Mohawks: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3

"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."

CHAPTER V

"I'LL JOIN WITH THEE IN A MOST JUST REVENGE."

Fétis 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 nobleman'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. Fétis, as his chair was being carried through perilous St. Giles's.