"Ah, sir, to be provided for by others—by a kind of pension from a wealthy benefactor for instance," looking at him searchingly, as if she were measuring his capacity for generosity, "that is all very well for poor-spirited people—the English lower classes have no pride. But my husband and I are of an independent mind. We would rather have our liberty even in poverty than be pensioners upon any one's bounty, which might be withdrawn at a day's notice."
"Nay, a pension of that kind to be useful must be assured to you—something in the way of an annuity in the public funds, for instance—dependent on your own lives, and not upon any one else's frail thread of existence."
Mrs. Fétis looked interested, and almost convinced.
"'Twould be a delicious life and free from care; but Fétis has a passion for London, and all whom I love in my own country are dead. It would be but to go back to their graves."
Mr. Topsparkle said no more. He did not want to appear over anxious to banish his old servant, yet the man's tone to-day and the wife's revelations had intensified a feeling he had entertained for a long time, a feeling that the hour had come when it would be very agreeable to get rid of his âme damnée. He would suffer considerable inconvenience undoubtedly from the loss of a valet who so thoroughly understood his complexion; but anything was better than the everlasting vicinity of a servant who knew too much.
He dismissed the Frenchwoman with a compliment, escorted her to the ante-room, and kissed her hand with a finished courtesy before he committed her to the care of the footman, and then he went back to his sofa, warmed his feet at the log-fire, and gave himself up to a serious thought.
"The man is getting dangerous," he thought; "he always was a creature of excitable temper, and now he has drunk or gamed himself into a kind of mental fever, from which perhaps the next stage would be madness. Better so! Nobody believes a madman. And if he were to make any revelations about the remote past, who is there to confirm him? No one. The old Venetian must long since have been numbered with his ancestors. The apothecary disappeared thirty years ago and left no trace behind him. If it had not been for that damnable scandal at the time, set on foot and fostered by that villain Churchill, I could laugh any accusation of Fétis to scorn; but there are a few of my contemporaries malicious enough to have long memories, and I would do much to avoid a revival of that hellish outcry which drove me from the hustings and from the country. I have not forgotten. That hateful scene at Brentford is as vivid in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. And he has begun to talk, to get up in the middle of the night and to rave about being haunted. And this loquacious wife of his will repeat his ravings to all her gossips. Yes, there is danger, were it ever so slight. A man of my importance is a target for every venomous arrow. Fétis, you must be silenced."
He rose and paced the room slowly, meditating upon the position in all its aspects, and with all its possibilities of evil. There was his wife, of whose loyalty he was ever doubtful. What if that ancient scandal were to reach her ears? Would she not use it as a weapon against him, ally herself with her old lover for his destruction? The very thought made that magnificent periwig of his tremulous as if with a palsy.
The man must be got out of the way somehow. If he did not snap at the bait of a handsome annuity and accept retirement to his native land, there might be other means, nearer, shorter, of disposing of him.
Yes, there was one way, short and easy, as it seemed to Mr. Topsparkle; a way of making Louis Fétis safe for ever: but that way would leave the wife at liberty—and she might be dangerous.