty reason, quotha.”
“To be made an honest woman would have steadied her; you might have given her the company of her child; that is ever a mother’s safeguard.”
“Pollute my house with the presence of a squalling baby! No, Fétis, endurance has limits. Pshaw! let us not harp upon this folly. Do you remember Mrs. Bosworth?”
“Yes; I saw her only at a distance. The likeness was certainly startling.”
“And you did not know that the lady is now Mr. Durnford’s wife? He stole her from her father’s house t’other day, and Parson Keith married them.”
“No; I had not heard that.”
“And therefore could not guess that the ghost you saw in the dark room was no less a personage than Durnford’s young wife, who by a freak of nature happens to be the living image of my dead mistress?”
“By heaven, it might have been so! I never guessed — I never thought—” faltered Fétis.
“Of course not. You have lost your head, my friend, since you took to cards and strong waters. Had you been content to drink like a gentleman, these fancies would never have addled your brains. I hope you betrayed yourself no more than by your swooning fit in Lavendale’s presence. You held your tongue, I trust, when your senses returned?”
“I know not,” answered Fétis, with an embarrassed air. “I left the house like a sleepwalker, scarce conscious of my own actions; nor do I know how I reached my own chamber.”
“You are a sad fool, my dear Fétis, and, what is more, you are a dangerous fool,” said Topsparkle, in his gentlest voice, and with a faint sigh. “The hand-glass again, please. Yes, that is better: the eyebrows have more delicacy than your first attempt. I want to appear at my best to-night. A man who has a beautiful wife should not look a scarecrow. You have a remarkable talent for touching up a face; a gift, Fétis, a gift. ’Tis an art that can be no more learnt than oratory or poetry. A man must be born with it. I am very sorry for you, my good Louis, sorry that tongue of yours is no more to be trusted. There, that will do. My valet can help me on with my wig. You are looking ill and tired. Get home as fast as you can.”
“Indeed, sir, I am far from well.”
“I can see it, my poor friend. Good-day to you. Tell my servant to bring me a dish of tea as you go out.”
Fétis bowed and retired, gave his master’s message to the footman sitting half asleep in the ante-room, and went out of the house.
He had not left the Square before he was stopped by two shabbily-clad men, one of whom tapped him on the shoulder.
“You are my prisoner, Mr. Fétis.”
“Prisoner, fellow! you are joking.”
“No, sir; this will show you there is no joke in the matter;” and the man produced a paper which Mr. Fétis read with a troubled brow.
“This can be very easily settled,” he said after a pause; “’tis but a bagatelle. I had forgotten that Mr. Bevis had sued me. The account is such a paltry one, and I have put thousands into Bevis’s pockets. It is but fifty pounds. If you will accompany me to yonder house on the other side of the Square, Mr. Topsparkle will oblige me with the cash.”
“Can’t do no such thing, your honour,” growled the bailiff, in a voice thickened by hard living and strong drink. “My orders are to take you straight to the sponging-house. You can communicate with your friends when you’re there.”
“But the house is within a few paces, and I tell you I can get the money!”
“The law’s the law, and it mustn’t be tampered with,” said the man, “and duty’s duty, and it’s mine to see you safe inside the lock. Call a coach, Jerry; there’s a stand in Greek Street,” and so, with his arm held in the dirty grasp of a bailiff, Mr. Fétis was marched off to a coach.
In that trouble of mind which had been growing on him of late he had indeed almost forgotten that judgment had been pronounced against him at the suit of Messrs. Bevis, wine merchants, of the Strand, whose account, though he made so light of it, was one of long standing. Messrs. Bevis had filled and refilled Mr. Topsparkle’s cellars since his re-establishment in London, and Fétis had been the agent and intermediary in all purchases of wine, choosing, tasting, approving, and had been courted and fawned upon by the Messrs. Bevis and their clerks. And now on account of a trumpery fifty-odd pounds for goods supplied to himself, he was to be locked up in gaol! He was astounded at the ingratitude of these wretches.
CHAPTER VIII.
“STILL THE PALE DEAD REVIVES, AND LIVES TO ME.”
It was on the second day after Fétis had been deprived of his liberty, that the post brought a thick packet to Mr. Durnford in Bloomsbury Square, as he sat with Lavendale over a bottle of claret after the four o’clock dinner. The writing of the address was unfamiliar to him, and the characters had a blurred and irregular look, as if the hand that had traced them had scarce been steady enough to hold a pen.
He broke the seals hurriedly, eager to see the contents, for the post-mark was that of the next post town to Flamestead and Fairmile.
The letter contained an enclosure consisting of three other letters, the ink faded, and the paper yellowed by age. These were written in French, in a niggling mean little hand which Mr. Herrick had never seen before.
On the inside of the cover were these lines in the same illegible and tremulous scrawl as the outer inscription.
“Sir, —— the hand of death is on me. Your wife never injured me, and I should like to do her a good turn before I die. The enclosed letters, which Squire Bosworth found on the person of your wife’s father, were discovered by me in his bureau some years ago. They may help you to a fortune, and induce you to think more kindly of your humble servant, —— Barbara Layburne.”
Herrick hastily unfolded one of the three letters, and looked at the signature.
“By heaven, Lavendale, ’tis a strange world!” he exclaimed. “This letter is signed by the man who was here the other night, and his signature in this conjuncture, before I read a line of this correspondence, assures me that my suspicion is well founded.”
“What suspicion?”
“One which I have hitherto hesitated to confide to you lest you should deem me a lunatic.
I have for some time suspected that the likeness between Irene and the portrait you and I unearthed at Ringwood Abbey was something more than an accident — that there was a link between the story of Topsparkle’s past life and my dear one’s birth — and here in Philip Chumleigh’s possession are letters bearing the signature of Topsparkle’s tool and accomplice. Before I read them I am convinced they will confirm all my suspicions.”
“Read, Herrick, read. Thou knowest I am more interested in thy fortunes than in my own — for thine are the more hopeful. Read, Herrick, I burn with impatience.”
Durnford obeyed, and after a careful comparison of dates read the first letter, which was dated Florence, July 20th, 1705.
“Mademoiselle, — It is with the utmost regret that I am constrained to remonstrate with you upon the contents of your last letter addressed to your father, under cover to me, and forwarded at your urgent desire by the Rev. Mother, who, when she so far complied with your wish, was aware that she transgressed the rules laid down for her guidance by my honoured master, your guardian and benefactor, who desired that no communication should ever be addressed to him by you.
“Your address to a father who has long ceased to exist, can but be answered by the assurance that the noble Englishman who is generous enough to pay for your maintenance at the convent recognises no claim upon him of a nature such as you put forward in your vehement letter. He has provided for you from your infancy, and will continue to provide for you so long as you deserve his bounty; but he cannot submit to be persecuted by appeals to his affection, or by your foolish desire to know the secret of your birth, a knowledge which you may be assured could not add to your satisfaction or peace of mind.
“Be advised, therefore, my dear young lady, by one who is cordially your friend. Pursue the even tenor of your way, and ask no indiscreet questions of any one. It would be well for you, perhaps, if the piety of your surroundings should lead you to renounce the vanities of a troublesome world, and to devote your life to the peaceful seclusion of the cloister. Should you make this election, your noble friend will doubtless contribute handsomely to the wealth of the convent in which your childhood and girlhood have been spent so happily. — Accept the assurance of my sincere respect, Fétis.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 882
