THE SMILES OF NATURE AND THE CHARMS OF ART.
Mr. Fétis slept until late in the afternoon, and awoke restored to his senses and so far recovered in his health as to be able to dress himself and go down-stairs. He was taking a cup of coffee strengthened with cognac in his wife's parlour when the Topsparkle orange and brown livery again enlivened the doorstep, and a note was handed in at the door.
It was a somewhat urgent summons from Fétis's patron and master.
"If you are well enough to come to me this afternoon, I should like to see you," wrote Mr. Topsparkle; "my messenger will get you a chair."
Fétis told the footman that he was able to walk, and would wait upon Mr. Topsparkle almost immediately. He followed the footman in about five minutes, and was at once admitted to his master's dressing-room, where he found Mr. Topsparkle sitting before the fire, in slippers and a crimson brocade négligé.
"My good Fétis, pray think me not inhuman in sending for you," he exclaimed, in his airiest manner, "but if you have vital power enough to put my head and complexion in order for the evening, it will be a real benevolence on your part. I am to go to an assembly at Henrietta's, and I don't want to look older than poor Mr. Congreve, who has the aspect of a sickly Methuselah."
"I do not believe her Grace thinks so, sir," said Fétis, going over to the toilet-table and beginning to arrange his arsenal of little china pots and crystal bottles, brushes and sponges, and hare's-feet.
"O, for her he is always Adonis. But he grows daily more wrinkled and mummified, and he paints as badly as Kneller at his worst, which is saying much," replied Topsparkle, seating himself in front of the glass, a Venetian mirror, framed in filagree silver, which ought to have reflected beauty as young and fresh as Belinda's. "And so, my poor friend," he continued with a sympathetic air, "you have been very ill. May I ask the nature of your malady?"
"I was as near death as I could be, I believe, sir," answered Fétis gloomily, still occupied with cosmetics and paint-brushes, and going on with his work as he spoke. "You will laugh at me doubtless when I tell you the cause of my indisposition, for you have a lighter nature than mine, or you could scarce live contentedly in this house."
"I have less education, and more philosophy, Fétis. That is the secret of my easier temper."
"I saw a ghost last night, sir," said Fétis, beginning his operations on his master's complexion.
"Indeed, my dear Fétis, I am told they swarm in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury, where I hear you spent last midnight in most patrician society."
"How did you know where I spent my evening?" gasped Fétis.
"A little bird, my dear friend, a sweet little singing bird. Our London groves are vocal with such airy songsters. Pray keep your hand steady. God's curse, fellow, that wash of yours is revolting when 'tis not laid on smoothly. You are too thick over the right temple."
There was a pause, during which Fétis finished his ground-colour and outlined an eyebrow with a miniature-painter's pencil.
"And so you saw a ghost last night. Was it in Denmark Street, St. Giles's, as you reeled homewards after your orgy?"
"No, sir, 'twas before I left Lord Lavendale's house. I had supped with his lordship and Mr. Durnford—"
"A fellow I hate!" interrupted Topsparkle; "a sinister, prying knave!"
"We had played cards for an hour or so, and I had been sole winner. I was in excellent spirits, elated, rejuvenated by my good luck. I had to pass through a suite of cold and empty rooms, dark except for the candle carried by my companion, Durnford, and a gleam of light from a lamp on the staircase beyond. It was in this semi-darkness I saw the shape of her whose death we compassed, in that room yonder, forty years ago!"
He pointed to the door opening into Topsparkle's bedchamber.
"My good Fétis, you were drunk," said his master, without moving a muscle. "His lordship had plied you with wine till your highly imaginative mind was on the alert for phantoms. An effect of light and shade in a dusky room, a white curtain perchance, an optical delusion of some kind. I should have given you credit for more sense and less superstition."
"I tell you 'twas she, Margharita Vincenti. It was her face, sad, reproachful, as it has looked upon me many a time in this house. It was her figure, her attitude, standing there before me in the light of Mr. Durnford's uplifted candle, with all the reality of life."
"And yet in a trice the vision vanished, melted before your eyes?"
"Indeed I know not, sir, for terror overcame my senses, and I swooned."
"My good Fétis, you are in a very bad state of health. You need to be monstrously careful of yourself. These signs and wonders of yours presage lunacy. Give me the hand-mirror. No, your eyebrows are not so successful as usual. There is a gouty line in the arch of the left, and you have given me a scintilla too much rouge. Pray tone down that rosy-apple appearance to a more delicate peach bloom. I think you are falling off in the composition of your red. There is a purple tinge that is too conspicuously artificial. You are a chemist, and should know more of the amalgamation of colours. You should try to imitate nature, my good Fétis. And you tell me you saw my poor Margharita's ghost, and that 'twas Mr. Durnford who held the candle that lighted the vision?"
"It was just as I have told you."
"To be sure. And pray do you happen to remember a certain young lady, an heiress, who came to the Abbey last winter, and who was the living image of my poor Margharita—whom you must remember I indulged and treated with all possible kindness so long as she was faithful to me—and on whose account you might therefore spare me your reproaches."
"I cannot forget my crime, nor who prompted it."
"Plague take you, Fétis, why use hard words? 'Twas but a sleeping draught made a thought too powerful, so that the sleep became eternal. 'Twas euthanasia. Had that girl lived her fate would have been an evil one. She was on the downward slope when death stopped her. She had ceased to care for me, and was passionately in love with Churchill. Do you suppose he would have remained true to her when the vanity of conquest was over and her monotony of sweetness began to pall? Deserted by him, she would have fallen a prey to some coarser profligate, and then the side boxes, and the hospital or Bridewell. Faithless to me, there was nothing but death that could save her."
"You might have made her your wife."
"Because I found her false and fickle as a mistress! A pretty reason, quotha."
"To be made an honest woman would have steadied her; you might have given her the company of her child; that is ever a mother's safeguard."
"Pollute my house with the presence of a squalling baby! No, Fétis, endurance has limits. Pshaw! let us not harp upon this folly. Do you remember Mrs. Bosworth?"
"Yes; I saw her only at a distance. The likeness was certainly startling."
"And you did not know that the lady is now Mr. Durnford's wife? He stole her from her father's house t'other day, and Parson Keith married them."
"No; I had not heard that."
"And therefore could not guess that the ghost you saw in the dark room was no less a personage than Durnford's young wife, who by a freak of nature happens to be the living image of my dead mistress?"
"By heaven, it might have been so! I never guessed—I never thought—" faltered Fétis.
"Of course not. You have lost your head, my friend, since you took to cards and strong waters. Had you been content to drink like a gentleman, these fancies would never have addled your brains. I hope you betrayed yourself no more than by your swooning fit in Lavendale's presence. You held your tongue, I trust, when your senses returned?"
"I know not," answered Fétis, with an embarrassed air. "I left the house like a sleepwalker, scarce conscious of my own actions; nor do I know how I reached my own chamber."
"You are a sad fool, my dear Fétis, and, what is more, you are a dangerous fool," said Topsparkle, in his gentlest voice, and with a faint sigh. "The hand-glass again, please. Yes, that is better: the eyebrows have more delicacy than your first attempt. I want to appear at my best to-night. A man who has a beautiful wife should not look a scarecrow. You have a remarkable talent for touching up a face; a gift, Fétis, a gift. 'Tis an art that can be no more learnt than oratory or poetry. A man must be born with it. I am very sorry for you, my good Louis, sorry that tongue of yours is no more to be trusted. There, that will do. My valet can help me on with my wig. You are looking ill and tired. Get home as fast as you can."
"Indeed, sir, I am far from well."
"I can see it, my poor friend. Good-day to you. Tell my servant to bring me a dish of tea as you go out."
Fétis bowed and retired, gave his master's message to the footman sitting half asleep in the ante-room, and went out of the house.
He had not left the Square before he was stopped by two shabbily-clad men, one of whom tapped him on the shoulder.
"You are my prisoner, Mr. Fétis."
"Prisoner, fellow! you are joking."
"No, sir; this will show you there is no joke in the matter;" and the man produced a paper which Mr. Fétis read with a troubled brow.
"This can be very easily settled," he said after a pause; "'tis but a bagatelle. I had forgotten that Mr. Bevis had sued me. The account is such a paltry one, and I have put thousands into Bevis's pockets. It is but fifty pounds. If you will accompany me to yonder house on the other side of the Square, Mr. Topsparkle will oblige me with the cash."
"Can't do no such thing, your honour," growled the bailiff, in a voice thickened by hard living and strong drink. "My orders are to take you straight to the sponging-house. You can communicate with your friends when you're there."
"But the house is within a few paces, and I tell you I can get the money!"
"The law's the law, and it mustn't be tampered with," said the man, "and duty's duty, and it's mine to see you safe inside the lock. Call a coach, Jerry; there's a stand in Greek Street," and so, with his arm held in the dirty grasp of a bailiff, Mr. Fétis was marched off to a coach.
In that trouble of mind which had been growing on him of late he had indeed almost forgotten that judgment had been pronounced against him at the suit of Messrs. Bevis, wine merchants, of the Strand, whose account, though he made so light of it, was one of long standing. Messrs. Bevis had filled and refilled Mr. Topsparkle's cellars since his re-establishment in London, and Fétis had been the agent and intermediary in all purchases of wine, choosing, tasting, approving, and had been courted and fawned upon by the Messrs. Bevis and their clerks. And now on account of a trumpery fifty-odd pounds for goods supplied to himself, he was to be locked up in gaol! He was astounded at the ingratitude of these wretches.