Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Your lordship is simply incorri-corri-gibber,” protested the Dowager, lunging at the great Tory with her fan.

  “Have a care, Lady Polwhele. Incorrigible is not an easy word to pronounce at two o’clock in the morning.”

  “Yet you can say it, villain.”

  “I have always been noted for a sound head and a steady tongue.”

  “Faith, were your principles but as sound as your head you might be Treasurer now instead of that lubberly Norfolk squire,” said her ladyship, somewhat thickly. “And then we should not all be given over to the Muggites.”

  “Your ladyship forgets that I am a Muggite,” remarked Lavendale laughingly.

  “No, I don’t forget you, scaramouch. I never forget old friends” — with more fan-tappings. “And I mean to trap you an heiress yet. You shall marry bullion, Lavendale, as sure as I am one of the cleverest women in London. Look at Asterley there. ’Twas I got him his City wife, and ’tis I am training her for the Court and good company. See how sleek and bloated my Benedick begins to look, fattened by the consciousness of a full purse, as well as by the physical effects of a well-stocked larder. But you look lean and haggard, Lavendale. I prescribe an heiress.”

  “Wake up, Topsparkle,” cried Asterley, anxious to stop his patroness’s loquacity. “The boatmen have had their night’s rest, and the moon is high. Put on your roquelaures, gentlemen, and you ladies wrap your mantuas close round you. Even a July night is cold on the river.”

  “I have never found a July night too warm anywhere in this atrocious climate,” said Topsparkle, waking with a shiver. “The earth in this latitude is only half cooked. There is no sun worth speaking of. ’Tis a raw, bleak, uncomfortable world, invented for the profit of woollen-drapers and furriers. Let me help you on with your mantua, Judith, and then let us all get home as fast as we can. ’Twas foolish to come here by water, but ’tis mad to return that way.”

  “Music and moonlight,” murmured Lady Polwhele, with a maudlin air. “Nothing in this world so delicious as music and moonlight. I hope you brought your flute, Asterley.”

  “He has it in his pocket, your ladyship,” vouched the buxom young wife, who was passing proud of her husband’s trivial accomplishments.

  “The flute! Lord forbid!” cried Topsparkle. “We are sure of a fit of the shivers, and it needs but Asterley’s flute to give us the ague.”

  At last they were all out of the arbour, Lady Polwhele lurching a little as she leaned on Bolingbroke’s arm, and so down to the water-side and to the gilded barge with its eight rowers, which slipped noiselessly from the shadowy shore under the summer moon.

  “The moon rises late, does she not?” asked Lavendale, looking up at that silver lamp hanging in mid-heaven.

  How pale he looked in that clear white light! how hollow and worn the oval of his face! how attenuated those delicate features! Judith saw only the love-light in those adoring eyes.

  “The moon rises between eleven and twelve,” replied Mr. Philter, who always knew, or pretended to know, everything. It is so easy to be wise in polite society. A man has but to answer with sufficient assurance and a quiet air of precision to be believed in by the ignorant majority.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  “YET STILL I AM IN LOVE, AND PLEASED WITH RUIN.”

  It was the noon of next day before Lavendale opened his curtains and rang for his letters and his chocolate — a glorious summer noontide, with a flood of sunshine pouring in through the three tall narrow windows in that front bedchamber in Bloomsbury Square. The Lavendale mansion was a fine double-house with the staircase in the middle. His lordship’s bedroom, dressing-room, and private writing-closet, or study, occupied one side of the first floor; on the other were two drawing-rooms, the white and the yellow, panelled and painted, opening into each other with high folding-doors after the French manner; and beyond these a small inner room, where a choice company of three or four kindred spirits might play high and drink deep, as it were in a sanctuary, remote from the household. The house had been built by the first Lord Lavendale in his pride of place and power. Here Somers and Godolphin had been entertained; here William himself had brought his grim dark visage and high wig, his hooked nose, and his Dutch favourites, to steep themselves in the Lavendale Burgundy after a ponderous old English dinner of thirty or forty dishes. It was a house full of stately memories, a house built for a statesman and a gentleman. How pleasantly would those panelled rooms have echoed the merry voices of children, the scampering of little feet! but all prospect of domesticity was over for Lord Lavendale. To-morrow the paternal house would be deserted, perhaps for ever; left to the rats and some grimy caretaker, or sold in a year or two to the best bidder. To-day the paternal acres would be mortgaged up to the hilt, since a man who runs away with a woman of fashion must needs have ready-money. There are a few things in this life that cannot be done upon credit. Running away with your neighbour’s wife is one of them.

  Lavendale thought of these things in very idleness of fancy as he stirred his chocolate, while his valet gathered up scattered garments, picked up an Alençon cravat from the floor, and reduced the disorder of the room generally. He thought of his mother, whom he remembered as the occupant of this bedchamber. The room had seemed sacred and solemn to him, like a temple, in those early days of his childhood, when he came in at bedtime to say his prayers at his mother’s knee. How she had loved him! with what heart-whole devotion, with what anxiety! as he knew now, looking back upon her tenderness, understanding it with the understanding of manhood. He had not enjoyed his prayers in the abstract; but he had always liked to be with his mother. She was not one of the gad-about mothers, who see their children for five minutes in a powder-closet, look up from a patch-box to kiss little missy or master, and then airily dismiss the darling to nurse and nursery. She had always had leisure to love her boy. After those little prayers of his she would talk to him seriously of the time when he would be a man among other men in a world full of temptation. She entreated him to be good: to do right always: to be true, and brave, and pious, obeying God, loving his fellow-creatures. She warned him against the evil of the world. Sometimes she spoke to him perhaps almost too gravely for his years; but he remembered her words now.

  “She knew what a vile place this world is, and she warned me against its infamy,” he said to himself. “Vain warning: grave and tender speech wasted upon an incipient reprobate. Is there some place of spirits in which she dwells, where she sees and knows my folly, and grieves, as disembodied souls may grieve, over her guilty son? I, who find it so hard to believe dogmatic religion, cannot wean myself from the fancy that there is such a world — that she whom I loved lives yet, and can feel and care for me — that the last link between mother and son was not broken when the first clod fell on the coffin.”

  A footman knocked at the door and handed in a salver with a letter, which the valet brought to his lordship’s bedside.

  “From Lady Judith Topsparkle. The messenger waits,” said the man.

  He had recognised the brown and orange livery, although the footman had not mentioned his mistress’s name.

  “The dragon is roused at last,” wrote Judith. “Topsparkle has taken alarm at our familiarity last night. I doubt he was only shamming sleep, and that he watched us while we whispered at the supper-table. No sooner were we at home than he burst into a tragic scene — Cato was never more heroic — taxed me with carrying on an intrigue with you, and using Bolingbroke as a blind. I laughed at him and defied him; on which he announced that he should carry me off to Ringwood Abbey directly after the Guildhall dinner. ‘Nothing I should love better,’ says I, ‘for I am heart-sick of the town, and you and I were made to bill and coo in solitude. All the world knows how fond we are of each other.’ After this he became silently savage, white with suppressed wrath. What an evil face it is, Jack! I think he is capable of murdering me; but you may trust me to take care of myself, and to touch no potion of his mixing, between now and to-morrow night. He ordered
Zélie to pack my trunks for the Abbey; the very thing I would have. They are to go off on Thursday morning, he says. Be sure you send your wagoner on Wednesday evening. So now, dear love, from such a Bluebeard husband my flight will be a pardonable sin. I do but run away in self-defence.”

  “Bring me standish and portfolio,” said Lavendale; and with his elbow on his pillow he wrote hastily:

  “Beloved, I will not fail you. I have some business arrangements that must be made to-day, and to-morrow at dusk I will be with you. If you have any apprehension or any sense of unhappiness in the mean while, come to me here at once, and I will defend you. Once within these doors you shall be safe as in a fortress. But it will be better if we can slip away quietly. I doubt if Topsparkle will follow us to the South. From hints I have had about him I take it he is not over-fond of fighting — would fight, perhaps, if hard driven — but will not court an encounter; and for your sake I would rather not cross swords with him. So if finesse and patience can keep matters smooth till to-morrow night it will be well. Till then, Adored One, adieu. My heart, soul, mind, being, are in your keeping already. This Lavendale which goes to and fro, and must needs get through the day’s business, is but a breathing piece of mechanism, a self-acting puppet. The real Lavendale is sighing on your bosom.”

  This letter despatched, with a guinea to the gentleman in orange and brown — guinea which by some curious conjuring trick became a half-guinea at the bottom of the staircase — his lordship rose and dressed, or suffered himself to be dressed, very impatiently, and then, without any more breakfast than his cup of chocolate, walked off to his favourite Jew.

  He knew most of the money-lenders in London; men who would lend at an hour’s notice and on lightest security; men who were slow and cautious. It was to an enterprising usurer he went to-day.

  “I want a thousand pounds immediately, Solomon,” he said, flinging himself into a dusty chair in a dusty office near the Fleet, “and four thousand to follow.”

  Then came negotiation. Hitherto Lavendale had refused to mortgage the Surrey Manor. Other estates were heavily clipped — but the place his mother had loved, the house in which she died, had been held sacred. Now, he would stick at nothing. He must have money at any sacrifice. Old Solomon had itched for a good mortgage on that Surrey Manor. He had a client who wanted to lend money on land near London, a rich City tradesman who hardly believed in the validity of any estate that was not within fifty miles of the metropolis. The client would think himself well off if he got five per cent for his cash; and Mr. Solomon knew that he could make Lord Lavendale pay seven per cent, and pocket the difference. His lordship was in too great a hurry for the money to consult his own lawyer, would not examine the deeds too closely. He had the air of a man who was in a fever of impatience to ruin himself. Solomon promised to have the mortgage-deed engrossed and the money ready to hand over by two o’clock next day. Lavendale swore he must leave England at three. The money would be no use to him unless it were his before that hour.

  “You shall have it,” protested Solomon, “though the scrivener should have to work all night. I will go straight off to my client and bid him prepare his cash.”

  Lavendale went back to Bloomsbury, and gave orders about the wagon and the coach-and-four, with a third pair of horses to be ready on the other side of London Bridge, and relays all along the Dover road. His valet was as clever as Figaro, and had hitherto proved himself trustworthy.

  “I am running away with an heiress, Jevons,” said his lordship. “A sweet young creature of seventeen; a cit’s only daughter, worth a plum in her own right.”

  Jevons bowed with an air of respectful sympathy, and knew that his master was lying. The orange and brown livery had appeared too often in Bloomsbury Square within the last month or so; and Jevons had seen his lordship in Lady Judith’s box, from the pit of the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and knew exactly how those two stood towards each other.

  “’Tis a bad business,” thought Mr. Jevons, “and may end in bloodshed. I would rather see him running after masks and misses, as he did ten years ago.”

  Mr. Jevons was too well trained a servant to disobey orders, were he even sure they must result in fatality. He would have sharpened his master’s rapier for a duel as coolly as he cleaned his boots. So he went off and ordered coach, wagon, and horses, and despatched a couple of mounted grooms to ride to Dover by easy stages. They were to order relays of post-horses as they went along, and were to make sure that there should be no hitch in the journey.

  “And if you find his lordship is pursued, you are to do your damnable best to prevent his pursuer getting a change of horses anywhere,” said Mr. Jevons, with his authoritative air, which was more imperious than his master’s.

  Lavendale ordered his carriage late in the afternoon, and drove down to his Surrey Manor in the summer dusk. He wanted to see Vincenti before he left England, perhaps for ever. He wanted to see that old home which he might never look upon again. And Durnford was to be at the Manor that evening, the one friend in whose fidelity he could always confide; to whom he could confess even his darkest secrets; whose sound sense he could rely upon when his own feather-brain failed him.

  “I must make some plans for her future,” he told himself, “for I fear I am not a long-lived man. Alas! what can I leave her? Three or four happy years in the South will exhaust my resources, and there will be nothing left but an estate mortgaged to the hilt.”

  This was a dark outlook, so he tried to shut his eyes to the future. And then he remembered what some knowing busybody had told him about Lord Bramber’s cleverness, and the handsome settlement extorted from Mr. Topsparkle before he was allowed to carry off the lovely Judith.

  “So good a settlement,” said the gossip, “that her ladyship has but small inducement to remain constant to a fossil husband. She may elope whenever she likes, for she will be handsomely provided for even in her disgrace. Lord Bramber is a man of the world, and able to look ahead.”

  There was some consolation in the thought that Lady Judith was not to sacrifice everything in throwing away her reputation. And yet to think of her enriched by Topsparkle’s money was as bad as to see her shining in Topsparkle’s diamonds.

  “’Tis so evil a business that nothing can mend it,” he said to himself; which was an ill frame of mind for a lover.

  It was dark when he reached the Manor, and Durnford had not arrived. The coach had brought a letter from him to say that important business in the House detained him, but that he would ride down next morning.

  Chagrined at this disappointment, Lavendale went straight to the laboratory, where he found Vincenti walking to and fro in an unusual state of excitement.

  “Have you found the great secret?” he asked. “You have a look of triumph.”

  “I am nearer than I have ever been,” answered the old man, with feverish eagerness; “so near that I might almost say I have reached the goal. The universal panacea is all but won. I feel a renewal of strength in every limb, a fresher life in every vein, and, if not the secret of immortality, I have at least found the key to an almost indefinitely prolonged existence. I tell you, Lavendale, there is a medicine that will prolong life for centuries if a man is but free from organic disease.”

  “If!” echoed Lavendale; “that ‘if’ makes all the difference. If he do not fall off his horse, or if he be not turned over in a stage-coach, or drowned ‘twixt Dover and Calais. If he do not fall into a crater, like Empedocles, or if he be not buried in the lava flood, like Pliny, or murdered in the street, like Tom Thynne, or killed in a duel, like Hamilton and Mohun. There is a vast variety of ‘ifs’ to be considered.”

  Vincenti was not listening to him. He walked to and fro like a man exalted by a beatific vision. Then he suddenly stopped and went over to a furnace, upon which there stood a crucible. He peered into this for some moments, and then resumed his feverish pacings up and down the spacious floor: anon suddenly tottered, and staggered over to his chair, like a man who can sc
arce keep himself from falling.

  Lavendale went to him instantly, and put a glass of water to his lips. His brow was damp with cold perspiration, and he had every appearance of fainting.

  “Is this one of the effects of your panacea,” asked Lavendale; “is this the result of that marvel-working Azoth that Paracelsus believed in?”

  “It is nothing — a passing faintness. The reaction was too strong. I gave myself up too completely to the delight of my discovery — or I may have taken too powerful a dose. I tell you, my lord, the solution is infallible. It contains every element of life, every force that can sustain mind and body, strengthen every nerve, restore the quality of the blood, wasted with age. Feel my pulse, and say if it is not at once regular and strong.”

  “Strong? — yes, too strong for your age; too quick for health. Regular? — no. You had better go to bed, Vincenti. A basin of broth and a good night’s rest will do more for you than the higher metals.”

  “Your lordship is mocking me. But I am somewhat exhausted by the unintermittent watching of the last three days and nights. I will lie down for an hour or two, if you will be so kind as to assist me to my room.”

  Lavendale supported him to an adjoining room with almost womanly tenderness, and did not leave him till he was lying comfortably in his bed. He occupied a small apartment next the chapel, a room which had once been used as a sacristy. Here the student of Nature’s secret forces had a pallet, and a kind of hermit’s cell, preferring such scanty accommodation close to his furnaces and alembics, to the comfortable bedchamber above-stairs which had been allotted to him at his coming.

  “Yonder is a sword that has well nigh worn out its scabbard,” thought Lavendale, as he went back to the library. “Did Albertus Magnus dream thus to the last, I wonder, and die on the threshold of some tremendous discovery, or fancy himself near it in his last hours? Is it all an idle dream, as Herrick says, and is there no undiscovered power that can prolong the life of man? How feverish was that old man’s joy at the idea of stretching his thin thread of life! And yet one would think existence could be of little value to one who has survived every earthly passion, every human tie. But for me — for me, whose days have been so short, so empty of all real joys; for me, whose heart beats high with fondest hopes and sweetest anticipations—’tis hard for such as I to know his days measured, his span of life dwindling fast to the vanishing point. Life might be prolonged indefinitely, says Vincenti, if there be no organic disease. That ‘if’ means so much. There is something tells me this heart of mine has been worked too hard upon foolish excitements and frivolous fancies, horse-races, cock-fights, the gambling-table, and the bear-pit; and that now — now when I would fain feel myself secure of length of days — the flame that burns so fiercely is but the expiring flourish of a burnt-out candle.”