"SMITE HIS HARD HEART, AND SHAKE HIS REPTILE SOUL."
With Vincenti's narrative fresh in his mind, and with a very lively recollection of Mr. Philter's story, Lord Lavendale had a keen desire to see something more of the French valet—or private secretary—who had been so diabolically subservient to his master's jealousy and revenge. There was of course always the possibility that Vincenti's theory and the floating suspicions of the neighbourhood might be without substantial foundation. People have had a knack of attributing all sudden or mysterious deaths to poison ever since the days of Sir Thomas Overbury—nor could Lord Essex cut his throat with his own razor without giving rise to an accusation of murder. In any case Lavendale was determined to see something more of the supposed tool, and to study him on his own ground, at the house in Poland Street.
It was very easy for him to get invited to supper at this favourite rendezvous. The Schemers' Club was extinct, and almost forgotten. It had expired with Wharton's disgrace and exile; and Wharton himself, the brilliant orator, the unscrupulous turncoat, the prodigal and profligate, was a wanderer in the wilds of Catalonia, ruined, broken, and dying.
There were other bloods of the same kidney, lesser lights in the firmament of pleasure, and one of these, Sir Randal Hetherington, invited Lavendale to a card party at the house in Poland Street.
"'Tis a snug retreat, where a gentleman can receive his friends without being stared at by the chance mob of a chocolate house; 'tis more secluded even than a club, and has the advantage of admitting feminine company," he said; "and Fétis has one of the best cooks in London. A very clever fellow, Fétis, monstrously superior to his station—knows more about foreign politics than Peterborough or Horace Walpole; I have sometimes suspected that he is one of old Fleury's spies."
Lavendale went, supped, and drank deep of the champagne which Mr. Fétis supplied to his patrons at a guinea a bottle, but not so deep as to lose a word that was spoken or a single indication which could enlighten him as to the character of his host, who waited upon the little party in person during supper, and afterwards sat down to cards with them, received upon a footing which was more familiar than friendship, something after the kind of condescending jocose intimacy which obtained between the princes and court jesters of old.
Fétis under such conditions was an altogether different person from Mr. Topsparkle's sedate and silent valet. He had a Rabelaisian wit which kept the table in a roar, had a fund of French anecdotes, short, sharp, and pungent, àpropos to every turn of the conversation. He had been carefully and piously educated in his early youth, and out of the theological learning acquired in those days was able to furnish an inexhaustible flow of blasphemy.
"I never knew a man who could get such a fine effect out of so small a knowledge of the Scriptures," said young Spencer, the Duchess of Marlborough's prodigal grandson, and one of the finest gentlemen upon town. He and his elder brother were both patrons of the house in Poland Street, supped there with a confidential friend or two on a bladebone of mutton and a magnum of Burgundy, after the play, as the prologue to a quiet hour at hazard, or gave a choice banquet in the French style to a bevy of stage beauties.
Lavendale marked the change in Fétis from the grave and high-bred servant to the audacious jester, and saw in it the clue to the man's character—a creature of various masks, who could fit his manners to the occasion; but he saw also that the man was of a highly nervous excitable temperament, and that a long life of iniquity had wasted his physical forces to extreme attenuation.
"He is of a more spiritual type than his master, in spite of that gentleman's various accomplishments," thought Lavendale, "and with him the flame in the lamp burns brighter, the oil that feeds it wastes faster. Not a man to stand a violent shock of any kind, I doubt."
As the night wore on, and the party grew more riotous, and less observant of one another, Lavendale took an opportunity to talk apart with Fétis.
"I think we have met before, Monsieur Fétis?" he said.
"Yes, my lord, frequently. I was at Ringwood Abbey in attendance upon Mr. Topsparkle while you were visiting there last winter."
"True, 'twas there I saw you, slipping past me in a corridor with a most incomparable modesty. I dreamt not what a roguish wit was hidden under so subdued and sober an aspect."
"Your lordship must consider that in Mr. Topsparkle's house I am in some measure a servant. Here I am on my own ground, and these gentlemen are good enough to indulge all my follies."
"Ringwood Abbey did not give me my first knowledge of you," said Lavendale, watching the crafty face, as Fétis trifled with a silver-gilt snuffbox. "Your renown had reached me before then. I heard of you some years ago when I was travelling in Italy, where you are still remembered."
"Indeed, my lord! It is ten years since I was in Italy."
"These memories were of an older date. They went back to the last century, when you were a youth and a student, an adept in chemistry, I am told."
Fétis started, and turned towards his interlocutor with an ashen countenance, the snuffbox shaking in his tremulous hand.
"Who told you that?" he asked; "who remembers me so long?"
"An old Venetian who happened to hear of you at that time, and who is one of my most intimate friends."
"Will your lordship tell me his name?"
He had recovered himself by this time, and had closed the snuffbox, not without spilling a slight shower of the scented mixture upon his olive-silk knee-breeches.
"Borromeo."
Fétis shook his head.
"I have no memory of such a person. Yes, my lord, I was in Venice forty years ago as a travelling secretary to Mr. Topsparkle. We were both young men in those days, and I was more of a student than I have ever been since that time. The world soon drew me from the study of science; but at three-and-twenty I was full of enthusiasm, hoped to discover the philosopher's stone, to make myself as powerful as Dr. Faustus. Idle dreams, my lord. The world is wiser nowadays. I am told that Sir Richard Steele was the last person who ever cultivated the necromantic arts in England, and that he set up his laboratory at Islington. But even he learnt to laugh at his own delusions."
"But there are more practical studies for the chemist than the arts of Paracelsus or the Geber Arabs," said Lavendale lightly. "My informant told me that you had the repute of being a great toxicologist."
Fétis looked at the speaker intently, but did not answer for the moment. He seemed sunk in a reverie.
"Borromeo," he muttered to himself; "I know no such name."
"Fétis, the deal is yours," cried Mr. Spencer, and Fétis took the cards with a mechanical air, and went on with the game.
Lavendale was satisfied. He had gone far enough for a first attack, and he had seen enough in the manner and expression of the man to assure him that Vincenti's story was true.
"And the woman I love is married to a secret assassin!" he thought despairingly, "and when I might have plucked her out of that hell yonder, I drew back and left her there at peril of her life! If he was capable of murdering that early victim of his forty years ago, at what crime would he stop now, hardened and emboldened by a long life of wickedness? She has but to go a step too far—provoke his jealousy beyond endurance—and Mr. Fétis and his black art may be invoked again. Fool that I was to leave her in his power, and yet—" And yet he felt that the alternative might have been worse—to ally her to a fast vanishing life, to leave her with a dishonoured name, ruined in worldly circumstance, widowed in heart without a widow's title of honour, desolate, unpitied, to wander about the Continent in fourth-rate society—an outcast—as the Duke of Wharton was wandering now. No, that would have been a moral murder, worse than the hazard of Topsparkle's revenge. Again, there was always this to be considered—that, although a nameless foreign mistress might be murdered almost with impunity, it would be a very perilous matter to make away with an English lady of rank.
"No, she is safe," reflected Lavendale, "and if she is unhappy she wears her rue with a difference—everybody thinks her the gayest and luckiest of women. I will not waste my pity upon her."
Before the entertainment was over, his lordship and Mr. Fétis were on the friendliest terms.
"You must visit me in Bloomsbury Square, Monsieur Fétis," said Lavendale. "The house is not without interest, for 'twas a chosen resort of the Whigs in Godolphin's time, and it has seen some curious meetings at the beginning of the late king's reign."
"I shall be proud to wait upon your lordship."
"Say you so; then name your evening to sup with me. Shall it be to-morrow?"
"If your lordship has no better occupation."
"I could have none better. Your mind is a treasury of interesting facts, Mr. Fétis, and your conversation is the best entertainment I can imagine for an idle hour after supper. I want to talk with you of my poor friend Wharton. He and I have been companions in many a revel in London and Vienna; and 'tis sad to think that fiery comet should have plunged so fast into space and darkness, a burnt-out shell."
"His grace was one of my most generous friends and patrons, and I mourn for him as for a son," said Fétis.
Lavendale went home in a thoughtful mood, and was glad to find lights burning in Durnford's study, and that his friend was sitting up late to finish his newspaper work, after a long afternoon at the House. Herrick and Irene were still his lordship's guests, and he was very loth to part with them; but they had found a cottage at Battersea, with a garden sloping to the river, not far from that big house of Lord St. John's which dominated the village. The cottage was in a wretched state of repair, and a month or more must elapse before it could be made habitable; but to Herrick and Irene there was rapture in the idea of this modest home which was to be all their own, maintained by the husband's industry, brightened and beautified by the young wife's care.
Mdlle. Latour was in possession already, living in the one habitable room, and superintending the repairs and improvements. She was installed as Irene's housekeeper, with a stout servant-girl for the rest of the establishment.
Lavendale was vexed that his friend should not be content to share his home in London and Surrey.
"'Tis churlish of you to go and build your own nest four miles off, and leave me to the desolation of empty rooms and echoing passages," he complained. "Pray, have I been over-officious in my hospitality, or intrusive of my company? Have I ever disturbed your billing and cooing?"
"You have done all that hospitality and delicatest feeling could do to make us happy, dear Jack," returned Herrick warmly; "but it is not well for any man to set up his Lares and Penates under another man's roof. The sense of independence, the burden of bread-winning, is the one attribute of manhood which no man dare surrender, least of all when he has a dear soul dependent upon him. What would the world say, d'ye think, were my wife and I to riot in luxury at your cost?"
"Damn the world!"
"Ay, Jack, I could afford to say that while I was a bachelor; but for my wife's sake I must truckle to the town, and do nothing to forfeit the most pragmatical person's good opinion. Do you think I shall love you less when I am living at Battersea?"
"I know that I shall have less of your society—that when my dark hour is on there will be no one to cheer me."
"Order your horse and ride to Battersea whenever the dark hour comes. The ride will do you good, and you shall have a loving welcome and a decent meal, come when you may. We shall always keep open house for you."
"And I shall visit you so often as to make you heartily sick of me. Good God, Herrick, how I envy you your happiness, your future with its fulness of hope; while for me there is nothing—"
Herrick clasped his hand without a word; that honest affectionate grasp was all the comfort he could offer to one whose wasted life and broken constitution left scarce the possibility of hope on this side of the grave; and to suggest spiritual consolation at all times and seasons was not in Herrick's line. He knew too well that no man could be preached into piety.
Lavendale went straight to the room where his friend was at work, and told him of his evening in Poland Street, and of his invitation to Fétis. He had told Herrick all the facts in Vincenti's narrative, and the two had discussed the story together. Herrick was keenly interested, and it was partly on his suggestion that Lavendale had made himself familiar with the Fétis establishment.
"Let him come to-morrow night by all means," he said eagerly, "and if we lay our heads together meanwhile, we might, I think, with Irene's help, frighten the wretch into a confession."
"What, after forty years of secrecy, after having so hardened himself in crime!"
"Well, say an admission of some kind—a full confession were perhaps too much to expect. Nothing but the immediate prospect of a hempen necklace would extort that. And yet it has been found that the most hardened villain has sometimes a vein of superstition, an abject terror of that spirit world whose judgments and punishments he has hazarded so audaciously."
"With Irene's help, you said. What has Irene to do with the matter?"
"Have you forgotten that picture in Mr. Topsparkle's cabinet—that Italian head which might have been intended for my wife's portrait, so vivid was the likeness?"
"Yes, I remember it perfectly."
"I have a notion that I can play upon Fétis's feelings by means of that resemblance."
"But the likeness will not be new to him. He saw your wife at Ringwood Abbey."
"Yes; but the circumstances under which he shall see her again will be new, and his own feelings will be new. Leave me to work out my scheme after my own fashion, Jack. All you have to do is to ply your guest with the strongest liquor he will swallow, and then watch and listen."