"And whose very warm advances she must at one time have encouraged," suggested Lady Polwhele. "Poor Molly would never have been so frightened had there not been something more than money transactions between her and Monsieur Rémond. But pray tell us more of the heiress."
"She is as simple as Wycherley's country wife, but much more genteel," replied Lady Judith lightly, while Juba carried round the chocolate, and while Lavendale sat on thorns. "She has learnt to sing and dance from a lame old Frenchwoman, who taught Lady Tredgold's gaunt daughters—"
"And never succeeded in teaching them to step to the music," said Asterley.
"But this girl is a born sylph, and a musician by instinct. Topsparkle has heard of her singing, though he has never seen her, and he wants me to ask her to Ringwood. Surely you must have observed her, Lady Polwhele?"
"I was not at the birthnight; my dearest pug had a fit of the colic so severe that I trembled lest every breath should be his last. I would not have left him for a galaxy of kings and princes."
"But you must have seen her to-night. A slim, nymph-like creature, disguised as Diana, with a silver crescent in her hair. She and Lavendale were the prettiest couple in the room."
"Lady Judith is bent upon rekindling the ashes of a long-extinguished vanity," said Lavendale.
"But you do not deny the South Sea heiress. You plead guilty to serious intentions," said Lady Polwhele, shaking her fan at his lordship in a kittenish manner.
"Gold and spices from southern seas have a pleasant sound, your ladyship," replied Lavendale easily, "and the young lady herself is as much too good for me as I am too bad for her."
"O, but a country-bred girl always doats upon a rake."
"'Tis only natural a rustic lass should be fond of making hay. I suppose it is that kind of innocent wooden rake your ladyship means.Gaudentem patrios findere sarculo agros."
"No, sir, a battered, hardened, brazen, half-ruined, infidel man of fashion," answered the dowager; "that is the object a country wench admires. If you are reformed, be sure you have spoiled your chances. You cannot be too wicked to please sweet simplicity. It is only experienced women of the world, like Lady Judith and me, who have a relish for virtue."
"And then only in the abstract, I'll be sworn," cried Asterley, coming to the tray for a second cup of chocolate, and devouring cakes out of a silver filigree basket. "You relish virtue in your Locke or your Addison—a stately preachment of morality in elegant Saxon-English, but you like a man to be—a man. There is Lord Bolingbroke, for instance. Is he not the highest example of manly perfection?Facile primus.An easy first in everything: first in pleasure, idleness, and debauchery, as he is first in learning, diplomacy, and statesmanship."
"And in lies and craft," said Lady Judith scornfully; "there he is—what do you call it?—primus inter primos. I would rather have Walpole for my type of manliness. A coarser stuff, if you will, but a far more honest fabric; no such mixture of gold and tinsel, strength and rottenness."
"I forgot that your ladyship belongs to the Whig faction," said Asterley.
"O, I tie myself to no politics. If the Chevalier were a MAN, I would rather have him to rule us than this little German king. But the little Hanoverian is at least honest, and has shown his mettle against the Turks, while the Stuarts are as false as they are feeble: ingrates to their friends and trucklers to their foes."
While she was speaking, there came a great ringing of the hall-bell, and the sound of a chair setting down outside; and then the double doors were opened, and between a lane of footmen Mr. Topsparkle sauntered in.
He had not condescended to any further disguise than a crimson damask domino, which he flung off as he entered, revealing a suit of tawny velvet embroidered with gold thread, with ruffles and cravat of finest Malines lace, his small pinched features almost overshadowed by the fulness of his somewhat old-fashioned periwig. He saluted the company with an air of being enraptured at seeing them, which wasde rigueurin that age of compliment and all-pervading artificiality.
"I vow it is our divine Lady Polwhele, looking at least a decade younger than when these eyes last beheld her."
"Why, you foolish Topsparkle, 'twas but t'other day we met and quarrelled for a china monster—a green dragon with a hollow stomach for burning pastilles—at the auction-room over the way."
"Ah, but that was by daylight, and a woman's beauty when she has once passed thirty is too delicate and evanescent for sunshine and open air. Buxom wenches of twenty may endure the glare and the breeze: it only makes them a trifle more blowsy; but for the refined, the intellectual, the ethereal loveliness ofwomanhood, there must be chastened light and gorgeous surroundings. This room becomes you as her rainbow and her peacocks become Juno, or as the sea-foam sets off Aphrodite."
"Flatterer!" sighed her ladyship, tapping him playfully with her fan; "you were always incorrigible. I have not forgotten the wicked things you said to me seven years ago, when we met in Venice. Come, prince of lies, show me your last new picture; you are always adding gems to your collection."
"Nay, I have forsworn painting, and live only for music. I bought a little dulcimer t'other day which belonged to good Queen Bess. Come and look at it."
Lady Polwhele followed him into the picture-gallery, which had been brilliantly lighted in the expectation of droppers-in after the masquerade. And now came more setting down of chairs, swearing at chairmen, quarrelling of link-boys, and loud ringing at the hall-bell, and some of the most modish people in London came sauntering in to sip Lady Judith's chocolate or Mr. Topsparkle's Tokay. The rooms were almost full before Lord Lavendale left; and amidst that coming and going of guests, and idle compliments and idle laughter, he had found himself several times in close converse with Judith, they two, as they had often been before, alone amidst the babble of the crowd.
She congratulated him with a prettily serious air, almost maternal, or at least sisterly, upon his approaching marriage. She told him that he had chosen wisely in selecting so lovely a girl, with a fortune large enough to pay off his mortgages and start him afresh in life.
"I protest there is nothing settled," he said. "What you have heard is but the town gossip—words without meaning. I have said not a word to the lady. I grant you that her father has been monstrously civil to me, that he is rich while I am poor, and that our estates join. Upon my honour there is no more than this."
"0, but you have only to speak and to win. I have set my heart upon seeing your fortune mended. I have been poor myself, and know how hard it is for a patrician to be penniless. I shall ask Harpagon and his daughter to Ringwood. He is an odious miser, they tell me."
"He has lived in rather a shabby way, and I believe that to accumulate wealth is his ruling passion; but I doubt he would be willing to spend liberally upon occasion. He has been a misanthrope rather than a miser, Alceste rather than Harpagon."
"Whatever he is I will endure him, for his pretty daughter's sake."
"You are ever gracious and obliging. Good-night."
"Good-morning, for it has just chimed four."
They saluted each other with stateliest courtesy, and Lavendale left, but not to go straight back to Bloomsbury. Late as it was, he felt there was still a chance of company and play at White's chocolate-house; so it was westward to St. James's Street he betook himself, there to lose a few of those loose guineas which he always had in his pocket, albeit he was practically a pauper.
Squire Bosworth, having once consented to bring his daughter to town, was not a man to stint money in detail. He surprised his sister-in-law by the liberality of his arrangements and the liberty he allowed her in expenditure. She had excellent rooms for herself and her gaunt daughters, and a coach and four at her disposition, with free license to buy tickets for concerts, operas, masquerades, and public amusements of all kinds; and she was told to order all that was needful for the adornment of the heiress's person. Her ladyship was an old campaigner, and knew how to profit by her position. The mantua-makers and milliners who waited upon Mrs. Bosworth were tradeswomen who had supplied Lady Tredgold for a quarter of a century, and she had them, as it were, under her thumb. "I have so little money to spend, my dears, that if I did not spend it with the same people year after year, I should not be of the slightest importance to fashionable trades-folk. But by a steady patronage of the same people, and by always paying ready money, I have contrived to keep the best milliner and mantua-maker in London my very humble and devoted servants."
It happened, therefore, that in these halcyon days of the Arlington Street lodgings, Mrs. Amelia and Mrs. Sophia Tredgold were supplied with gowns and caps almost at half-price by these obliging and confidential purveyors. There was a handsome margin for profit upon the prices paid for Irene's Court-train and other fineries.
Everything in that wonderful world of fashion and pleasure was new and surprising to the girl who had been reared in the seclusion of Fairmile Park. She gave herself up freely to the enchantments of the dazzling, dissipated, extravagant, artificial town. She saw only the glitter and sparkle of society's surface, and knew not that the light was the phosphorescence of putrefaction; that the whole fabric, this fairy palace gleaming with lights and breathing music, was rotten to the core, and might fall about the heads of these revellers at any moment, as that other fairy palace where Philip the Regent and hisrouéshad so lately held their orgies was doomed to fall before the century should be ended.
But of all pleasures which that great city could offer to innocent youth the divinest was music, which at this period enjoyed an unbounded popularity and fashion. The one art which George I. loved was music, and to that art and its most famous professors he and his family gave the warmest encouragement. The Royal Academy for Music had only been founded six years, but the influence of such a school was already felt. Italian opera was in its glory, and the rivalry between Handel and Buononcini, and between Cuzzoni and La Faustina, was one of the most exciting topics in the whole round of society talk.
Rena revelled in that magic world of the opera. All the glamour of the stage was here intensified by the stronger magic of music. Handel's classic operas, with their wealth of melody and charm of mythologic story, opened a new world of enchantment to the girl's quick imagination. Lady Tredgold and her daughters loved the opera only because it was fashionable, and stifled many a yawn behind their Watteau fans; Rena and Mdlle. Latour delighted in music as an epicure delights at a feast. They hung entranced upon every note, and inwardly resented the chattering and giggling of Mrs. Amelia and Mrs. Sophia, who coquetted with their admirers at the back of the box, and encouraged visits from all the most frivolous foplings of the town. Rena had no suspicion that these young fribbles came for the most part in the hope of getting a word or two with the heiress. It had never occurred to her that she was a prize for which half the young men in London would have liked to race each other.
Lord Lavendale was a frequent visitor at the house in Arlington Street, and was cordially received by Lady Tredgold, who had been intimate with his mother in her girlhood and was disposed to favour his suit. He had spoken to Mr. Bosworth, who had answered bluntly, "Win her if you can, and then we will see about paying off the mortgages on Lavendale, and joining the two estates. But I am no tyrant to force my daughter into an uncongenial marriage. If you would have her and her fortune, you must first win her heart."
"I will try," Lavendale answered, honestly enough.
It was his resolute intention to try and gain Rena's love, and to lead a better life than he had ever led yet: to abjure the bottle and the dice-box, though both those amusements were deemed the fitting diversion for a fine gentleman's leisure. Even the graver and statelier men of the day were topers. The late Lord Oxford had been accused of coming drunk into the presence of his Queen; and Pulteney drank almost as deep as St. John. Three or four bottles of Burgundy were deemed a fair allowance for a gentleman; and now the Methuen treaty, giving free trade in Portuguese wines, was bringing a heavier liquor into fashion.
Lavendale and Irene met in all the aristocratic assemblies of the day, at operas and balls, auction-rooms, Park, and Mall. They met at the house of Henrietta Duchess of Marlborough, daughter of the great Duke and widow of Lord Godolphin the statesman, who gave musical evenings and swore by Buononcini. Here Rena beheld Mr. Congreve,l'ami de la maison, gouty, irritable, and nearly blind, but occasionally condescending to sparkle in brief flashes of wit. He was petted and obviously adored by the lady, who, after having had the greatest soldier and the grandest statesman of that age for father and husband, appeared to have reserved her warmest affections for a selfish old bachelor playwright.
Lavendale and Irene met each other in still higher society at St. James's, Leicester House, and Richmond Lodge, where Lady Tredgold had the entry. New and pretty faces are always welcome at Court, and it became speedily known that the charms of this particular face were fortified by a handsome fortune. The Princess of Wales was very gracious to Squire Bosworth's daughter, and Mrs. Howard smiled upon her with that sweet vague placidity which one sees in the faces of deaf people. Rena here beheld the famous Dean Swift, newly advanced to that title of Dean, and come to kiss his patroness's beautiful hand, and to sneer at all the little great world around him in nightly letters to Stella Johnson, far away in a Dublin lodging, with small means and an elderly companion. Fond and faithful Stella may have needed those lively letters of the Dean's, with their graphic account ofhispleasures, to cheer the slow monotony of her days.
Irene enjoyed everything, and, being nearly as innocent as Una, saw no evil under that fair outward surface of high-born society. Life flowed so smoothly and pleasantly under that superficial elegance; everybody spoke sweetly, wit was current coin, and music of the highest quality seemed the very atmosphere in which these people lived. It was but for the King to set the fashion, and everybody adored music; just as in Charles I.'s time everybody had been more or less fanatical about painters and painting. Rena moved from scene to scene with a sublime unconsciousness of evil, and late at night, or over their chocolate in the morning, would describe all she had seen and heard to her devoted governess, who shared in none of her amusements except the opera and an occasional concert, but who was always sympathetic and interested in all she heard.
"You seem to meet Lord Lavendale wherever you go," Mdlle. Latour said on one occasion, when his lordship's name had been mentioned by her pupil with perfect frankness.
"We are always meeting all the same people. When I go into a crowded room now, I seem to know everybody in it. I feel quite surprised at the sight of a stranger."
"Just as if you were an experienced fine lady," laughed Mademoiselle; "how quickly my woodland nymph has accustomed herself to the ways of this crowded fashionable town! But to return to Lord Lavendale: if you do not meet him oftener than you do other people, I think that at least you enjoy more of his society. You and he are often talking together, Mrs. Amelia told me."
"O yes, we are very good friends," the girl answered carelessly. "I think he is pleasanter than most people."
"Heart-whole, and likely to remain so, as far as Lavendale is concerned," thought the little Frenchwoman with satisfaction; for she knew too much of his lordship's past history to approve of him as a suitor for her beloved pupil.
After a pause she said,
"By the bye, Rena, Mr. Durnford called yesterday when you were out with Lady Tredgold. It is the fifth time he has called and found you gone abroad."
Irene blushed crimson.
"O, why did you not beg him to stop till I came home?" she asked.
"My dear child, this is not my house. I have no right to give invitations."
"Yes, you have. You could have detained him if you had liked. The fifth visit! What must he think of me?"
"He confessed that he thought you somewhat a gad-about. He told me that he tried to waylay you in public resorts—in the Ring, or at the auction-rooms; but even there he had been unfortunate: when he went west, you had gone east."
Irene looked piteously disappointed.
"Five times! and I have not been told of one of those visits!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Why was that?"
"Because your aunt's footmen forgot all about it, I daresay," replied Mademoiselle. "Footmen have a knack of forgetting such visitors, especially when the visitor wears a shabby coat and may forget to emphasise his inquiries with a crown. I doubt you would never have heard of this last visit, if I had not happened to come in from my walk in St. James's Park just as Mr. Durnford knocked at the door. He stopped for a few minutes' chat on the doorstep. I told him you were to be at the opera to-night."
"Then perhaps he will go there!" cried Rena, suddenly becoming radiant, and confirming the shrewd little Frenchwoman in a suspicion which she had harboured for some time.
What a pity that Herrick Durnford was poor, and without rank or lineage to counterbalance his poverty! She knew that Squire Bosworth would favour Lavendale's suit, and would in all probability disinherit his daughter if she presumed to marry a penniless scribbler. Mdlle. Latour had enjoyed opportunities of studying the character of both these young men, and she had decided that Durnford's was the nobler nature, though there was assuredly some good in Lavendale.
Christmas was near at hand, the fox-hunting season was in full swing, and Lady Judith and Mr. Topsparkle had made up a large party for sport and music at Ringwood Abbey. Her Grace of Marlborough and Mr. Congreve were to be there; Sir Robert Walpole had promised to spend half a week away from the charms of his own beloved Houghton and his still dearer Molly Skerritt. The two spendthrift Spencers were asked, and Chesterfield; while Bolingbroke, whom Lady Judith pretended to admire more than any man living, was to be the chief star among so many luminaries.
Lady Judith affected to have taken a fancy to the new heiress, and was so pressing in her invitation to Lady Tredgold to bring her sweet niece to Ringwood for the Christmas holidays, that the good lady could not resist the temptation to visit at a house which she had so often joined in rancorously abusing for its riotous extravagance and corrupt taste. But as Lady Judith had pointedly ignored the two gaunt daughters in her invitation, Lady Tredgold considered herself under no obligation to be grateful. She left the daughters in Arlington Street under the charge of Mdlle. Latour, and started for Ringwood with Rena and two maids in a coach and six. Had she been travelling at her own expense, she might have managed the journey with four horses, bad as the roads were; but as Mr. Bosworth had to pay, she considered six indispensable. Had the journey been at her own cost, she might even have gone in the great heavy Salisbury coach, which, although periodically surprised by highwaymen between Putney and Kingston, or on Bagshot Heath, was perhaps somewhat safer in its strength of numbers than any private conveyance.
On this occasion she took a couple of footmen armed with blunderbusses, hid her own and the heiress's jewels in a little leather bag under the seat, and put her trust in Providence for the rest. Despite of these precautions and of her six horses she might, perchance, have fared badly, had it not been for an unexpected reinforcement in the persons of Lavendale and Durnford, who overtook the carriage on Putney Common in the sharp frosty morning of December 21.
They were both well mounted on powerful roadsters, and followed by two grooms upon horses of scarcely inferior quality; gentlemen and servants were both armed.
Irene blushed and sparkled at sight of the two cavaliers, and Lavendale, spoiled by a decade of successes, made sure those smiles were for him.
"You are early on the road, ladies," he exclaimed gaily, "considering that it was past two this morning ere you plunged the Ridotto in untimely gloom by your departure. There were some blockheads who put down that diminished lustre to a sudden failure of the wax candles; but I knew 'twas but two pairs of eyes that had ceased to shine upon the assembly. Pray how far do you propose travelling to-day, Lady Tredgold?"
"Only as far as Fairmile. We are to lie at my brother's house to-night, and pursue our journey at eight o'clock to-morrow morning. It is odious rising so early in winter. My niece and I dressed by candlelight, and the watchman was crying half-past six o'clock and a frosty morning when my maid came to wake me. It seemed but half an hour since I left the Ridotto."
"'Tis those short nights that shorten the measure of life, madam," said Durnford gravely. "Mrs. Bosworth will be older by ten years for the pleasures of a single season."
Her ladyship honoured the speaker with a slow, supercilious stare, and deigned no other answer.
"0, but there are some things worth wasting life for, Mr. Durnford," replied Irene, smiling at him; "the opera, for instance. I would barter a year of my old age for one night ofRinaldoorTheseus."
"A lady of eighteen is as free with the treasure of long life as a minor with his reversion," said Durnford. "Both are spendthrifts. But I, who have passed life's zenith, which with a man I take to be thirty, am beginning to be chary of my declining years. I hope to win some prize out of life's lottery, and to live happy ever after, as they say in fairy tales. Now I conclude that 'ever after' in your story-book means a hale old age."
"Give me the present hour and its pleasures," cried Lavendale, "a bumper of rattle and excitement, filled to the brim, a long deep draught of joy, and no for-ever-after of old age and decline, in which to regret the golden days of youth. There should be noarrière penséeon such a morning as this, with a bright winter sun, a good trotting-horse, and beauty's eyes for our lode-stars."
"How does your lordship happen to be travelling our way?" asked Lady Tredgold.
"For the simplest of all reasons: I and my friend Durnford here are both bound for the same destination."
"You are going to Ringwood Abbey! How very curious, how very pleasant!" exclaimed the lady, in her most gracious tones; then she added with a colder air, and without looking at the person of whom she spoke, "I was not aware that Mr. Durnford was acquainted with Mr. Topsparkle."
Durnford was absorbed in the landscape, and made no reply to the indirect question.
"Mr. Topsparkle is ever on the alert to invite clever people to his house," said Lavendale, "and Lady Judith has a rage for literature, poetry, science, what you will. She is a student of Newton and Flamsteed, and loves lectures on physical science such as Desaguliers gave the town when Durnford and I were boys. Lady Judith is devoted to Mr. Durnford."
"I am charmed to learn that literature is so highly appreciated," said her ladyship stiffly.
She made up her mind that Herrick Durnford was dangerous—a fortune-hunter, doubtless, with a keen scent for an heiress; and she had observed that her niece blushed when he addressed her.
She could not, however, be openly uncivil to so close a friend of Lord Lavendale's, so the journey progressed pleasantly enough; the horsemen trotting beside the carriage like a bodyguard for a while, and then dropping behind to breathe their cattle, or cantering in advance now and then when there came a long stretch of level turf by the wayside.
They all stopped at Kingston for an early dinner, and it was growing towards dusk when the coach and six fresh horses started on the second stage of the journey. The progress became slower from this point. The road was dark, and had the reputation of being a favourite resort for highwaymen. Lady Tredgold had never yet been face to face with one of those monsters, but she had an ever-present terror of masked and armed marauders springing out upon her from every hedge. It was but last year that Jonathan Wild had paid the penalty of his crimes, and Jack Sheppard had swung the year before; and though neither of these had won his renown upon the road, Lady Tredgold vaguely associated those great names with danger to travellers. It was not so very long since the Duke of Chandos had been stopped by five highwaymen on a night journey from Canons to London; nor had her ladyship forgotten how the Chichester mail had been robbed of the letter-bags in Battersea Bottom; nor that robbery on the road at Acton, by which the wretches made off with a booty of two thousand pounds. And she had the family diamonds under the seat of the carriage, tied up in a rag of old chintz to make the parcel seem insignificant; and her point lace alone was worth a small fortune.
She counted her forces, and concluded that so long as they all kept together no band of robbers would be big enough or bold enough to attack them.
"Don't leave us, I entreat, dear Lord Lavendale," she urged, as they crossed Esher Common. "We will drive as slow as ever you like, so as not to tire your saddle-horses. Tell those postboys to go slower."
"Have no fear, madam," answered Lavendale gaily. "Our hacks are not easily tired. We will stick by you as close as if we were gentlemen of the road and had hopes of booty."
So they rode cheerily enough towards Fairmile. It was broad moonlight by the time they came to Flamestead Common; a clear, cold, winter moon, which lighted up every hillock and gleamed silvery upon the tiny waterpools.
Durnford had been riding close beside the coach, talking of music and plays with Irene; but as they approached this open ground where the light was clearest, he observed a change in her countenance. Those lovely eyes became clouded over, those lovely lips ceased to smile, and his remarks were responded to briefly, with an absent air.
"Why are you silent, dearest miss?" he asked. Lady Tredgold was snoring in her corner of the carriage, Lavendale was riding on the farther side of the road, and those two seemed almost alone. "Does yonder cold, pale planet inspire you with a gentle melancholy?"
"I was thinking of the past," she answered gravely, looking beyond him towards that irregular ground where flowerless furze-bushes showed black against the steel-blue sky.
"You can have no past to inspire sad thoughts. You are too young."
"One is never too young for sorrow. The memory of a companion I loved very dearly is associated with this spot."
And then she told him the story of her little adopted sister, as she had heard it often from her nurse Bridget—the little fair-haired child who seemed like her own reflection charmed into life—the happy days and evenings they two had spent together, and how death came untimely and snapped that golden thread.
"I like to look upon the place where my father found her, and the place where she lies in her little grave," said Rena, straining her eyes, first towards the Common which they were now leaving, and then further afield to the low Norman tower of Flamestead Church.
Lady Tredgold woke suddenly when her niece relapsed into silence, and inquired where they were.
"Within half an hour of home, madam," answered Rena.
"Home!" and her ladyship, still half asleep, thought of that stately stone mansion in the fair white city of Bath, where her husband was left in solitude to nurse his gout and lament his wife's absence. Not but that Bath was a very pleasant place for a solitary man in those days, being the resort of fashion, wit, and beauty, statesmen and soldiers, men of letters and fine gentlemen, an ever-shifting gallery of faces, a various assembly of well-bred people, who all found it necessary from time to time to repair to "the Bath." Golden age for England when Continental spas were known only to the few, and when fashionable people were not ashamed to enjoy themselves on English soil. Had not the distinguished, erratic Lord Peterborough himself been seen hurrying through those busy streets from the market to his lodgings, with a cabbage under one arm and a chicken under the other, blue ribbon and star on his breast all the same? A city of considerable latitude both as to manners and morals.
"O, you mean Fairmile," muttered her ladyship, with a disappointed air; for though she loved a season in London at somebody else's cost, she had a passion for Bath, which to her was veritably home, and in her slumberous state she had fancied herself just entering that delightful city. "I hope the beds will be aired. There was plenty of time for that queer, grim housekeeper to get my letter."
"You need have no fear, aunt. Mrs. Layburne is not an agreeable woman, but she is a very good manager. The servants all fear and obey her."
"That is just the sort of person one wants to look after a household. Your good, easy-tempered souls are no use, and they are generally arrant cheats into the bargain. Do you lie at the Manor to-night, Lord Lavendale?"
Lavendale had been riding as in a dream, with head bent, and rein loose in a careless hand. A horse less sure-footed than his famous black Styx might have stumbled and thrown him. He was thinking of Lady Judith Topsparkle; wondering why she had so urgently invited him to Ringwood Abbey, when, if she had his sense of peril, she would assuredly have avoided his company. It might be that for her the past was utterly past; so completely forgotten that she could afford to indulge herself in the latest whim of the moment. What but a whim could be her friendship for him, her eagerness to mate him with wealth and beauty? How completely indifferent must she have become to those old memories which had still such potency with him!
"Why, if she can forget, so can I," he told himself. "Should Horace be truer than Lydia to an expired love? and yet, and yet, were Thracian Chloe ten times as fair, one of those old familiar glances from Lydia's starry eyes would send my blood to fever-point."
The gentlemen escorted the coach to the very door of Mr. Bosworth's house, much to Lady Tredgold's contentment, as she suspected marauders even among the old elm-trunks in Fairmile avenue. Arrived at the house, her ladyship honoured Lord Lavendale with a cordial invitation to supper; but as she ignored his companion Lavendale declined her hospitality, on the ground that the horses had done so heavy a day's work that they must needs require the comfort of their own stables. And so the two gentlemen said good-night, and rode away to Lavendale Manor, after promising to be in attendance upon the ladies at eight next morning.
Nurse Bridget was in the hall, eager to welcome her dear charge, from whom she had never been parted until this winter. Nurse and nursling hugged each other affectionately, and then Bridget put back Irene's black silk hood, and contemplated the fair young face in warmest admiration.
"You have grown prettier than ever," she exclaimed, "and taller too; I protest you are taller. I hope your ladyship will pardon me for loving my pet too much to be mannerly," she added, curtsying to Lady Tredgold.
"There is nothing, my good creature, unmannerly in affection. Yes, Miss Bosworth has certainly grown; and then she has had her stays made by my French staymaker, and that improves any young woman's figure and gives a taller air. I hope they have got us a decent supper. I am positively famished. And I hope there are good fires, for my niece and I have been starved this last two hours. The night is horribly cold. And have you aired a room for my maids?"
"Yes, my lady," and "Yes, my lady," said Bridget, with low curtsies, in reply to all these eager questions; and then Lady Tredgold and her niece followed the fat old butler—he had contrived to keep fat by sheer inactivity, in spite of Mrs. Layburne's meagre housekeeping—to the long white drawing-room, where there was a blazing log fire, and where Irene flew to her harpsichord and began to play the Sparrow Symphony fromRinaldo. There are moments of happiness, joyous impulses in the lives of women, which can only find expression in music.
At Lavendale Manor there was no note of expectancy, no stir among the old servants. His lordship had given no intimation of his return. The grooms had to rouse their underlings in the stable from the state of beery somnolence which followed upon a heavy supper. The butler bustled his subordinates and sent off the housemaids to light fires in all the rooms his lordship affected, and in the bedroom and dressing-room known as Mr. Durnford's, and urged cook and scullions to be brisk in the preparation of a pretty little supper. Happily there was a goose hanging in the larder, ready to be clapped on the spit, and this, with the chine which had been cooked for the servants' dinner, and a large venison pasty, with half a dozen speedy sweet dishes, would make a tolerable supper for two gentlemen. The old Italian never joined his patron at meals. He fed apart upon a diet of his own choosing, and on principles laid down by Roger Bacon and Paracelsus—taking only the lightest food, and selecting all those roots and herbs which conduce to long life.
Lavendale went straight to the old chapel, without even waiting to take off his boots. The student's attitude amidst his books and crucibles might have suggested that he had been sitting there like Frederick Barbarossa in his cave, ever since that summer evening upon which his lordship had with equal suddenness burst in upon his studies.
"Well, old friend, how do thy researches thrive? Is Hermes propitious?" asked Lavendale gaily. "Hast thou hit upon an easy way of manufacturing diamonds, or turning vulgar lead into the golden rain in which Danaë's ravisher veiled his divinity? Art thou any nearer the great secret?"
"Do you remember the infinitely little to which distance is reduced in that fable of Achilles and the tortoise?" asked Vincenti; "and how by descending to infinitesimals the logician gives the idea of progress, and thus establishes a paradox? My progress has been infinitely little; but yes, I think there has been something gained since we parted."
The sigh with which his sentence closed was not indicative of triumph. The finely cut features were drawn with thought and care; the skin, originally a pale olive, was withered and yellow, and had a semitransparent look, like old parchment. Death could hardly be more wan and wasted than life appeared in this searcher into the dark mysteries of man and Nature.
"You have been absent longer than usual," said the old man, "or at least it seems to me that it has been so. I may be mistaken, for I keep no actual count of time—except this bare record of years."
He turned to a flyleaf in a black-letter volume at his right hand; and on that, beginning in ink that had grown brown and pale with time, there appeared a calendar of years, and opposite each the name of a place.
This was the only record of the philosopher's existence. Lavendale's keen eye noted that it began early in the previous century, and that the handwriting was uniform throughout, though the colour of the ink varied. Could this man, whom he had guessed at about seventy years old, have really seen the beginning of the last century? Vincenti had been ever curiously reticent about his past life—had told his patron only one fact in his history, namely, that he was by birth and parentage a Venetian.
"No, my dear friend, you are not mistaken; I stayed longer in town than I intended when I left you. People seemed glad to see me—mere seeming, of course, since in that selfish town of ours there is not a mortal who cares a snap of the fingers for any other mortal; except lovers, and theirs is but a transient semi-selfish liking. But there is a fascination in crowds; and I saw a woman who has quite forgotten me, but whom I never can forget."
"How do you know she has forgotten you?"
"By her indifference."
"Assumed as likely as not. There is no such hypocrisy as a woman's. There are liars and traitors among men, I grant you, but with them falsehood is an acquired art. In a woman deceit is innate: a part of her very being. She will smile at you and lie to you with the virginal sweetness of sixteen as cleverly as with the wrinkled craftiness of sixty. Never believe in a woman's affectation of indifference. It is the safest mask for passion. They all wear it."
"If I thought that it were so: if I thought Judith Topsparkle still loved me—"
"Topsparkle!" muttered the old man, staring at him in blank wonder.
"Did I think those old embers were not quite extinct, did I think that one lingering spark remained, I would risk the world to rekindle them, would perish in the blaze, die in a savage triumph of love and despair, like Dido on her pyre. But no, she is a woman of fashion pure and simple, cares no more for me than Belinda cared for Sir Plume."
"Topsparkle!" repeated Vincenti; "whom do you know of that name?"
"Only the famous Vyvyan Topsparkle, dilettante, eccentric, and Crœsus. A gentleman whose name is familiar, and even illustrious, in all the countries where works of art are to be seen and fine music is to be heard. A gentleman who left England forty years ago with a very vile reputation, and who has not improved it on the Continent; but we do not hang men of fabulous fortune: we visit them at their country houses, ride their horses, win their money at basset, and revile them behind their backs. Mr. Topsparkle is a very fine gentleman, and has been lucky enough to marry the loveliest woman in London, who has made his house the fashion."
"Vyvyan Topsparkle! I thought he had gone into a Portuguese monastery—turned Trappist, and repented of his sins. I was told so ten years ago."
"Yes, I remember there was a rumour of that kind soon after I left the University. I believe the gentleman disappeared for some time, and stimulated the inventive powers of his friends by a certain mysteriousness of conduct; but I can assure you there is nothing of the monk about Mr. Topsparkle nowadays. He is altogether the fop and man of fashion, and, if wrinkles counted for nothing, would be almost a young man."
"He is a scoundrel, and may he meet with a scoundrel's doom!" muttered Vincenti gloomily.
"What, have you any personal acquaintance with him? Did you ever meet him in Italy?"
"Yes, more than forty years ago."
Lavendale flushed and paled again in his agitation. Here was one who perchance might help him to some clue to that old mystery, the scandal and suspected crime related by Tom Philter. He told Vincenti the story exactly as Philter had told it to him.
The old man listened intently, those dark eyes of his shining under the bushy white brows, shining with the reflected light of the fire, shining with a fiercer light from within.
"I have heard this story before," he said.
"And do you believe it? Do you believe there was foul play?"
"Yes, I believe Vyvyan Topsparkle was a murderer as well as a seducer. It is not true that his mistress was a dancing-girl. She was a girl of respectable birth, brought up in a convent—highly gifted, a genius, with the voice and face of an angel."
"Good Heaven, you speak of her with the utmost familiarity! Did you know her?"
There was a pause before the old man answered. He turned over the pages of the book he had been reading when Lavendale entered, and seemed for the moment as if he had forgotten the subject of their conversation.
"Did you know that unhappy girl?" Lavendale asked eagerly.
"I knew something of her people," answered Vincenti, without looking up. "They belonged to the trading class of Venice, but had noble blood in their veins. The father was a jeweller and something of an artist. The girl's disappearance made a scandal in Venice. She had but just left her convent school. It was not known where the seducer had taken her. A near relative followed them—tracked them to Paris—followed them from Paris to London—in time to see a coffin carried out of the house in Soho Square, and to hear dark hints of poison. He stayed in London for nearly a year; wore out his heart in useless efforts to discover any proof of the crime which was suspected by more than one, most of all by an apothecary who was called in to see the dying girl; tried to get an order for the exhumation of the body, but in vain. He was a foreigner, and poor; Mr. Topsparkle was an Englishman of large fortune. The government scented a Jacobite Jesuit in the Italian, or at any rate pretended to think him dangerous, and he had notice to leave the country. He left, but not before Topsparkle had fled from the blast of scandal. His attempt to become a senator confounded him. Slander had slept until the Brentford election."
"Yes, that chimes in with Philter's account," answered Lavendale. "Do you know what became of the girl's father?"
Vincenti shrugged his shoulders.
"Died, I suppose, of a broken heart. He was too insignificant to make any mark upon history."
"Well, I am quite ready to believe Mr. Topsparkle to be a double-dyed scoundrel—and yet I am going to sit at his table and sleep under his roof. That is what good company means nowadays. Nobody asks any searching questions about a host's character. If his wines and his cook are faultless, and his wife is handsome, every one is satisfied: and on this occasion Mr. Topsparkle's company is to be exceptionally distinguished. Swift is to be there, the Irish patriot and ecclesiastical Jack Pudding, who is just now puffed with importance at the success of his queer hook about giants, pigmies, and what not; and there is a talk of Voltaire, the young French wit, who has been twice beaten for hisbon-mots, and twice a prisoner in the Bastille, and who is in England only because France is too hot to hold him. There is a promise of Bolingbroke, too, and a hint of my queer kinswoman, Lady Mary, who made such a figure the other night at the Prince's ball. We shall doubtless make a strange medley, and I would not be out of the fun for anything in this world, even though in his hot youth Mr. Topsparkle may have played the character of Othello with a phial of poison instead of a bolster. After all, Vincenti, jealousy is a noble passion, and a man may have worse motives for murder."
The old man made no answer, and as supper was announced at this moment, the conversation ended.
There was something in Lavendale's manner which told of a mind ill at ease, perchance even of a remorseful conscience; but he had the air of a man who defied Fate, and who meant to be happy in his own way.
To the belated peasant tramping homeward beside the lessor Avon, Ringwood Abbey in the December gloaming must have looked as like an enchanted palace as it is possible for any earthly habitation ever to look. Provided always that the peasant had heard of fairyland and its wonderful castles, which shine suddenly out upon wandering princes, luminous with multitudinous windows, and joyous with the buzz and clatter of an army of servants and a court of fine ladies and gentlemen. Ringwood Abbey was all ablaze with wax candles, and reflected its Gothic casements in yonder sedgy stream until it seemed to outshine the stars in the cold clear winter sky. This earthly illumination was so much nearer than the stars, and to the agricultural labourer tramping homeward after a day at the plough-tail was suggestive of pleasanter thoughts than were inspired by yonder cold and distant lights of heaven. Ringwood Abbey meant broken victuals in abundance, and money flung about recklessly by the Squire and his London guests. It meant horse and hound, and all the concomitants of a big hunting-stable. It meant custom for every little tradesman in the village, and charities on a large scale to the poor. It meant beauty and splendour and stateliness and music to gladden the eye and the ear. It meant bribery at elections, largesse at all times and seasons. It meant all that a large country house, carried on with a noble disregard of cost, can ever mean to the surrounding neighbourhood. Needless, therefore, to add that in this little corner of Hampshire, beside the lesser Avon, Mr. Topsparkle was a very popular gentleman, and Lady Judith a queen among women, a goddess to be worshipped by all who came but to the outermost edge of her enchanted circle.
It was the cheery eventide after a five-o'clock dinner. They dined late at this season on account of the hunting-men, and even then there were some eager sportsmen who would rather miss their dinner than draw bridle before the doom of Reynard; and these came in ravenous to the ten-o'clock supper, full of their adventures over heath and through stream, and a most intolerable nuisance to the non-hunting people.
My Lord Bolingbroke, lolling at ease yonder in a carved oak armchair, coquetting with Lady Judith, had once been the keenest of sportsmen, and was fond of hunting still, but not quite so reluctant to miss a day's sport as he had been a few years ago.
"Do you remember our wolf-hunt at La Source, the winter you were with us, Arouet?" he asked, following up a conversation half in French and half in English, in which he and Lady Judith, a young gentleman standing in front of the fireplace, and Lord Lavendale had been engaged for the last quarter of an hour. "I had some very fine hounds that Lord Gore sent me, and I was curious to see whether they would attack a wolf boldly, or sneak off as soon as he stood at bay. 'Twas a stirring business for men, horses, and hounds; but, after all, I think there is nothing better than a genuine British fox-hunt."
"In France we study the picturesque and romantic in sport," said the tall slim gentleman lounging in front of the wide mediæval fireplace, whom Bolingbroke addressed sometimes familiarly as Arouet, and anon by his newly assumed name of Voltaire. "You English seem only to regard the practical—so many miles ridden over, so many foxes slaughtered, so many pheasants shot. With you the chase is a matter of statistics; with us it is a royal ceremony, diversion for kings and courtiers. Our hunting-parties are as stately and picturesque under Louis as they were under Charlemagne. Ours is the poetry of the chase, yours the prose."
"True, my dear Voltaire, but for horseflesh and pedigree hounds we are as far your superiors as you excel us in gold-lace coats and jewelled hunting-knives, or in the noise and fuss of yourcurée; while for hard riding—well, you hunt for the most part in a country that scarcely admits of fine horsemanship."
"It is one of our misfortunes not to be a nation of centaurs, my lord," answered Voltaire lightly and in English, which he spoke admirably, although he dropped into his own language occasionally. "I envy you English gentlemen your superb capacity for outdoor sports and your noble independence of intellectual amusements. Of course I except your lordship from the category of average Englishmen, who devote their days to killing birds and beasts, and their evenings to the study of blood and murder tragedies by their favourite Shakespeare."
"0, don't be too hard upon our sturdy British taste, my dear friend. We read Shakespeare occasionally, I admit, but we very seldom act his plays. That pretty foolish comedy,As You Like It, has never been represented since the author's death; and I protest there are some love-making scenes in it that would not disgrace Dryden or Wycherley."
"Do you know, Monsieur de Voltaire, that I delight in Shakespeare?" said Lady Judith, who sat on a sofa by the fire, fanning herself with a superb listlessness, and leaning down now and then to caress her favourite pug.
"From the moment Lady Judith admires him he is sacred," said the Frenchman gaily; "but you must confess that there is a crudeness about his tragedies, an extravagance of blood and wounds and sudden death, which can hardly stand comparison with such calm and polished compositions asPhèdreorLe Cid."
"I place Shakespeare infinitely higher than Racine or Corneille, and I consider his tragedies sublime," replied Judith, with the air of a woman who has the privilege of being positive even when she is talking nonsense.
"What, that refined and delicate Roman story, for instance—Titus Andronicus, and Lavinia with her bleeding stumps, and the profligate blackamoor?"
"0, we give you Lavinia and her stumps," cried Bolingbroke, laughing. "We repudiateTitus Andronicus. It is the work of an earlier playwright, to which Shakespeare only gave a few fine touches; and those flashes of genius have made the whole play pass for inspired."
"0, if you are going to repudiate everything coarse and brutal which passes for Shakespeare, and claim only the finer touches for his, you may succeed in establishing him as a great poet. Would that we might all be judged as leniently by future critics! What say you, Mr. Topsparkle? You are a man of cosmopolitan tastes, and have doubtless compared your native playwrights with those of other nations, from Æschylus downwards."
"I care not a jot for the whole mass of English literature," answered Topsparkle, snapping his taper fingers with an airy gesture; "and as for Shakespeare, I have never soiled my fingers by turning his pages. My mental stamina is not robust enough to cope with his monstrosities."
"And yet you revel in foreign coarseness; you devour Boccaccio and Rabelais," said his wife, with a scornful glance at the pinched painted face and frail figure airing itself before the wide old hearth, set off by a gray and silver brocade suit with scarlet shoulder-knots.
"Ah, my dear Judith, no woman can appreciate the grace of Boccaccio nor the wit of Rabelais. Your sex is seldom delicately critical. A butcher brute, like Shakespeare, pleases you because he conjures up scenes of blood and murder which your imagination can easily realise; but the niceties of wit are beyond your comprehension."
"I would rather have written theRape of the Lockthan all Shakespeare's plays and poems to boot. 'Tis the best mock-heroic poem that ever was written," said Voltaire, pleased to compliment Lord Bolingbroke by praising his friend. To the exile, the favour of the Lord of Dawley was not altogether unimportant, and Arouet had been on a footing of friendship with Bolingbroke and his wife for some years, a favoured guest at his lordship's château near Orleans. He had sat at Bolingbroke's feet, and imbibed his opinions.
TheHenriadewas still awaiting publication, and Francis Arouet had an eye to his subscription-list; a man at all times supple and adroit, ever able to make the best of every situation, dexterous alike as wit and poet, courtier, lover, speculator, flushed with the small social successes of his brilliant youth, secure in the friendship of royal duchesses androuéprinces, accepted in a society far above his birth, envied and hated by the malignant few—witness M. de Rohan's brutal retaliation—but petted and caressed by the many. Who could wonder that such a man, accustomed to float easily on the very crest of the wave, should be quite at home at Ringwood Abbey, oppressed neither by Bolingbroke's intellectual superiority nor by Lady Judith's insolent beauty?
"Nothing can excel perfection," answered Bolingbroke blandly. "My little friend's poem is an Y entire and perfect chrysolite; but it is perfection in miniature. I hope to see Pope excel on a larger scale and with a loftier theme. He is capable of writing a great philosophical poem, which shall place him above Lucretius."
"Hang up philosophy! I only care for Pope when he is personal," said Lady Judith. "He is like that other small creature, the adder, only of consequence when he stings."
"One would suppose he had stung you," retorted her husband.
"No, I have not yet been assailed in print. My time is to come, I suppose. But last summer, when all the world was at Twit'nam, there was not a day passed that I did not hear of some venomous shaft which Poet Pug had let fly at one of my friends. No doubt he is just as spiteful about me, only one's friends don't repeat such things to one's face."
"Not to such a face as yours, madam," said the Frenchman. "Malevolence itself must yield to the magic of incomparable charms."
The conversation meandered on in the same trifling strain, Lavendale silent for the most part, standing in the shadow of the carved oak mantelpiece and casting uneasy glances from time to time towards his hostess, who seemed too much occupied by Lord Bolingbroke to be aware of anybody else's presence, save when she flung some casual speech into the current of idle talk. It was but eight o'clock, and they had dined at five. Seldom did that deep drinker, Henry St. John, leave the table so early. To-night he had not stayed to finish his second bottle of Burgundy ere he joined Lady Judith in the drawing-room, and had given the signal for the breaking up of the party, much to the disappointment of Sir Tilbury Haskell, an honest Hampshire squire, who had heard of Bolingbroke as a four-bottle man, and had hoped to make a night of it in such distinguished company. Mr. Topsparkle had that Continental sobriety which is always offensive to Englishmen, and Voltaire was equally temperate. Sir Tilbury rolled his ponderous carcass to the billiard-room to snore on a sofa until supper-time, when there would be a well-furnished table for the sportsmen and more Champagne and Burgundy.
Bolingbroke was charmed with his hostess. That proud beauty, in its glorious prime of early womanhood, made him for the moment forgetful of his accomplished French wife, who was just then invalided at Bath, where he was to join her in a few days. It was not that he was unfaithful to his wife even in thought, but that his vanity hungered for new conquests. The triumphant Alcibiades of Anne's reign had become the boastful libertine who would fain be credited with new successes in the hour when he feels his seductive power on the wane.
This evening hour found Lord Bolingbroke in his lightest mood, warmed with wine, expansive, happy; but the cold winter daylight had seen him seated at his desk, thoughtful and laborious, writing the first number of theCraftsman, a newspaper of which he and William Pulteney were to be joint editors and proprietors, and which was to be launched almost immediately. That noble brow, now so bland and placid, had but a few hours ago been crowded with eager and vengeful thoughts, and was even at this moment but the smooth mask of an ambition that never slept, of a craft that never ceased from plotting, of a resolute determination to succeed at the expense of every finer feeling and of every loftier scruple. That deep and thrilling voice, which to-night breathed soft nothings into Judith's ear, had but a week ago been insinuating slanders against Walpole into the complacent ear of the King's favourite, her Grace of Kendal, ever a willing listener to the courtier who would weight his arguments with gold.
Lavendale watched yonder handsome profligate with a jealous eye. Yes, Judith listened as if with pleasure to those insidious addresses. The lovely eyes sparkled, the lovely lips smiled.
"She is an arrant coquette," thought Lavendale. "Years have made her charms only more seducing, her manners only more reckless. She may be laughing in her sleeve at yonder middle-aged Lothario; but it pleases her to fool him to the top of his bent—pleases her most, perhaps, to know that I am standing by and suffering damnable tortures."
Judith looked up at that moment, almost as if in answer to his thought, and their eyes met.
"I protest you have quite a disconsolate air, Lord Lavendale!" she exclaimed. "What has become of your charmer, and how is it you are not in close attendance upon her? I saw her wander off to the music-room directly after dinner, and I believe your umbra—Mr. What-d'ye-call-him—went with her. Mr. What-d'ye-call-him is fonder of music than you are."
"My friend Herrick Durnford is in all things, more accomplished than I."
"If he is, you had better keep a closer watch upon your own interests," said Judith, shaking her fan at him.
"I have nothing so sordid as interest to consider at Ringwood Abbey. I am here only for pleasure.Fay ce que vouldrasis my motto, as it was with the monks of that other abbey we know of."
"And a devilish good motto it is, Lavendale," exclaimed Topsparkle. "'Fore Gad I have a mind, to get those cheery words hewn on the front of the stone porch, or inscribed on parchment and fastened, on the lintel of the door, in the Jewish fashion."
"You had better not," said Bolingbroke; "your friends might interpret the inscription too literally, and stay here for ever. Try it not upon me, Topsparkle, unless you would have me a fixture. For a man like myself, who is wearied of worldly strife and has renounced ambition, there could be no more tempting cloister than Ringwood Abbey."
"Your lordship cannot stay here too long, or come here too often," answered Topsparkle; "but I doubt the French saying holds good in this case,reculer pour mieux sauter, and that when Lord Bolingbroke talks of the cloister, he is on the eve of restoring a dynasty, and of changing the face of Europe."
"No, Topsparkle, 'tis only Peterborough who has those large ideas, who parcels out the world in a letter, as if with aFiatand the breath of his mouth it could be accomplished; and who flies from court to court with meteoric speed, only to embroil the government that sent him, and make confusion worse confounded. And as for restoring a dynasty, the hour is past. Atterbury and I might have done it thirteen years ago had our colleagues but shown a little pluck. High Church and a Stuart would have been a safe cry against a Lutheran and a stranger—witness the temper of the mob at Sacheverell's trial. There was your true test. The people were heart and soul for James III., and had we brought him home then, he might have made as glorious an entrance as Rowley himself. But we had to do with palterers, and we lost our chance, Topsparkle; and now—well, King George has lived down the worst of his unpopularity, and Walpole is a deuced clever fellow, and my very good friend, to whom I owe the nicely measured mercy of my King. The chance has gone, friends, the chance is lost. The year '15 only made matters worse by showing the weakness of the cause. Tis all over. Let us go to the music-room. Your young friend, Squire Bosworth's heiress, has the voice of a nightingale."
"You had better come to the dining-hall, my lord," said Topsparkle. "Our hunting friends will have found their way home by this time, and we can taste a bottle of Burgundy while they take their snack of chine or venison pasty."
"No, I will drink no more till supper-time," answered Bolingbroke. "There is a novel sensation in temperance which is deucedly agreeable. And then I delight in your snug little suppers, which recall Paris and the Regent. Alas, to think that worthy fellow is no more! Half the glory of the French capital expired when my poor friend Philip sank in an apoplexy, with his head upon the knees of the pretty Duchesse de Phalaris. It was a sorry change from such a man to one-eyed Bourbon, with his savage manners, brutal alike in his loves and his animosities. And now we have Peace-at-any-price Fleury, whose humour admirably suits my pacific friend Sir Robert. But let us to the music-room."
"Nay, my lord, what say you to a hand at quadrille? The tables are ready in the next room."
"I'm with you, Topsparkle. I'm your man."
"Now, is it not strange that Mr. Topsparkle, who raves about every Italian squaller that Handel and Heidegger import for us, should be supremely indifferent to one of the sweetest voices I ever heard!" exclaimed Lady Judith, appealing to the circle in general. "I cannot induce him to be interested in that charming Mrs. Bosworth, who is so pretty and who sings so delightfully."
"O, but she is only an Englishwoman," said Voltaire. "I find that in this country it is a vulgar thing to admire native merit, especially in music."
"Yes, but Topsparkle is cosmopolitan. I have seen him make much of a ploughboy who happened to have a fine alto voice, stand the little wretch beside his organ and teach him to sing an air of Lully's, listening with as much rapture as to Farinelli himself. Why, then, should he refuse to admire Mrs. Bosworth, who has as lovely a voice as ever I heard, and who is as much a fanatic about music as he is himself? Nay, he goes further than not admiring; he has an air of positive aversion when the dear girl chances to approach him."
Topsparkle's face changed as much as any face so thickly enamelled could change under the influence of angry feelings. He turned towards his wife scowlingly, began to speak, checked himself abruptly, and then with his airy French shrug said lightly, "All sensitive people have their caprices, my dear Judith; one of mine is not to like this charming personage whom you and your friends rave about. I hope I have not been uncivil to the young lady. I should die of mortification could I deem I had been discourteous to a pretty woman and my guest."
"No, you have not been actually uncivil: but your looks of aversion have not escaped me, though I trust they have escaped her," answered Judith.
"At the worst I have not the evil eye. My glances do not slay."
Lavendale strolled off to the music-room, a noble apartment, which had originally been a chapel, and which retained its vaulted roof and frescoed walls, in all the richness of restored colouring and precious metal. At one end stood an organ built by the Antignati in the fifteenth century; at the other was an instrument in which the art of organ-building had been brought to the highest perfection by the renowned Christopher Müller. The central portion of the room was occupied by the finest harpsichord of modern manufacture, and by a choice collection of older instruments of the same type, from the primitive dulcimer to the more developed spinet. Scattered about the spacious apartment were chairs and couches of the last luxurious French fashion, in all the florid richness of that elaborate style which we still recognise as Louis Quatorze, and which was then the latest development of the upholsterer's art.
Irene was seated at the harpsichord, and Herrick Durnford was standing by her side; but the heiress was not unguarded, for Lady Tredgold sat near, slumbering peacefully behind her fan, and giving full play to the mechanism of her admirable digestive organs after a copious dinner. For the rest, the room was empty.
The singer was just finishing a dainty little ballad by Tom Durfey as Lavendale entered.
"Is it not pretty?" she asked, looking shyly up at Herrick, whose taciturn air vexed her a little and mystified her much.
"Yes, it is charming, like everything you sing."
"How dolefully you say that!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, I confess to being doleful, the very incarnation of gloom. O Rena, forgive me, I am the most miserable of men! Here I am in this great gaudy tavern, for such a house is no better than an inn—seeing you every day, hearing your voice, near you and yet leagues away—never daring to address you freely save in such a chance moment as this, while your vigilant kinswoman sleeps; here am I, your adorer, your slave, but a pauper who dare not ask for your heart, though his own is irrevocably yours. To ask you to marry me would be to ask you to ruin yourself irretrievably."
"You might at least venture the question," said Rena softly, looking down at the keys of the harpsichord. "Perhaps I have a mind to do some wild rash act that will beggar me. I am weary of hearing myself talked of as an heiress. My father has been very good to me, and I am very fond of him. I should fear much more to grieve him than to lose a fortune. I could not be a rebellious daughter; better that I should break my heart than break his: and he has told me that all his hopes of the future are centred in me. Could you not talk to him, could you not persuade him—?" she added falteringly, touching the notes at random here and there in her confusion.
"Persuade him to accept a penniless newspaper hack for his only daughter's husband! Alas, I fear not, Rena. If I could but find some swift sudden way to fame and fortune—in the senate, for instance! A fine speaker may make his name in one debate, and stand out ever after from the common ruck; and I think I could speak fairly well on any question that I had at heart."
"O, pray be a speaker; go into Parliament directly!" exclaimed Rena eagerly.
"Dear child, it is not so easy. It needs money, which I have not, or powerful friends, and I have but one, who is also my rival. Alas, I fear a seat in Parliament is as unattainable for me as the moon. And the age of adventure is past, in which, a man might grow suddenly rich by dabbling in South Sea stock. 'Twas said the Prince of Wales made forty thousand pounds on 'Change at that golden season, and Lord Bolingbroke restored his fortune by a lucky purchase of Mississippi stocks. But it is all over now, Rena."
"I have heard it said 'twas by South Sea stock my father made the greatest part of his fortune," said the girl thoughtfully. "If it is so I wish he were poorer, for one must but think of those poor creatures who paid thousands for shares that proved scarce worth hundreds."
"That is only the fortune of Exchange Alley, Irene: and from the speculator's standpoint your father's honour is uncompromised and his conscience may be easy. Yet I grant 'tis no pleasant thought to consider those simple widows and foolish rustic spinsters who risked their all in that fatal adventure, fondly believing that an endless tide of wealth was to flow from those far-off seas, and that there was to be no ebb to that golden stream. But indeed, Irene, I would with all my heart you were poorer. I would Squire Bosworth had dabbled in all the rottenest schemes of those wild days, from the company for extracting silver from lead to the company for a wheel for perpetual motion, so long as his losses brought our fortunes level."
"You should not wish me poor," she answered. "If my father's wealth is but honestly come by, I should be proud to share some of it with one I loved. And if you can but persuade him—"
"Well, I will try, dearest, though I know that to avow my aim will be to banish me from this dear presence for ever—unless you can be bold enough to risk your fortune and disobey your father."
They had been talking in subdued tones so as not to awaken Lady Tredgold, at whom they glanced from time to time to make sure that her placid slumbers were unbroken. Lord Lavendale stood at the end of the room, in the shadow of the great organ, watching those two heads as they bent to each other, Herrick's arm on the back of Irene's chair, the girl's, head drooping a little, bowed by the weight of her modesty. He was quite able to draw his own inferences from such a group.
"Is it thus the land lies," he said to himself, "and shall I spoil sport by a loveless wooing—I, whose heart, or whatever remnant of heart is left, belongs to another? Better let youth and true love have their own way—unless Herrick is fortune-hunting. But I know him too well to suspect him of any sordid motive. He is a better man than I, though we have lived the same bad lives together."
He gave a little cough, and walked towards that central space where the lovers sat in front of the harpsichord. They started, and moved farther apart at the sound of his footsteps, and Lady Tredgold opened her eyes and blinked at the company like an owl, exclaiming, "Can I really have been asleep? That ballad of Rameau's is the sweetest thing I have heard for an age, Irene. Lord Lavendale, you must positively hear it: I know you love old French music."
"All melody from such lips is entrancing, and such lips can speak only music," said his lordship, bowing to Irene, who had risen, rosy red in her confusion, and who acknowledged his compliment with a low curtsy.