"I left the house, sick at heart. That glimpse of the ruined girl amidst her garish splendour had pained me more than it would have done to find her forsaken and dest.i.tute, for then I could have carried her back to her father a true penitent. I felt, however, that the hour of repentance must come, and I determined to wait for it.
"I was able to pursue my studies in Paris. I had taken a quiet lodging in one of the smaller streets of the Marais, and I pa.s.sed a great deal of my time at the hospital, where I devoted my days to the study of anatomy, while my evenings were mostly spent in the laboratory of an old man with whom I had studied toxicology forty years before. He had been one of the experts in the Brinvilliers case, and perhaps knew more about the secret poisoners of Paris than any living man. My life under such circ.u.mstances was full of interest and occupation; but I never let a day pa.s.s without paying a visit to the street where Mr. Topsparkle had his apartment. This was also in the Marais, and not ten minutes" walk from my own obscure lodging.
"I heard the sounds of music and gaiety from those lighted windows night after night, saw visitors enter, saw Margharita pa.s.s to her carriage or her sedan-chair, saw all the indications of a life devoted to pleasure and dissipation. One night I followed the chair to the Opera House, and took my seat in the pit, from which I saw my granddaughter in her box, blazing with diamonds, and one of the loveliest women in the house. My neighbours pointed her out to each other, and talked of her as the rich Englishman"s mistress.
""Is she not his wife?" I asked. My neighbour shrugged his shoulders, and answered as a true Parisian cynic:
""Wife or mistress is all the same nowadays, except that in some cases the mistress is the more virtuous. Every fine gentleman"s wife is some other fine gentleman"s mistress; but I believe there is here and there a Miss who is faithful to her protector."
"This kind of life continued for a little more than four months, and then one morning I found Mr. Topsparkle"s splendour melted like a fairy palace and the apartment in the Marais to let. He had gone to London with all his retinue, including Fetis, whom I had met several times in the street and who had tried to make his peace with me. I had, however, treated all his advances with contempt, and on but one occasion did I stoop to speak to him. This was to accuse him of having carried Margharita away under the influence of the Indian drug, the knowledge of which he had obtained in my laboratory.
""Do you think drugs were needed?" he asked sneeringly. "You have seen the lady. If she is a snared bird, you will admit that she is uncommonly fond of her cage."
"I followed the seducer to London, and found myself a cheap lodging in an alley near St. Martin"s Lane, from which den I went forth daily and nightly to keep watch upon my granddaughter"s life.
"She reigned to all appearances as sole mistress in the house in Soho Square, but she did not appear in public with Mr. Topsparkle as audaciously as she had appeared in Paris. She was called by his name, but he introduced her nowhere as his wife; and she now seemed to give up all her time to the cultivation of her musical talent, under the tuition of famous masters who attended daily at the house in Soho Square.
"I found, as time went on, that there were some grounds for this seclusion, as she was ere long to become a mother.
"Mr. Topsparkle himself was quite as dissipated in London as he had been in Paris, and spent most of his nights at the chocolate-houses, or in society of an even worse character than was to be found in those resorts. Margharita"s life at this period must have been sadly lonely.
"Months elapsed, and I heard one day that she was the mother of a baby girl. I would have given much to have seen mother and child, but dared not trust myself to approach her while she was still impenitent, lest I should say hard things to her. I so hated her seducer that I could not enter his house without the hazard of a quarrel which might end in bloodshed. I contented myself, therefore with keeping my stealthy watch upon my poor child"s life, and obtaining as much knowledge as I could through the servants.
"From them I heard that their lady was unhappy, and devoted to her infant: but only a few days after receiving this information I saw the child carried off one evening by a buxom countrywoman in a hackney coach.
"My chief informant among the servants, an underling whom I had bribed on several occasions, and who was always serviceable and obliging, told me that the woman was a wet-nurse who was carrying the child to her home in Buckinghamshire, where the infant was to be reared by this rustic foster-mother, as my lady was too delicate to nurse her.
"This I took to be the beginning of sorrow for my deluded granddaughter, and I felt that the time was now at hand when I might lead her back to her duty; but at this very time I was attacked by a fever which laid me up for over a month, and when I was again able to get about a change had come over Margharita"s life.
"She had a secret admirer, a young and handsome man, who haunted her footsteps on those rare occasions when she took the air, and who had paid clandestine visits to the house. It was my informant"s opinion that although she had openly repulsed this person"s advances, and had on one occasion ordered her servants to turn him out of her house, where he pretended to have followed her under a mistake, supposing her to be a lady of his acquaintance, she was yet secretly inclined to favour him.
Her waiting-woman had surprised her in tears on several occasions.
"Mr. Topsparkle had been often absent of late. He had been at Paris and at Newmarket, leaving his mistress to the companionship of her shock dog and her old Italian music-master. She had fretted for the loss of her baby, whom she was not allowed to see, as Mr. Topsparkle hated squallers.
"Apprehending the perils of this present position I forced my way into the house one evening, and found my unhappy granddaughter alone in the midst of her splendour, and as desolate a woman as I had ever looked upon. I urged her to take advantage of Topsparkle"s absence, and to leave his house at once and for ever. We would start together next morning, and not stop till she was safe beneath her father"s roof. I promised her that there should be not one word of reproach from him or from me. The interval of her sin and her splendour should be forgotten as if it were an ill dream.
""I cannot forget that I am a mother, and that I have a child whom I love," she said. "Those facts cannot be wiped out of my life like a blot of ink off a fair white page. No, I cannot go backward."
""And you still adore your seducer; his love can still reconcile you to your infamy?" I asked.
"She hung her head and melted into tears, tears which I believe were the marks of a deep-rooted anguish. She was a being not made for dishonour, and she felt in this moment that she was drifting into deeper shame.
""You have ceased to love your paramour," I said sternly.
""He has ceased to be kind to me," she faltered.
""Come," I said, "it is time for you to leave him. Your life in this house is beset with peril."
"It was in vain that I urged her. I was by turns stern and gentle. I promised all that love could offer, I threatened all that my experience could foresee of evil in her present course.
""You are on the high-road to an abandoned life," I said; "between you and the most notorious courtesan in London or Paris there is but the narrowest boundary-line, and so long as you remain in this house you are in hourly danger of pa.s.sing it. If your own inconstant heart do not betray you, "tis ten to one your first betrayer will tire of you and pay off old scores by pa.s.sing you on to his friend."
"She fell on her knees at my feet in a flood of tears, entreated me to give her time to think of the matter, and if she could find a way of taking her child with her, she would perhaps go with me.
""Tell me where your child is to be found, and I will look to that part of the business," I said; and then I discovered that she did not even know the name of the town or village to which her baby had been taken.
She knew only that the nurse lived in Buckinghamshire.
"I left her at last, deeply moved--left her, full of anxiety as to her fate. On the threshold of the house I met Fetis, who had his usual air of triumphant malignity masked under a silken courtesy. It was the first time he and I had met in London.
"He asked me where I lodged, how long I had been in town, and whether I was still pursuing my scientific investigations. I told him I had other investigations on my hands, even more absorbing than those of the laboratory; I had my granddaughter"s evil fortunes to guard from further decline.
""Do you call it evil fortune to be mistress of such a house as this?"
he asked, looking round him at the hall in which we were standing.
""I call it infamy to be the mistress of your master, most of all, his slighted mistress," I answered.
""O, fie, sir! we all call the lady his wife. She is known here only as Mrs. Topsparkle."
""An empty honour, sir, which the more strongly indicates her dishonour.
Did you ever know Mr. Topsparkle introduce his lady to any decent woman, to any persons of standing or repute? No, his only generosity is to surround her with a sybarite luxury, to leave her in a gilded desolation. You all know she is _not_ your master"s wife, and that no wife would consent to have her child carried off from her by a stranger to a place of which she knows not the name."
""My master is a man accustomed to rule," answered Fetis. "We none of us ever presume to thwart him."
"I pa.s.sed out of the house without another word, and waited day after day for some sign from Margharita, to whom I had given the address of my lodging; but none came. My illness had weakened me considerably, and I was no longer able to loiter about within sight of Mr. Topsparkle"s door for an hour at a time; yet I dragged myself there every evening, and generally contrived to got a word with my ally in the servants" hall.
"One evening at dusk I saw a young man of remarkably handsome appearance leave Mr. Topsparkle"s house, as I thought with a stealthy air, hurrying away with anxious glances to right and left, and with the collar of his cloak pulled up about his ears.
"Two days afterwards I saw in the _Flying Post_ that there had been a pa.s.sage of incivilities between the rich Mr. Topsparkle and young Mr.
Churchill, a brother of the famous Mrs. Arabella Churchill, the favourite of the late King, a dispute which had nearly resulted in a duel. I went at once to Soho Square, but was refused admittance. Mrs.
Topsparkle was dangerously ill, and her husband was in constant attendance upon her.
"I asked to see Fetis, and, after waiting nearly an hour in the hall, he came to me.
"In reply to my anxious questions he affected to make light of my granddaughter"s illness. "A fit of the spleen," he said, "which Mr.
Topsparkle"s tenderness has exaggerated into a serious malady. One of the Court physicians is now with her."
"I charged him with deceiving me. "There has been a quarrel between your master and that unhappy girl," I said, "and she is reduced to a state of misery in which you will not allow me to see her."
""Quarrel! What should they quarrel about?" he asked, with his unblushing air.
"The physician came down-stairs attended by a couple of lacqueys at this moment, and I went to him at once and questioned him about his patient.
He looked astonished at my effrontery, and turned to Fetis for an explanation.
""I am a near relative of the patient, sir," I said, "and this old heart will break if any ill befalls her."
""My good man, the lady is not seriously indisposed. She is but suffering from a languor which is natural to a woman of quality after the ordeal of maternity; and she is somewhat vapourish from the seclusion of convalescence. If she follows my prescriptions implicitly she will soon be restored to good spirits and full beauty."
""Then she is not in danger?" I asked.