"Society is given to that kind of suspicion; and the lady's death occurred in an agitating time, when the minds of men were full of Jesuit plots, supposititious babies, poison, and treason. I have read some curious paragraphs in the newspapers of that year, in which the suspicious circumstances of Mrs. Topsparkle's death were hinted at, together with various insinuations and innuendoes questioning the lady's character, and suggesting that she had no legal claim to the name of Topsparkle. But it was only when Topsparkle ventured to stand for Brentford as a high Tory in the beginning of William's reign that the Whig pamphleteers and lampooners let fly their venomed arrows. Then it was broadly stated that Mr. Topsparkle had run away with an Italian dancing-girl—she was no longer a singer, you will mark: that would have been too reputable. He had stolen her out of a booth where she was Columbine to an itinerant Harlequin; he had brought her to London, shut her up in his house in Soho Square, surprised her treachery with a gentleman of good birth and superior personal attractions, best known to society for former favours bestowed upon him by her Grace of Cleveland, and had made away with her, whether by bowstring or poisoned bowl the lampooners averred not, but bills setting forth this scandal were freely distributed in Brentford. Mr. Topsparkle was challenged with his guilt on the hustings, and narrowly escaped being mauled by the mob. It was altogether a very ugly experience in the way of electioneering adventures, and you can hardly wonder that Topsparkle's ardour for parliamentary fame cooled from that hour."
"Did he do nothing to refute this slander?" asked Durnford.
"A great deal—and too little. He laid a criminal information against the least cautious of his libellers, and got him put in the pillory; but public feeling was altogether against the libelled gentleman, and the pillory was as a bower of roses to the venal scribbler, who doubtless had written just what he was told to write by Topsparkle's political opponent. Perhaps, had Topsparkle stayed in England and held his own boldly, the scandal would have passed as the mere scum of the political cauldron; but as he sneaked off to the Continent almost immediately afterwards, under pretence of offering his allegiance to the Royal Exile, most people were of opinion that the story was not altogether a baseless fabrication, and, taken in conjunction with the rest of Mr. Topsparkle's experiences and his personal character, the suspected tragedy put the finishing touch to a ripening reputation, and kept him out of the way of his fellow-countrymen for over thirty years."
"I should be slow to believe a slander so circulated, and resting on such slight foundations," said Lavendale gravely.
"So should I, my lord, nor have I refused Mr. Topsparkle my friendship," answered Philter, with a grand air. "I spent a week at his country seat last winter; a most magnificent mansion, a mediæval abbey furnished with all the luxuries which modern art and the invention of a sybarite could devise. Mr. Topsparkle is a connoisseur, an enthusiast in painting and sculpture, porcelains, enamels, bronzes, and boule cabinets, and as he draws upon a kind of Fortunatus's purse, he can afford to gratify every fancy, however exorbitant. Nor does he stint the pleasures of his friends. Although no sportsman, he has the finest stud and the finest stable in Hampshire, and although an absolute ascetic in his eating and drinking, he has the best table and the best cellar of any gentleman of my acquaintance."
"I can easily credit that," said Lavendale, "since I opine you do not count your moneyed friends by the dozen."
"O, but there are varieties of the species," answered Philter, unabashed by the snub. "There are many who have a genius for making money, but few who possess the noble art of spending it. Indeed, I doubt if you ever get those two faculties united in the same person. The man who makes his own fortune has a silly greed for keeping it. Only in the second generation of money-getters do you find the royal art of the spender and the connoisseur. Now, our friend Topsparkle was born in the purple. He was swaddled in point d'Alençon, and fed out of a parcel-gilt porringer."
"So you have been at Ringwood Abbey, Tom," said Lavendale, with a half-unconscious insolence. "The company there must be curiously mixed, I take it."
"So much the better for the company. 'Tis only in mixed society you find the true sparkle, the fire of clashing wits, the lightning flashes of adverse opinions. Yes, at Ringwood one finds every shade of opinion in politics, from the notorious Jack to the sleek Muggite—from satisfied placemen to discontented non-jurors. Bolingbroke was there last winter, the object of everybody's interest and curiosity, after his long exile. He is as handsome as ever, and almost as fascinating as when he bewitched half the women of fashion and quality, and yet was the abject slave of Clara, a nymph who sold oranges in the Court of Requests. Now he brags of his French wife and his farm near Uxbridge, a poor plaything of a place on which he has just spent a trifling twenty thousand or so. Here he grows turnips and affects Cincinnatus, pretends to have done with politics and to live only for breeding cattle and cultivating the classics. And no sooner had that sun sunk below the horizon than there rose a more prosperous luminary in the person of Walpole. Carteret, the all-accomplished, have I met there, and punning Pulteney, and hesitating Grafton, with his grand airs of royalty by the left hand; and in fact the society at Ringwood Abbey is but a new illustration of an ancient truth, that if a man be but rich enough, he can always keep the highest company in the land."
"And how do you pay your footing among all these grandees, Mr. Philter? Do you write an acrostic for one, and a love-song for another, fetch and carry between peers and their mistresses, or comb shock-dogs for peeresses?"
"I hope you have not such a low idea of a journalist's status, my lord. Be assured that I do nothing to degrade the dignity of letters."
"What, not borrow a ten-pound note from St. John, or sell a political secret to Walpole? Be not offended, Tom; I must have my jest. 'Tis but gaiety of spirits that makes me impertinent. And at Ringwood, now, did you surprise no domestic mysteries, hear no hints about that tragedy you have suggested?"
"Not a word. All there seemed sunshine. Topsparkle adores his wife with an almost servile devotion, lives only upon her smiles, follows in her footsteps like her lap-dog. I believe in his heart of hearts he is jealous of poor pampered pug, and would not regret to see the little beast expire of a surfeit of cream and kisses."
"And she—is she happy?" asked Lavendale, relaxing from simulated gaiety to moodiness.
"There I dare not answer off-hand. Who can swear to a fine lady's happiness? Her heart is a close-locked coffer, of which only her abigail or her lover has the key. I can pledge myself to the brilliancy of Lady Judith's eyes and conversation, to the lightness of her foot in a minuet or a country dance, to her dash and courage in the hunting-field, her impertinence to her superiors in rank, up to the throne itself; I can testify to her superb recklessness in expenditure and her princely hospitality: but to pronounce whether she is happy or miserable must be left to her guardian angel, if she have one."
"Such a frivolous existence would be rather under the care of Belinda's ministering sylphs," said Durnford, as they turned into Bloomsbury Square.
It was after midnight, but Philter never refused a drink, so he accepted Lavendale's invitation to a bottle of some particularly choice Burgundy which had been laid down by his lordship's father. The bottle, with such a potent imbiber as Mr. Philter, led to a second, and as glass followed glass, the journalist talked more and more freely of the scandals of the town.
"But mark you, I have never heard a breath against Lady Judith," he said; "she has the reputation of Diana's coldness backed by Juno's pride. She never has bestowed favour on mortal; she would destroy a modern Actæon for a disrespectful look; she would pursue with direst wrath the Paris who dared to place her second in the royalty of beauty. And yet I believe she is human," added Philter, with a significant glance at Lord Lavendale, "and that a passionate heart beats under the snow of that majestic bosom."
"Pray do not suspect his lordship of any designs in that quarter," said Durnford bitterly. "He has only an eye for youth and simplicity. He is courting an heiress just escaped from the nursery."
"O, but there is always a charm in bread-and-butter for your thoroughroué," answered Philter, with a knowing air; "that hardened man about town Horace is never more enthusiastic than when he sings the half-fledged beauty shrinking from a lover's pursuit. I congratulate your lordship on the prospect of a match with youth, beauty, and bullion. I once thought my own mission would have been to marry money; but no less than three young women of fortune whom I had at various times in tow, and almost as good as anchored in the safe harbour of matrimony, got wind of certain conquests of mine which shall be nameless, and from my infidelities as a lover doubted my capacity to keep faith as a husband."
And having hiccoughed out this boast, Mr. Philter wiped his wine-stained lips and departed.
Lavendale mused and brooded upon that strange story of the man who had cheated him out of his sweetheart, if it could indeed be said that he owed the loss of Judith's hand to Mr. Topsparkle, when he had forfeited her affection by his own folly. But he was not the kind of man to reason closely upon such a matter, and he resented Judith's marriage as an act of inconstancy to himself, and Topsparkle's wealth as an impertinence. To think that the son of a City merchant should wallow in gold, entertain princes and politicians, while Lavendale groaned under the burden of an encumbered estate, and endured the curse of empty coffers!
He looked up old newspapers and magazines, called at Tom Philter's lodgings, and, with that gentleman's aid, raked over the gutter of the past for any scrap of scandal against Mr. Topsparkle; but he could discover no more than the journalist had told him in the first instance. There had been a lady in the house in Soho Square, nearly forty years ago, and that lady had been called Mrs. Topsparkle; but as she had never appeared in public with her lord, it had been concluded that she possessed no legal right to that name. John Churchill's encounter with Topsparkle had been town talk for a week or so, the conqueror of Blenheim and Malplaquet being at that period famous only for his personal beauty, and for the scandalous adventures of his early youth—an intrigue with a duchess, a chivalrous descent from an upper window—and an imputation of venality which went to prove that the avarice of the future hero was already engrained in the stripling of the present. The mysterious lady's sudden death, in the very flower of her youth, had imparted a fictitious interest, and she had made herself briefly famous by that untimely doom. The papers gave exaggerated descriptions of her beauty and broadly hinted that her fate had been as tragic as that of Desdemona. TheFlying Postdescribed how the Nickers had broken all Mr. Topsparkle's windows with halfpence, soon after the poor lady's funeral. Topsparkle was alluded to as the City Othello, and in one scurrilous print was denounced as an "und-t-ct-d ass-ss-n." However baseless the slander may have been, it had evidently been freely circulated, and Topsparkle's subsequent residence abroad for more than a generation had given a kind of colour to the foul charge. Nor was this vaguely defined tragedy the only dusky page in the millionaire's history. His general character had been vicious, his habits on the Continent had been reported as abominable. He had been an admiring follower in the footsteps of the Regent Orleans, and of lesser lights in the same diabolical firmament.
And this man was Judith's husband. Yet what was it to him whether she was happy or miserable? that old sweetheart of his, whose round white arms had been wreathed round his neck that night in the little Chinese room at Lady Skirmisham's, what time she swore she would be his wife, and urged him to be true to her. Well, he had not been true; he had played the fool with fortune, had sacrificed the one real love of his life to mere braggadocio and the idle vanity of an hour, and his reward was an empty heart.
Vainly did he try to fan those red embers into a new flame, to burn before a new altar. He would have been very glad to fall in love with Squire Bosworth's daughter. Again and again he told himself that she was younger and lovelier than Judith, and that in her love he might find the renewal of his wasted youth, find contentment and length of years more surely than in that sacred art which old Vincenti had cultivated with the enthusiast's devotion for nearly half a century, and which seemed to have brought him but little nearer to those three great mysteries which he sought to fathom:—
The secret of illimitable wealth by the transmutation of meaner metals into gold and silver.
The secret of prolonged existence, to be found in some universal panacea, guessed at, almost grasped, yet always escaping the seeker.
And thirdly, the secret of intellectual power—the intercommunion of flesh and deity, the link between this mortal clay and the ethereal world of angels and demons.
It seemed to Lavendale, in his dreams of the past and of the dead, in his vivid recalling of half-forgotten words, the touch, the kiss of long ago, that this communion between severed souls was not unknown to human sense. If it could thus be granted in our sleeping hours, why not also to our waking senses? To him there was something more than mere memory in the dreamer's commune with the dead.
Vincenti pored over his old black-letter books: Roger Bacon's "Cure of Old Age;" or the "Art of Distillation, or Practical Physick, together with the preparation of Precipiolum, the Universal Medicine of Paracelsus;" or the "Golden Work of Hermes Trismegistus, translated out of Hebrew into Arabick, then into Greek, afterwards into Latin;" very precious volumes these, in the old Venetian's sight, treasuries of the wisdom of Eastern sages, hoarded up in the dim distance of the remote past to be the guide of searchers after truth in the present.
His toil of nearly half a century had brought him to the threshold of the temple, but it had not enabled him to open the door of the sanctuary. The secret was still a secret, and he felt life waning. All those things which made this world pleasant to the common race of mortals Vincenti had sacrificed to the necromancer's grander idea of bliss; he had nothing to live for except the realisation of that one hope; and if he should die without having mastered even the meanest of those three great secrets, he must needs confess that he had lived and laboured in vain.
"Others may follow me," he said, with a simplicity of resignation that was almost heroic. "Others will read what I have written, and may profit by labours that have just missed fruition. The truth must be revealed, the secret must be found. It is only a question of time and patience."
Lavendale spent his days between London and country, rushing backwards and forwards by coach or on horseback, as whim prompted him, and in this autumn of 1726 he seemed of all men the most whimsical. London was dull and empty, half the fashionable world was at Twickenham, and the other half at Bath; yet there was always a chance of playing deep, or of getting involved in some political plot; there were always taverns, and chocolate-houses, and clubs in full swing, and a fever of party feeling in the air, which gave a certain amount of variety and excitement to life. Bolingbroke was in London, plotting hard, and there were bets as to whether he would succeed in undermining steady-going, steadfast Robert Walpole, the greatest financier England had ever known, and the only man of capacity wide enough to foresee the peril of the South Sea Company, when to all the rest of the world that rotten fabric seemed the enchanted palace and treasury of Plutus himself, containing gold enough to enrich every one of the money-god's votaries, down to the meanest.
That stubborn good sense of his on the occasion of the South Sea fever had established Robert Walpole's reputation as a safe minister, and the sober common sense of the nation was with him. He had shown himself an advocate for peace, and Bolingbroke, who in the days of Marlborough's triumphs in the Low Countries had cavilled at the continuance of the war, was now scornful of the Treasurer's pacific policy, and led the chorus of the disaffected to the tune of England's decay. Lavendale dined with Lord Bolingbroke more than once that autumn at his house in Pall Mall, the splendid mansion in Golden Square having passed into other hands during his lordship's exile. Lavendale was a Whig by birth and education, but his Whiggism was not strong enough to prevent his friendship with the most brilliant man of the age, or to exclude him from the most intellectual circle in England. He went down to Dawley, Bolingbroke's fancy farm near Uxbridge, where his lordship appeared to advantage in his favourite character of country squire, and where the ploughs and harrows painted in fresco on the walls of the hall indicated his bucolic bent. Here Lavendale made the acquaintance of the statesman's French wife, and here he met Pope and Swift, and Arouet de Voltaire, who had now established himself in the neighbourhood of London, a distinguished literary exile, and who wasl'ami de la maisonat Dawley.
In his wild youth, when good Queen Anne was sovereign of England, and the Mohawk Club in full swing, Lavendale had admired Henry St. John as the type and model of all that is finest in manhood. He had been then, in the insolence of power and floodtide of success, scheming for the restoration of the Stuarts, while affecting to favour the Hanoverian succession. He had ousted his old friend and patron the Duke of Marlborough, had allowed the conqueror of Ramillies and Blenheim, the man who had made our English arms as glorious as they had been in the days of the Henries and the Edwards, to be humiliated by that nation which his signal genius had elevated above all other nations. That great man, to whom England and England's Queen owed so much, had knelt at his sovereign's feet and besought her pardon and favour for his beautiful termagant, whose follies might have been forgiven for the sake of the husband who so blindly adored her. An ignominious end assuredly to royal friendship, and royal favour, and heroic genius unfortunately mated. Saddest page in the life of England's Captain-General, that scene in the palace, the kneeling conqueror, and the stubborn Queen's unrelenting wrath.
St. John, who once wrote himself down my Lord Marlborough's most devoted and grateful servant, had helped to bring about that humiliation and that fall from power. And then came Atropos with the fatal shears, and just when the traitor's hopes were highest, and he was to play, in a strictly diplomatic and unwarlike character, the great part of General Monk, and bring about a new Restoration, with more ringing of joy-bells and flinging of flowers, as on the glorious twenty-ninth of May, the Queen died, and the plotter's web was rent in pieces. "What a world it is, and how does Fortune banter us!" he cried, in bitterness of spirit. Then came loss of office, six months of rustic retirement, watching for any change of the wind setting Saint-Germain-wards, then the bill of attainder, and the sudden flight of one who dared not face his accusers. Oxford, whose timidity mid irresolution had been ridiculed by his high-spirited colleague, had faced the danger, and escaped it; while Bolingbroke, the high-minded and daring, had fled to France disguised as a French messenger. And now he was in England again, debonair, audacious, favoured by his Majesty's morganatic wife, her Grace of Kendal, flattering everybody, charming everybody by his graces of person, his witchery of manner, his matchless talents, his reckless liberality.
Lavendale could but admire the sinner now, as he had admired him ten years ago, only with a less unquestioning idolatry.
"I know he is an unprincipled scamp," he told Durnford, when his friend remonstrated with him upon those long nights of brilliant talk and deep drinking which he spent with the patriot. "I know he has been a reprobate in his conduct to women, flying at all game, from the young lady of fashion to the chance Egeria of the Mall; and he could drink us bottle-men all under the table and keep his head clear to the last; yes, go straight from the carouse to his office-table and pen diplomatic correspondence, no worse for his four bottles than if he had been drinking rose-water instead of champagne. But he drinks less now, and he can hardly run after women as he used to do, since his adoring wife watches him closer than ever Juno watched Jove."
"And in all probability with the same result."
"Nay, Herrick, he is too deeply immersed in statecraft to sacrifice to Venus. He and Pulteney have sworn an alliance. They call themselves Patriots, and are to start a newspaper before the year is out, with the help of that scamp Amhurst, whom you must remember at Oxford, where he was turned out of his college for profligacy and insubordination. I have half a mind to write for them."
"You, Lavendale! Are you going to rat—turn Jacobite?"
"No, but I am rather inclined to join the Hanoverian Tories. They have all the talents on their side. Walpole is too jealous of power. He will suffer no rival near the throne."
"I see that St. John has been poisoning your mind against the man to whom he owes his return from exile. But he who was ungrateful to Marlborough may well turn upon Walpole."
"I know not that he owes much to Walpole. In the first place, he was promised his pardon years ago—or at any rate told he might hope for everything—by the King; and now, instead of a free pardon, he returns on sufferance, and still languishes under the attainder which keeps him out of the senate. He who would shed such an unwonted blaze of light upon that dull firmament the House of Lords is constrained to grow turnips and train foxhounds at Dawley."
"But you find he is not content with foxhounds and turnips. He is to start a party paper which will doubtless breathe the very spirit of rancorous opposition, cavil at every measure, gird at the chief minister for everything he does and everything he does not do. Take my word for it, Jack, this country of ours, with those wide dependencies which make her chief greatness, was never in safer hands than it is under Robert Walpole. Never was the ship of state sailed by a cleverer skipper than Captain Robin."
"O, I hate the man," cried Lavendale contemptuously, "with his bluff country manners and his stuttering country speech. He is on the crest of the wave just now, after the treaty of Hanover; but wait till our friends of the opposition begin to interrogate financial matters, and you will see how heavily Sir Robert's popularity has been paid for out of the national exchequer. Why, it is said he spends a thousand a week at Houghton, to say nothing of the expenses of another establishment."
"Yes, the witch's brew has worked," said Durnford; "the magician has you in his toils. You could not have a more fatal counsellor or a more dangerous friend than Henry St. John."
"Not a word against him, Herrick; he is my friend."
Durnford bowed and held his peace. He was a staunch Walpolian, and had a sincere and honest regard for that great man which was entirely independent of self-interest. But as he was now writing regularly for one of the Whig journals, his friend affected to think him a party hack, and made light of all his warnings.
The friends dined at Fairmile Court about half a dozen times during the summer and early autumn, but Lavendale had not yet declared himself as a suitor either to the father or to the daughter; although there was enough encouragement in the Squire's manner to bring about such a declaration. The feelings of the young lady herself were at that period generally regarded as a secondary consideration; but even here there was nothing on the surface to discourage a suitor. Irene welcomed Lord Lavendale and his friend with her brightest smile, seemed glad at their coming and sorry when they went. She had a bewitching air of gaiety at times which almost caught Lavendale's wavering heart; she had in other moments a pensive manner that made her seem even more beautiful than in those joyous moods. And yet he faltered in his purpose and hung back, and told himself that there was no need for haste when a man is to seal a lifelong doom.
Herrick, meanwhile, held his peace, save for an occasional word or two with his beloved, just the assurance that she was true to him and cared nothing for his brilliant friend. He dared ask no more than this. He was working hard and honestly, had thoughts of trying for a seat in Parliament at the next general election, if his friends would help him to a borough. He had flung himself heart and soul into politics, and had abjured drink, gaming, and all those other follies which in those days went by the name of pleasure.
And now came wintry evenings and London fogs. The linkmen were busy again, there were assemblies for every night in the week, sometimes as many as seven upon one night, and women of ton went to half a dozen parties of an evening. Fashionable beauty's sedan was a feature in the dimly-lighted streets, escorted by running footmen armed with blunderbusses and carrying torches; cheery the flare of those torches across the darkness of night, with an occasional glimpse of beauty's face behind the glass, briefest vision of sparkling eyes, flashing gems, patches, vermilion, and powder. Now came the season of Italian opera. Society began to rave and dispute about tall lanky Farinelli with his seraphic voice, and short squabby Cuzzoni, also seraphic, and paid at a rate which made Court pensioners seem the veriest paupers; albeit that this was the golden age for place-hunters, whereby Sir Robert Walpole was able by and by to provide snug sinecures of two or three thousand a year for his younger son Horace provision almost more generous on the part of Sir Robert than of the nation, were all things considered. Now came the season of masked balls, much affected by King George, and by his son's lesser but gayer Court at Richmond and Leicester Fields. Lavendale was well received at Richmond Lodge, where Pope and his literary friends were in great favour, and where the lovely Mary Lepel was now shining as Lady Hervey; where Chesterfield, Bathurst, Scarborough, and Hervey were the chief ornaments, all paying homage to the wit and wisdom of clever Princess Caroline, a lady of wide reading and strong opinions upon most points, yet astute enough always to play second fiddle to that dull dogged husband of hers, flattering him with subtlest flatteries, and maintaining her ascendency in spite of all rivalries; a calm, clever, far-seeing woman, of extraordinary power of mind and strength of purpose, standing firm as a rock amidst the quicksands of Court life; a woman of noble disposition, whose youth had known dependence and poverty, yet who had refused the heir to the German Empire rather than turn Papist.
At Lord Lavendale's advice, Squire Bosworth took lodgings in Arlington Street, over against Little St. James's Park, and brought his daughter to London, where she was presented to his Majesty by her aunt, Lady Tredgold, who treated herself and daughters to a London season, chiefly at Mr. Bosworth's expense, in order to perform this duty. Herrick heard of this London visit with an agonised heart: heard how Rena had been presented on the Prince's birthday, and had been admired at the birthnight ball. The town would change his wood-nymph into a fine lady; that sweet simplicity which was her highest charm would perish in the atmosphere of courts. How could he hope that she would be true to him when once she discovered the power of her position as an heiress and a beauty? She would be surrounded by fops and flatterers, run after by every adventurer in London. "And I shall rank among the meanest of them," thought Herrick. "What can I seem to her but an adventurer, when once she becomes worldly-wise and learns to estimate her own value? She will think that I tried to trap her into an engagement; she will begin to despise me."
Agitated by these fears and doubts, Herrick found it hard to work as steadfastly and courageously as he had been working. He found it harder still to withstand the allurements of society, the chocolate-house and the green cloth, the dice-box and the bottle; more especially as Lavendale was always at his side, tempting him, accusing him of having turned dullard and miser.
"For whom are you toiling, or for what?" his lordship asked lightly. "Do you aspire to be a poet and diplomatist, like Prior, to write verses and sign treaties, and live hand in glove with statesmen and princes? Or do you want to be the petted darling of fine ladies, like Gay? Or do you think it is in you to turn satirist, and rival Pope?—who wrote me the genteelest letter you can imagine this morning, by the way, although scarce able to hold a pen for two maimed and useless fingers, having been turned over in Bolingbroke's chariot as he was driving through the lanes between Dawley and Twit'nam on a cursedly dark night. And cursed lanes they are in bad weather, as I can affirm, having ridden through them when the mud was up to my horse's hocks. Come, Herrick, you were not made to play the anchorite. There is to be a masquerade at Heidegger's opera-house to-night, and my divinity, my wife that is to be, will be there, her first public ball. Come and be bottle-holder. I think I ought to declare myself to-night. A masquerade is a capital place for a declaration. I have been reading Shakespeare'sMuch Ado about Nothing. What a pity that fellow's comedies are so seldom acted! There is good stuff in the worst of them."
The masked ball at the opera-house was the gayest scene in London. Every one was there, and royalty was conspicuous, first in the person of the old King, "a taciturn, rather splenetic elderly gentleman," in a snuff-coloured suit with silk stockings to match, no finery but his blue ribbon and diamond shoe-buckles, accompanied as usual by her maypole Grace of Kendal, lank, ungainly, and plain, but dear to Majesty by long habit, homely Joan to royal Darby. Her grace reigned alone since the death of the Countess of Darlington, another German lady with English title and estates, who had fattened upon the wealth of Britannia; an obese elderly person, with round staring black eyes, reputed to have been in early life an amazing beauty. The more well informed of the German courtiers believed the tie between this lady and the King to be purely platonic, that she was indeed his Majesty's half-sister—an illegitimate daughter of the old Elector by his infamous mistress, the Countess of Platen.
The young Court, too, was there: handsome, high-bred Caroline, with her fine aquiline features and her clear, far-seeing eyes; meek Mrs. Howard, with a long-suffering air of submission to royal caprices, not by any means the triumphant style of amaîtresse en titre; brilliant hoydenish Mary Bellenden, now Mrs. Campbell; and sparkling Frenchified Mary Lepel, wife of John Lord Hervey; Chesterfield, airing his new title, and laying about him ruthlessly with that reckless wit which spared neither friend nor kinsfolk, heedless how deep he cut; affecting the airs of a universal conqueror also, pretending even to favours from women of the highest fashion, rank, and beauty, despite a squat ungainly person and an ugly face.
Herrick entered late upon this brilliant scene. He had waited to finish his work at the newspaper office, a dark little printer's workshop near Smithfield, and had hastily washed off the grime of the City and flung on a domino over his every-day clothes. It was a kind of pilgrim's cloak which he wore, and he had put on a pilgrim's hat like Romeo's, and carried a pilgrim's staff, when he went in quest of his Juliet.
For the first quarter of an hour his keen eyes failed to distinguish her amidst that ever-moving, ever-changing mob of masqueraders: princes and peasants, soldiers and chimney-sweepers, French cooks, Italian harlequins and columbines, Venetians, Turks, Dutchmen, and Roman emperors. The glitter and confusion of that undulating crowd, swaying to the sound of lightest music, baffled and bewildered him; but all of a sudden, in the stately movements of a minuet, he saw a form which at a glance revealed the slender gracefulness of his wood-nymph. No other form he had ever seen upon this earth had that airy motion and exquisitely unconscious elegance.
Yes, it was she, dressed as Diana, with a diamond crescent upon her brow, and her soft auburn hair coiled at the back of the perfectly shaped head, a careless curl or two hanging loosely from the coils. Her classic drapery of white and silver clothed her modestly from shoulder to ankle, revealing only the slender feet in silver sandals. In an age of monstrous headdresses and naked shoulders, powder and patches, that classic form and simply braided hair had all the charm of singularity.
Herrick glanced from his beloved to her partner. A slim, elegant-looking man in a Venetian suit, black velvet and gold, with jewelled stiletto—Lavendale without doubt. Yes, that was his dashing air of unconquerable self-possession, the easy consciousness of superiority. He offered his hand to his partner when the dance was over, and led her through the crowd, talking to her animatedly as they moved along. Herrick could see that he was pointing out the celebrities in the mob, giving his tongue full license as he described their characteristics, no doubt in a series of antitheses, as was the fashion in those days, when a modish wit depicted every man or woman of his acquaintance as a bundle of opposite qualities, a creature made up of contradictions, and as impossible as sphinx or chimæra.
Herrick followed them closely. He was able to follow unobserved in that crowded assembly; moreover it was a legitimate action to follow any woman at a masquerade. The entertainment was invented for assignations and imbroglios, mystifications and illicit love-making. He followed close enough to hear the drift of his friend's conversation, if not the very words, and it relieved that sore heart of his to be assured that there was no serious love in all that flow of talk, only gallantry and compliment, scandal and satire.
"There goes my Lord Chesterfield, who just escapes being as ugly as Caliban, with that huge Polyphemus head of his, yet affects elegance and pretends to be irresistible with women. Heidegger himself—the ugliest man in London—might almost as fitly assume the airs of an Adonis. But there is Carteret, the most accomplished man in England, with more languages in his head than were ever spoken at Babel; I must seize an opportunity for presenting him to you. He is a great man, and would be a great minister if Walpole were not jealous of him. Have you seen Mrs. Howard—the shepherdess in pink—forty years old, and as deaf as a post? Her royal shepherd was glaring at us from that box yonder while you were dancing. And at the back of that large box over the stage you may see Majesty itself, sitting in shadow with a couple of Turks in attendance upon him, and the Duchess of Kendal in the front of the box."
"I thought kings and princes would have a grander air, would stand out more from the common people," said Rena. "I did not expect to see the King in his royal robes and crown, but I am vexed to find him so very plain-looking and humdrum! I don't believe Charles I. had ever that common look."
"We only know Charles as Vandyke painted him," said Lavendale. "I daresay were I to conjure up his ghost for you, in his habit as he lived, you would find him a somewhat insignificant person, with a long narrow face and attenuated features. You would not recognise in him the kingly figure on the white horse before which you stood so admiringly at Hampton Court Palace yesterday. But let us talk of something more interesting than kings and emperors. Let us talk of our dear selves. I have a very serious theme to discuss with you, and I thought in this light mock world, where every one is bent upon folly, you and I would be more alone than in a wood. Dare I speak freely, Irene? Will it be to seal my doom if I venture boldly?"
He had drawn the slight figure nearer to his side with a sudden caressing movement, favoured by the jostling of the crowd. Durnford grew savagely angry at that bold caress, and could scarce restrain himself from laying violent hands upon his friend; would not, perhaps, have forborne to part them, had not Rena herself started away with a half-frightened, half-indignant gesture.
But lo! at that very moment, just as Lavendale turned lightly towards the retreating nymph, bold as Apollo in pursuit of Daphne, he started and stood stock-still, as if changed into stone by some apparition of terror.
And yet it was not a terrific vision. It was only a woman, passing tall among women, with the form and carriage of Juno; a woman in a Turkish dress, glittering from brow to waistband with a galaxy of diamonds, which flashed from the gorgeous background of an embroidered robe. The lovely arms, of Parian whiteness, were bare to the shoulder; the lovely bust was but little hidden by the loose outer robe and narrow inner vest of cloth of gold. A long gauze veil fell from the jewelled turban which the lady wore, in proud defiance, or in happy ignorance, of Oriental restrictions.
This sultana of the hour was Lady Judith Topsparkle, and it was but the second time Lavendale had met her since they parted in the little Chinese room at Lady Skirmisham's.
While he stood dumfounded, scarce daring to lift his eyes to those flashing orbs which were shining upon him out of the sultana's little velvet mask, Irene drew still further away from him, unheeded, and Durnford slid in between them and slipped her hand through his arm.
"May the humblest of pilgrims be Miss Bosworth's guardian and defender in this unmannerly mob?" he asked tenderly.
She started, with a faintly tremulous movement which thrilled him with triumphant gladness. Only at the tone or touch of one she secretly loves is a woman so moved.
"Mr. Durnford!" she exclaimed. "How did you recognise me?"
"How did you know me so quickly, in spite of my mask?"
"By your voice, of course."
"And I you by a hundred things: by every turn of your head; by every line of your figure; by the atmosphere that breathes around you; by the halo of light which to my eye hovers perpetually round your head; by a deep delight that steals over me when you are near. And you have been in London a week and I have not seen you, and yet I have passed your door twenty times a day. Cruel, never to discover me from your window, never to make an excuse for five minutes' civility: were it but to drop an old fan in the gutter and let me pick it up for you, or to send Sappho out of doors to be all but run over, so that I might rescue her from under a coach and six at peril of this paltry life of mine."
"Sappho is at Fairmile. My father would not let me bring her. He has promised me a pug. Why did you not pay us a visit of your own accord?"
"I was afraid. I have waited, sneak as I am, for Lavendale to take me with him."
"But why?" she asked, with divinest innocence.
"Lest the Squire should suspect me of being in love with you, and forbid me his door."
This suggestion overpowered her, and she was silent. Durnford too was silent, in a delicious pause of rapturous contentment, as he moved slowly through the crowd with his divinity on his arm.
"Is your father here to-night?" he asked presently.
"O no. He hates all such places. My aunt, Lady Tredgold, brought me. My two cousins are here, dressed as Polish peasants, but I have lost them all in the crowd. My aunt is playing cards somewhere, I believe. She left me in charge of Lord Lavendale."
"And now you are in my charge, and I shall give you up to no one but your aunt."
"My cousins told me that she will play quadrille all night if we let her alone. We shall have to go and fetch her when it is time to go home."
"That will not be till the sun is high. And then if your cousins are girls of spirit they won't be too anxious for going home. We might drive to Islington and breakfast in the gardens there by sunrise, if it were but warmer weather. Let us be happy while we can."
"I am very happy to-night," answered Rena, with delicious simplicity. "When I first came I thought this scene enchanting."
"And you don't think it less enchanting now?" asked Herrick, in a pleading tone. "Surely my presence has not spoiled it for you?"
"Indeed, no: I am very glad to see you again."
And so they wandered on, in and out amidst that giddy crowd, jostling against statesmen and fine ladies, princes and potentates; and so lost in the delight of each other's presence that they were scarce conscious of being in company. For them that crowd of maskers was but as a gallery of pictures, mere scenic decoration, of no significance.
Lord Lavendale had been swallowed up in the throng, had vanished from their sight altogether, he and his Turkish lady. By one half-haughty, half-gracious movement of her Oriental fan she had beckoned, and he had followed, as recklessly as Hamlet followed his father's spectre, scarcely caring whither it led him, even were it to sudden, untimely death.
This Oriental lady only led the way to one of the side-rooms of the theatre—rooms where maskers supped, or gambled, or flirted, or plotted, as circumstance and character impelled them. This room into which Lavendale followed the sultana was devoted to cards, and two ladies and two gentlemen were squabbling over quadrille by the light of four tall wax candles.
Both gentlemen had removed their masks, and in one of them Lavendale recognised Mr. Topsparkle. That painted parchment face of his was scarcely more natural than a mask, and had something the look of one, Lavendale thought, in the flickering light of those tall dim candles.
Lady Judith turned and made him a curtsy.
"Now does your lordship know who I am?" she asked.
"I knew you from the first instant of our meeting. Is there any woman in London who has the imperial air of Lady Judith Topsparkle? Could a mask hide Juno, do you think?"
"I suppose not. One ought to muffle oneself in a domino if one wanted to be unrecognised. But I question if any of us women come here with that view. We are too vain. We want everybody to say, 'How well she is looking to-night! she is positively the finest woman in the room!'"
She had sunk upon a low divan, in a careless attitude which was full of a kind of regal grace.
"I forget if you and my husband know each other?" she asked lightly.
There was not the faintest sign of emotion in her tone or her manner. Careless lightness, the airy indifference of a fashionable acquaintance, could not be more distinctly indicated.
"I have not yet had the felicity of being made known to Mr. Topsparkle," Lavendale answered, with that perfect manner of his which was exquisitely courteous, and yet gave the lady indifference for indifference.
"O, but you must know each other. You have so many ideas in common—you are both travellers, both eccentrics, both much cleverer than the common herd of humanity. Vyvyan, put down your cards for a moment if you can; here is Lord Lavendale, who complains that you have not waited upon him since he returned from the East."
"I am vastly to blame," replied Topsparkle, shifting his cards to his left hand and offering the right to Lavendale, a pallid attenuated hand, decorated with a choice intaglio and one other ring, a twice-coiled snake with a black diamond in its head, which looked like a gem with a history; "I am stricken with remorse at the idea of my neglect. But his lordship's appearance in London has been meteoric rather than regular, and I have been for the most part in the country."
"The honour of making Mr. Topsparkle's acquaintance is only more precious because it has been deferred," answered Lavendale; and the two gentlemen, after having shaken hands with effusion, acknowledged each other's compliments with stately bows.
Mr. Topsparkle resumed his play, and Lavendale seated himself on the divan beside Lady Judith.
"Shall I attend you to the dancing-room?" he asked.
"No, I am sick to death of the crowd and the heat, and all those fine people," she answered, taking off her mask, and letting him see the loveliness he had once adored. "Did you observe Miss Thornleigh as Iphigenia?" she asked carelessly.
"I beheld an exquisite vision of nakedness, like Eve before the fall, at which all the world was gazing. I thought it was meant for our universal mother!"
"No, it was Iphigenia."
"I stand corrected. Then a scanty drapery of silvery gauze and a fillet round the brow mean Iphigenia. Now can I understand why Diana rejected the young lady by way of holocaust, and substituted a hind at the final moment. Such unclothed loveliness must have appalled the modest goddess."
Lady Judith laughed behind her fan, and shrugged her beautiful shoulders in the loose Turkish robe, which was decency itself in comparison with Miss Thornleigh's audacious transparency of raiment. Everything is a question of degree, and to be half naked in those days was only modish; but there was a boundary-line, and the beautiful Miss Thornleigh was considered to have overstepped it.
They talked of their acquaintance upon that crowded stage yonder, discussed the scandals of the hour, the curious marriages—an elderly lady to her footman, a gentleman of rank to an orange-girl—there had been a passion for oranges ever since the days of Nell Gwynne.
"I believe to sell oranges is the only passport to a fine gentleman's favour," said Judith. "I almost wish I had begun life with a basket, like the famous Clara, princess of the Court of Requests. I would give much to have inspired such a passion in such a man as Henry St. John."
"It is not too late, even without the oranges," answered Lavendale, smiling at her. "If St. John was too easily melted, be sure Bolingbroke is not altogether adamant."
"O, but he has a farm and a French wife, and has turned respectable. The fiery St. John of Queen Anne's time, the hawk that swooped on every dove, is altogether extinct; there is no such person."
"Are there not rivers in Damascus?" asked Lavendale with lowered voice, drawing nearer to her as he spoke. "Are there none who can love as St. John loved—not wasting that exquisite passion upon an inconstant orange-wench, but burning his lamp of life before a higher altar, worshipping, adoring at a purer shrine?"
"Heavens, what rodomontade we are talking!" cried Lady Judith, starting up from her divan, and moving quickly to the door. "The very air of these dances is full of a jargon which even sensible people fall into unawares. Come, why do you not ask my hand for a minuet? I think you and I have danced one ages ago, and that our steps went in decent time."
"Think! Ah, I forgot how short is memory in a lady of fashion."
"O, we have so many caprices to blot the tablet. Now a new singer, and anon a new colour in lutestring, or a new style of headdress, or a new game at cards. Life is a series of transformations. Here is poor Dick Steele, struck down with paralysis, and gone to end his days in Cheshire, he who was the wittiest man in London when I first knew this town. I heard of his malady only to-night. Life is full of sad changes. One can hardly remember oneself of a few years ago, much less one's friends. But I swear I should have known your lordship anywhere."
"I am proud to be so far honoured."
They reëntered the busy scene at a pause between two dances. Everybody was walking about. The dazzle and glitter of that moving throng showed dimly through an all-pervading cloud of powder and dust, like a tropical haze on a marshy shore; the Babel of voices was bewildering to the ear.
"There goes Peterborough with Anastasia Robinson on his arm. I can swear to the turn of her head, though she has muffled herself in sables as a Russian Czarina."
"If she knew what a cook-maid the present Empress of Russia is, the lady would hardly aspire to be mistaken for her."
"O, it is only to make us all sick with envy at the splendour of her sables. His lordship bought them for her in Paris. They are worth a king's ransom. 'Tis said he allows her a hundred guineas a month, but I am sure she must spend three times as much."
"You make me feel as if I were one of the Seven Sleepers," exclaimed Lavendale. "Is not Mrs. Robinson the very pink and pattern of virtue; so chaste and cold a being that even the too tender wooing of Senesino in an opera—mere stage love-making—wounded and offended her?"
"That is perfectly true; but it is no less true that she smiles upon Lord Peterborough. Who could withstand a warrior and a hero? The man who conquered a province with a mere handful of troops must needs be irresistible to a weak woman. She is living at Parson's Green with her mother; but as Peterborough spends most of his life there, people will talk."
"In spite of the mother?"
"In spite of the mother," echoed Judith. "However, it is hinted they are privately married, and there are those among us who still continue to receive Mrs. Robinson under that charitable supposition; ourselves, for instance. Topsparkle is such a fanatic about music that I hardly dare question a soprano's reputation, or hint that a tenor has the air of having sprung from the gutter. At Ringwood Abbey we receive every one who can sing or play to perfection, without reference to character. I myself own to a prejudice in favour of those ladies who are still at their first or second lover, in preference to those who have ruined half the pretty fellows in town. But Bononcini and Handel are the two people who really choose our society. We have our Bononcini set and our Handel set, and are Italian or German as those great masters dictate. But you must come to Ringwood some day and judge for yourself. How do you like my husband?"
This was asked abruptly, with the lightest, most impertinent air.
"Mr. Topsparkle's courtesy to me just now renders me too much his debtor to be disinterested. I am already a partial critic. But I am told by the indifferent world that he is a most accomplished gentleman."
"Yes, he is very clever. But it is a fantastical kind of cleverness. He plays the organ divinely, knows ever so many modern languages, and writes French almost as well as Monsieur le Voltaire. He has un-Englished himself by his long residence on the Continent, and must be judged by a foreign standard of taste."
"So long as he has succeeded in making you happy—" began Lavendale, in a lowered voice.
"Do I not look happy?" she asked, with smiling lips under the little velvet mask.
"You look gloriously handsome. That radiant surface is too dazzling for me to penetrate deeper. Who could question those lovely lips when they smile, or dare hint that silvery laughter might be artificial? I will believe anything those lips tell me."
"Then you may believe that Mr. Topsparkle is vastly kind, and that he has loaded me with all the luxuries women live for nowadays: lutestring gowns, Brussels lace, diamonds, pug-dogs, black footmen, and a Swiss porter. If he cannot always insure me peace of mind it is the fault of my capriciousness, and not any lack of kindness in him. My bosom is racked at this moment by the thought of the lottery. I may win ten thousand pounds, or draw nothing but blanks. I have wasted a competence in buying up other people's tickets, for I dreamt I won the ten thousand pound prize, and I have been in a fever of expectation from that hour."
"I hope you will not be too much disappointed should the dream prove false: one of those deluding visions by which the Homeric gods lead their victims into deadly peril."
"If that dream do not come true, I swear I will never sleep again; never more trust myself in the land of lying shadows."
"The company all seem crowding to one spot. Shall we go?"
"Yes, this instant. It is nearly time for the lottery."
She took his arm, leaning on it in her eager haste, and her lovely arm was pressed against his heart, beating passionately with all the old fever. It was an unholy fever, for in his heart of hearts he knew that she was not a good woman, that she had deteriorated sorely since their last parting, that wealth and pride of place and the flatteries of a modish mob had perverted all of good that had been left in her nature in those old days when she was Lady Judith Walberton. Her reckless conversation, her air of audacity, which seemed to challenge the rekindling of old fires, shocked even while it captivated him. There was a strange mixture of love and pity in his mind as he gazed upon this beautiful, brilliant, and perhaps lost creature.
The lottery was attended by a maddened crowd, almost reproducing upon a small scale the fever and folly of that famous South Sea scheme, which but six years ago had spread ruin and sorrow over the land, as if it had been some scaly monster come up out of the sea to devour the inhabitants of the earth. The monster's name was Avarice or Cupidity, most fatal among all fiery dragons that feed upon the flesh of men. And now the same foul beast in little was preying upon this modish crowd. There were women who had pledged their diamond earrings to buy tickets; there were sadder sisters who had bartered their honour: and for how many was the agony of disappointment inevitable!
For Lady Judith among others. Her eleven numbers were all blanks. She pushed her way through the mob in a towering passion.
"The whole thing is a cheat!" she exclaimed. "I believe the prize-winner goes halves with the proprietor of the lottery. There must be trickery somewhere. Did you see how delighted Lady Mary Montagu was at winning a paltry fifty pounds? That woman is as mean as Shylock or Harpagon, or as wicked old Sarah herself. I had eleven tickets, every one of them, as I thought, a lucky number: one was my age doubled; the other, Topsparkle's multiplied by nine; another had three sevens in it; another, four threes. I had chosen them with the utmost discretion; and to think there was not a winning number among the whole heap! I gave Lady Wharton a ruby ring for her ticket, one of the finest in my jewel-case, the true pigeon's-blood colour, and the creature has jewed me out of that lovely gem for a scrap of waste pasteboard. I am provoked beyond measure!"
"But, dear Lady Judith, with inordinate wealth at your command, and with the most indulgent of husbands for your purse-bearer, is it worth your while to gamble?"
"Is any pleasure worth one's while?" she retorted mockingly. "They are all empty; they are all Dead Sea apples that turn to dust and ashes. One may as well take diversion one way as another. Topsparkle thinks he is happy when he has collected a pack of squalling Italians or sourcrout-eating Germans under his roof; and yet they contrive to keep him in a fever, by their bickerings and grumblings and envyings, from the moment of arrival to the moment of departure. Will you help me to find my chair? I suppose there will be some of my men in the vestibule, if they are not all drunk at some low mug-house."
"I will answer for finding you a couple of sober chairmen. You will not wait for Mr. Topsparkle?"
"I would not disturb his game for worlds; for though he pretends I am the only gamester in the family, he has a passion for quadrille. He learnt the taste in the south of France, where they play hardly anything else."
They went to the vestibule, where Lady Judith Topsparkle's running footmen were lolling against the wall or lounging about in company with a crowd of other lacqueys, all slightly the worse for twopenny ale, but fairly steady upon their well-fed legs, nevertheless. Lady Judith's liveries of orange and brown were distinguishable by their sombre richness among gaudier suits of blue and silver or peach-blossom and gold.
"My roquelaure," she said to one of her men, a gigantic blackamoor who had served in the Royal Schloss at Berlin, and had been tempted away from his Prussian Majesty's service by larger offers from Mr. Topsparkle. His startling appearance had fascinated the wealthy Englishman, who was instantly eager to add this exotic grace to his household.
The giant spread a fur-lined cloak over her ladyship's shoulders, a cloak of paduasoy which enveloped the tall form from the throat to the feet.
"Let us go and look for my chair," she exclaimed impatiently. "This vestibule reeks of lamp-oil and black footmen."
Lavendale accompanied her swift footsteps out into the portico. Sedan-chairs were standing in quadruple ranks, coaches and chariots blocked the road, shining meteoric with the blaze of their lamps and the glitter of their harness, horses champing, snorting, pawing, in impatience to be moving through the cold crisp air. There was a slight frost, a faint gray fog, and, above, a new moon rode fast in a sky of steely blue, broken by dark clouds.
"I hate to be smothered in a chair after escaping from a stifling assembly-room," said Lady Judith, "and the night seems positively enchanting. Would you have the courage to walk home with me?"
"It needs the courage of a lion, yet I will face the peril for the sake of such company. But will those dainty little Turkish slippers which I observed just now keep out the cold and damp?"
"O, they are more substantial than they look, and the stones seem quite dry. I am not afraid. Juba, tell my chairmen I am going to walk."
Juba, Lady Judith's particular personal attendant, was quick to marshal his men. Two went in advance of their mistress with blazing torches, two others followed, while Juba marched at the head of the little procession by way of advanced guard.
Thus attended, and leaning upon Lord Lavendale's arm, Lady Judith's progress by way of Gerard Street to Soho Square had a picturesque air which is unknown in our matter-of-fact age of well-lit streets and miniature broughams. Everything in those days was on a grandiose scale; and if people spent a good deal of money, they at least had their full value in show and glitter. Those running footmen with their flaming torches, that huge blackamoor with his splendid livery, made a display that would have graced the semi-Oriental state of a Roman Empress in the decadence of the Empire.
Gerard Street was alive with gaiety and fashion—beaux and belles arriving and departing, torches flaming, harness rattling, sedans setting down or taking up their freight at every door, footmen lounging against every railing, link-boys rushing to and fro, making believe that the night was dark, though the cold crescent moon kept peeping out from amidst those black scurrying clouds and putting those resin-dropping links to shame.
Windows blazed with the light of many candles, and shadows flitted across many a blind. From some houses there came a gust of noise—laughter, babble, and the rattle of dice; from another, sounds of music now classic, then modern and fashionable. There was no such thing as solitude for Lavendale and Lady Judith in that walk through one of the most fashionable quarters of the town, no possibility of anything compromising or sentimental. Their talk was of the lightest—the very thistledown of polite conversation—with no more purpose or depth of meaning than there is in Mr. Pope's letters to Lady Mary written a few years before this time.
What a beautiful, frivolous, gracious creature she seemed in Lavendale's eyes as she walked by his side, moving with swift footsteps through the cold night! She carried herself superbly at all times, and walked like Dian or Atalanta. Sir Robert himself had praised her carriage, and talked of her as "a splendid mover," as if she had been one of his Norfolk hunters. She wore her mask still, and her head was muffled in her Turkish "asmack," and her long furred mantle reached to her heels. Yet there was hardly a man at the Court end of London who would have failed to recognise the lady whom a legion of admirers at White's and at the Cocoa Tree toasted as a queen among women, and whose name had been written with a diamond on one of the toast-glasses at the Kit-Kat Club when she was fifteen.
"Tell me some of your Eastern adventures," she exclaimed presently. "I have been telling you all about our town scandals, and you have told me positively nothing of your travels. Is it true that you broke into the seraglio at Constantinople, and were set upon by a dozen blackamoors as big as Juba, and very nearly killed in the scuffle?"
"Just about as true as the most startling adventures of Marco Polo or Sir John Mandeville. I saw no more of the seraglio than the cypress-tops in the garden that surround it, and a glimpse of the palace itself through the foliage."
"But is it not true that you brought home a Circassian slave, a peerless beauty, and that you have her under lock and key at Lavendale Manor?"
"That also belongs to the Marco Polo order of adventures. No, Lady Judith, the burnt-out ashes of a heart are not to be rekindled by almond-eyed beauties with thick waists and squabby figures; I saw nothing in the East half so lovely as that which I left in the West."
"And yet we are taught to think the Orient is full of loveliness. Here we are at my door. Will you come in and wait for Mr. Topsparkle? I daresay I shall have company, for I told half a dozen of my dearest friends they might take their chocolate with me after the masquerade."
The Soho Square of 1726 was a place of palaces, but its fashion was already waning. Monmouth House, a royal mansion built by Wren for the luckless Duke, had fallen from Lord Bateman's occupation to a public auction-room; and there were other signs of decay which indicated that Golden Square to the south, and the newly planned Cavendish Square, almost in the country, were disputing the palm with Soho, which was beginning to assume a dilapidated air; like old Lady Orkney, or any other famous Court beauty of a bygone generation.
Mr. Topsparkle's house was the largest and most regal-looking after Monmouth House. It was approached by a double flight of steps, and its pilastered balconies, pedimented windows, and Grecian cornice gave a stately air to a building which in spaciousness and elevation was magnificent.
But if the outer appearance of the mansion was noble and imposing, its interior decoration made it one of the richest and most wonderful houses in London. In all his journeyings about the face of the earth Mr. Topsparkle had amused himself by the collection of curios; and as his purse was long and his taste universal, he had gathered together the most heterogeneous assemblage of the beautiful and the ugly that had ever been amassed by one man or exhibited under one roof.
The spacious hall which Lavendale entered at Lady Judith's invitation was hung with Venetian tapestry from the palace of a fourteenth-century Doge, and almost black with age. But as a relief against that sombre background there hung a unique collection of Moorish and Indian arms, while the foreground of the room was enlivened with everything frivolous and elegant in the way of china monsters, Meissen porcelain, carved ivory, French fans and bonbon-boxes, filigree-silver caskets, bronze statuettes, gold snuffboxes, and Indian gods, all scattered, as it were, haphazard upon a variety of small tables of more or less eccentric designs. On the left of this hall opened a suite of drawing-rooms which served also as one continuous picture-gallery, and which contained a collection of French and Italian masters acknowledged to be one of the best in England. On the right was the dining-room—an immense apartment, which better deserved the name of banqueting-hall. Here everything was of carved oak, ponderous, gigantic, and strictly Dutch, and here the pictures were by Dutch and Flemish painters. A replica of Rubens' "Descent from the Cross" hung over the sideboard, and the rest of the wall was a mosaic of cabinet pictures, every one a gem.
The hall was lighted with clusters of wax candles in bronze candelabra dotted here and there about the tables, and making only islets of light in the gloom of those dark walls, against which Moorish breast-plates and Indian targets flashed and gleamed with faintly phosphorescent brightness. But at one end of the hall there was an enormous wood fire, which made a rosy atmosphere all round it; and it was in this roseate glow that Judith seated herself, sinking into a capacious armchair covered with stamped and gilt leather: a chair in which it was supposed Count Egmont had sat when he was tried for his life in the Town Hall at Brussels.
She flung off cloak and mask, and appeared in all the brilliancy of gold brocade and diamonds, a beautiful dazzling apparition which seemed hardly human in that fairy-like fire-glow. She touched a little bell, and her lacqueys began to arrange a table for chocolate; and before it could be brought three of her lady friends came trooping in, also cloaked and masked, with two gentlemen in attendance upon them.
"How early you left!" said Lady Polwhele, a stout matron of fifty, revealing a bedaubed complexion and a galaxy of patches; "I saw you sneak away. Do you know that I won twenty pound? I feel in the seventh heaven. It is odiously little to win, but it may be the turning-point of my bad luck. I have been losing persistently at every venture I have made ever since my wretched South Sea bonds, when I ought to have sold out and didn't. I could have sold them at nine hundred, Asterley, and can you believe that I was fool enough to keep them till they dropped to a hundred and twenty? The idiots about me declared there must inevitably be as rapid a rise as there had been a fall. Would you believe it, Ted?"
"I have heard the story so often that it has become an article of faith with me," answered Mr. Asterley, with a bored look. He, too, had taken off his mask, and revealed a small-featured, effeminate face and a faded complexion. He had not taken to paint yet, and he looked as if he had not slept for a week. His city-bred wife was one of Lady Polwhele's companions, for that worthy dowager had patched up a peace with her old admirer, and finding she could not dispense with the assiduities of the husband, now submitted to the society of the wife as a necessary evil. She was said to be forming Mrs. Asterley. But if the pupil was docile, the material was of the coarsest, or so her ladyship declared in confidence to at least fifty particular friends. "I think if any one could make a fine lady out of a handsome dairymaid I ought to be able to do it," she told her intimates, when she was bemoaning Mrs. Asterley's incorrigible vulgarity.
"You have trained so many fine gentlemen that it must be agreeable to work on the other sex by way of variety," said her confidante.
"O, I have always liked to have boys of good family about me to fetch and carry," answered Lady Polwhele carelessly. "They are better than black footmen; they want no wages, and they have not that horrid African odour which makes so many fine houses smell like a zoological garden. But for Ted Asterley's sake I should really like to make his wife presentable. Her high-mettled prancing at the last birthnight ball nearly set the room in a roar. Captain Bloodyer told me that her steps in the country dance reminded him of nothing but a dealer's horse being taught to step high over bundles of straw in a livery-yard. If the creature would only be quiet there might be some hope for her, but her plebeian blood has furnished her with a stock of animal spirits which must be her ruin."
Mrs. Asterley's spirits had not abandoned her even at three o'clock in the morning. This was her first visit to the famous house in Soho, and she ran about the room exclaiming at everything.
"Dear, what a funny room," she cried, "with all those crooked knives and pretty old dish-covers on the wall! I thought they kept the like of them in the butler's pantry, but they're mighty pretty against that carpet-work."
Then coming to a sudden stop before Lady Judith, and giggling shyly, she exclaimed, "Lord, how I should love a room just like this, your la'ship! It has such a sweet pretty murderous kind of an air, just like Bluebeard's chamber, where he kept his wives' heads. I shall ask papa to let me furnish a room the same pattern, so I shall."
"Pray do, Mrs. Asterley. The frame will charmingly suit the picture. You have a vapourish artistic air which would be admirably set off by antique furniture."
"My dear Belle, Mr. Topsparkle's old Venetian tapestry is both priceless and unique," said her husband reprovingly.
"What, that old carpet-work on the walls? I thought they had that for cheapness."
"My sweetest love, you have no more manners than a pig," said Asterley, but with an indulgent smile at his buxom wife's low-bred simplicity which was gall and wormwood to Lady Polwhele.
"O, but when one is blest with a wealthy father it is so natural to suppose he can get one anything one fancies by paying for it. I am sure I should have thought as much if my poor dear papa had not been a pauper," said Lady Judith, with languid good-nature. "You must go to Canons or Stowe, my dear Mrs. Asterley, and look about you. You will see some very pretty ideas for rooms, which will put you in the right way of furnishing your new house."
"But we have not taken a house yet. We are in a lodging over a tallow-chandler's in the Haymarket. It is dreadful on melting days. Yet they say Mr. Addison wrote his poem on Blenheim next door. I used to think Blenheim was a battle, but Teddie says 'tis a poem."
"My sweet child, if you were to talk a little less and listen a little more, there might be some hope of your arriving at an understanding of many things that are now dark to you," said Lady Polwhele severely; and then she peered about in the great dusky apartment, and suddenly descried Lord Lavendale sitting a little way behind Lady Judith, and quite in shadow.
"As I live, it is Lavendale!" she cried; "the very man I have been pining to see these centuries. Come and sit by me on this couch, you dear pretty fellow, and tell me where you have hidden yourself since you came from the East."
"In the dismal seclusion of my father's favourite estate, and the only remnant of his property which his son's follies have left intact," answered Lavendale gravely.
"Did not I tell you so, Asterley?" exclaimed her ladyship; "there is no help for it, you see. He must marry an heiress. Did not I say so, Asterley? You and I must find him an heiress."
"Forgive me, Lady Polwhele, if I submit that although you and my friend Asterley are doubtless admirable caterers, I would rather be my own purveyor."
"O, but heiresses are almost as extinct as the dodo. An only child of wealthy parents is the veritable black swan. And Asterley is such a diplomatist with women."
"Egad, his lordship is in the right in rejecting a lady of my choosing," simpered Asterley. "The odds are I should have insinuated my own image into the warmest corner of the dear creature's heart before I introduced my principal. Agents and proxies are always dangerous in love or matrimony."
"Would it surprise Mr. Asterley to hear that the heiress is found already?" asked Judith languidly, looking downward at the jewelled Moorish salver and chocolate service of German china which Juba and his minions had arranged on the table in front of her. The copper chocolate-pot was of curious shape, and was supposed to be as ancient as the destruction of Pompeii, and to have held some witch's concoction in the way of a philtre for love or hate. There was a tiny spirit-lamp under it, which burned with a diabolical blue flame.
"Found already, while Lavendale has been hiding in Surrey?" cried the dowager. "You astound me!"
"Yes, the young lady danced at the birthnight ball, and was the observed of all observers for her grace and beauty. Everybody was asking where she had learnt to walk a minuet with such a mixture of ease and stateliness, till Mary Campbell, who has the impudence of the devil, went about asking questions, and ferreted out the new beauty's history. She is the daughter of Squire Bosworth, Lord Lavendale's next-door neighbour, a curious old money-grubber who made a hundred thousand pounds in that odious South Sea scheme which beggared so many women of fashion and disgraced not a few: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for instance, who still trembles at the very name of that unlucky Frenchman whose money she ventured and lost."