"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. Fetis were on the friendliest terms.
"You must visit me in Bloomsbury Square, Monsieur Fetis," said Lavendale. "The house is not without interest, for "twas a chosen resort of the Whigs in G.o.dolphin"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. Fetis, 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 s.p.a.ce and darkness, a burnt-out sh.e.l.l."
"His grace was one of my most generous friends and patrons, and I mourn for him as for a son," said Fetis.
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 pa.s.sages," 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?"
"d.a.m.n 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 G.o.d, 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 const.i.tution 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 Fetis. 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 Fetis 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 superst.i.tion, 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 Fetis"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 circ.u.mstances 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."
CHAPTER V.
"I"LL JOIN WITH THEE IN A MOST JUST REVENGE."
Fetis repaired to Bloomsbury Square next evening, not altogether with the innocent simplicity of the lamb that goes to the slaughter, but with the caution of an astute mind which perceives a snare in every civility, and suspects a trap in every invitation.
"Why was the man so civil, and what does he know about my life in Venice forty years ago?"
Those were the questions which had agitated the Frenchman"s mind during that brief remnant of the night which he had spent in restless wakefulness, and they had proved unanswerable. Caution might have prompted him to avoid Lord Lavendale"s house and turn a deaf ear to that n.o.bleman"s civilities; but anxiety made him curious, and fear of the future made him bold in the present. He wanted to know the extent of Lavendale"s knowledge of his own past life, and to that end he accepted his lordship"s invitation. His vanity again, which was large, made him suppose himself a match for Lord Lavendale in any intellectual encounter.
"If he has courted me in order to pump me for the secrets of the past, he will find he has wasted his trouble," thought Mr. Fetis, as his chair was being carried through perilous St. Giles"s.
It was eleven o"clock, a late hour for supper; but Lord Lavendale had been at the House of Lords, and had dined with some of his brother peers after the debate. Supper had been prepared in the late lord"s private sitting-room, a small triangular parlour at the end of a stately suite of reception-rooms, a room which had been rarely used of late, but which Herrick, for some unexplained motive, had selected as the scene of this evening"s entertainment. It was altogether the cosiest room in the house, and with a heaped-up fire of sea-coal and oak logs in the wide grate, a small round table laid for supper, a pair of silver candelabra holding a dozen wax candles, and a side table loaded with all the materials for a jovial evening, the little triangular parlour looked the very picture of comfort.
The brightness and warmth of the room had an agreeable effect upon Mr.
Fetis, who had been chilled and depressed for the moment by those cold and empty apartments through which a footman had ushered him by the light of a single candle, borne aloft as the man stalked in advance with a ghostlike air.
"Let me perish, my lord, but your empty saloons have given me the shivers," said Fetis, as he warmed his spindleshanks at the blaze; "your tall footman looked like a spectre."
"Come, come, Mr. Fetis, you are not the kind of man to believe in apparitions," said Durnford gaily. "I think we are all materialists here, are we not? We accept nothing for truth that cannot be mathematically demonstrated."
Lavendale looked grave. "It is not every sceptic who is free from superst.i.tion," he said. "There are men who cannot believe in a Personal G.o.d, and who will yet tremble at a shadow. I have known an infidel who would scoff at the Gospel, stand up for the story of the Witch of Endor."
Mr. Fetis shrugged his shoulders, and did not pursue the argument.
The butler and a pair of footmen brought in the hot dishes, and opened a magnum of champagne, and supper began in serious earnest--one of those exquisite suppers for which Lavendale had been renowned in his wild youth, when he had vied with the Regent Philip in the studied extravagance of his table.
Fetis was a connoisseur, and his secret anxieties did not hinder him from doing ample justice to the meal. Lavendale pretended to eat, but scarcely tasted the delicacies which were set before him. Durnford ate hurriedly, hardly knowing what he was eating, full of nervous antic.i.p.ation. Fetis was the only one of the party who could calmly appreciate the talents of the _chef_ and the aroma of the wines.
He refused champagne altogether, as a liquor only fit for boyhood and senility; but he highly approved the Burgundy, which had been laid down by the last Lord Lavendale, and had been maturing for nearly fifteen years.
"There is no wine like that which comes from the Cote d"Or," he said; and then, in a somewhat cracked voice, he chirruped a stanza of Villon"s "Ballade joyeuse des Taverniers."