“Play is as high as ever, then, I conclude?” said Durnford.
“Higher; people seem more eagerly bent upon losing their money now there is less money to lose, and everybody crying out that the country is on the brink of ruin. They play in the green-rooms of the theatres, at the Bath, at Leicester House, and at St. James’s — everywhere. The Duke of Devonshire lost an estate t’other night at that same game of basset which nearly parted Mr. Topsparkle and his beautiful wife.”
“And was the breach healed? Are they friends again?” asked Durnford.
Lavendale sat silent, with a brooding air, listening intently under those finely marked brows of his.
He had beautiful eyes, large, lustrous, of a bluish-gray, with dark lashes, eyes which had haunted the memories of the women who had loved him, even after love was dead. He had delicately cut features, a sensitive mouth, a beautifully moulded but somewhat womanish chin. It was the face of poet and dreamer, rather than of statesman, warrior, or deep thinker; yet he had none of the effeminacy of Lord Hervey, nor yet that nobleman’s sickly pallor. But there was no bloom of health upon his face; his cheeks were hollow, and a hectic flush gave fire and brightness to eyes which had at other times a haggard and weary look.
“O, they are friends again, be sure,” answered Philter gaily, refilling his glass with the silver ladle, which had King William’s head on a crown-piece embedded in the bowl. “Topsparkle adores his wife, and is the veriest slave to her caprices. And even if he were less devoted he would hardly venture to rebel. A man of his doubtful antecedents cannot afford to wage domestic war.”
“Are Mr. Topsparkle’s antecedents so very bad?” asked Durnford, Lord Lavendale still keeping silence.
Mr. Philter bent across the table to answer confidentially. “I believe there is only one man in London who knows how bad, and he has just entered this room,” he said, with a jerk of his thumb across his shoulder: “mum’s the word.”
Lavendale and Durnford looked at the new-comer. He was elderly, but well preserved, wore the most fashionable style of peruke, and had as fine a complexion as white lead and vermilion could give him, set off by elaborate patches. His mouse-coloured grosgrain suit was trimmed with a narrow edging of silver braid, his waistcoat buttons were filigree silver. His mouse-coloured silk stockings and red-heeled shoes were perfection. Nothing could be more subdued or gentlemanlike than the man’s costume, nothing more graceful and unobtrusive than his air. He carried a tortoiseshell eyeglass, with which he gravely regarded the assembly as he glided sinuously through the narrow space between the tables towards one particular corner.
“That is Monsieur Fétis, Mr. Topsparkle’s valet, secretary, and âme damnée,” said Philter. “He has been in the gentleman’s service for the last forty years. They were young men together. Some say he is a natural son of Topsparkle the elder by a French actress, but that is a foolish tradition. He has done Topsparkle’s dirty work for forty years, been secret as the grave, and as faithful as a man who knows his interest lies in fidelity. And now he has a house in Poland Street, a useful kind of establishment, half lodging-house, half hotel, and wholly hospitable, which is rumoured to yield him two or three thousand a year. And yet he is content to curl Mr. Topsparkle’s wig, and train Mr. Topsparkle’s eyebrows, and apply hare’s-foot and lip-salve, as submissively as the veriest drudge at twenty pound a year.”
“The bond between them must be close,” remarked Durnford, while Lavendale still sat brooding, with lowered eyelids and thoughtful brow.
“Be sure it is close as crime can make it,” answered Philter. “There is no bond I know of that will keep service or friendship faithful for forty years, unless it be a guilty secret.”
He had drawn his chair close between Lavendale and Durnford at the beginning, and now spoke with head bent and voice lowered confidentially, so that there was little risk of his being overheard by any one beyond that table. Yet the conversation hardly seemed of a kind to be carried on in a public room.
Lavendale rose suddenly and took up his hat.
“Are you going to play to-night, Mr. Philter?” he asked.
“Your lordship ought to know that a man who lives by his pen can have very little cash to risk at the gaming-table. I come here only to see the world.”
“Then if you have seen enough of it for to-night, what say you to our walking homewards together? I think your lodgings lie somewhere near Bloomsbury.”
“Your lordship is right. I have some pleasant airy rooms in the Gray’s Inn Road, overlooking the old Inn garden and Lord Bacon’s catalpa-tree, where I shall be enchanted to see you two gentlemen any afternoon that you will drop in upon me for a dish of tea, and will condescend to listen to an act or so of a new comedy which only cabal and self-interest have kept off the boards of Lincoln’s Inn.”
The three men left the tavern together, Tom Philter highly elated at being seen in the company of a man of Lavendale’s rank and fashion. He could not help swaggering a little as he picked his way through the room, with elbows jauntily elevated, and slim court rapier swaying at his side, and hat cocked lightly over the left eyebrow.
“Now, Mr. Philter,” said Lavendale, when they were in the shadowy street, where the lamps were unlit when the moon was at the full, albeit Luna is a somewhat capricious luminary, given to dodging behind clouds, “tell me what you mean about Vyvyan Topsparkle and his guilty secrets. You seem to be on such familiar terms with the valet that you must needs know something about the master. You and Monsieur Fétis have often hob-nobbed together, I take it.”
“No, my lord, I do not chink glasses with valets, but I have supped at his house with some of the best company in London. ’Twas a pied-à-terre of Wharton’s when he was in his glory; and ’twas there I met the Duke of Bolton and pretty Mrs. Fenton, a poor actress but a sweet little woman, and most disinterestedly devoted to his grace.”
“Pshaw, Philter! Who believes in an actress’s disinterestedness? But it is not at a ducal supper-party you would hear queer stories of Mr. Topsparkle. No one talks of the past or of the future in such uproarious society as that. Every man lives for the present moment; his hopes and his ambition are bounded by the eyes and lips that are smiling at him; his views of life are as sparkling and as transient as the bubbles on a glass of champagne, and as rosy as the deepest glow of Burgundy. You must have had better opportunities of drawing Monsieur Fétis!”
“Fétis is not a man to be drawn, my lord. Walpole himself could not extort a secret from him. He has thriven too well by fidelity to turn traitor. My intelligence comes from higher sources.”
“I understand; from some friendly housemaid’s attic, no doubt,” laughed Lavendale. “Don’t be angry, Philter; I forgive you the sources if you will but give me your intelligence. I would give much to know that fribble’s past career, with all its dark mysteries.”
“That is a tangled web which will take time to unravel,” answered the oracle.
“I am willing to devote time, money, patience, anything, to the unravelment!”
“I have no positive information; only vague hints which might afford a clue to a man who would take the pains to follow it.”
“I am that man!” exclaimed Lavendale, putting his arm through that of Philter, who regretted that they were not in broad daylight and Bond Street. “Man,” said he, “in such a quest I am a sleuth-hound.”
“Well, my lord,” rejoined Philter, “there is a queer story of Topsparkle’s early youth which I have heard elderly men harp upon — a beautiful woman, commonly supposed to be an opera singer, whom he brought from Italy with him just before the Revolution, and kept immured in that great rambling house of his in Soho Square. The lady was reported to be exquisitely beautiful, but as she never appeared in public the town had no opportunity of judging for itself; yet she was not the less talked about, and perhaps all the more admired, for being invisible. Then came a report that John Churchill, at that time in the bloom of his irresistible youth, flushed with his conquests of
duchesses, had been seen hanging about the house; that Topsparkle was mad with jealousy, had challenged Churchill, had been laughed at and insulted, his challenge flung in his teeth. ‘If a man of your quality offends me I always horsewhip him, but as you haven’t offended me I have nothing to say to you,’ Churchill is reported to have said in a public assemblage. ‘I hope you don’t suppose that the fortune your worthy alderman-father amassed by the petty chicaneries of trade can ever put you on a duelling level with gentlemen.’ I had this speech verbatim from my grandfather, who was present on the occasion.”
“And did Topsparkle swallow the affront?”
“There was a row, and he wanted to maul the young Alcibiades; but friends and bystanders intervened, and Churchill, for the lady’s sake, assured Topsparkle on his honour, that if he had been seen in Soho Square at unseemly hours, the Hero whose tower he had scaled was not Mrs. Topsparkle. The citizen’s son appeared to be satisfied at this assurance, peace was made, and the town thought no more of Mr. Topsparkle’s lady till a fortnight later, when a funeral was seen to leave his house in Soho Square, and a brief notice in the news-letter informed the world at large that Margharita, lady of Vyvyan Topsparkle, Esquire, had deceased on such and such a day, after twenty-four hours’ illness, aged twenty-one.”
“Did any one suspect foul play?” asked Lavendale.
“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 thorough roué,” 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.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 848