People talked about Lord Lavendale's speech for at least a fortnight. It was not so much that the oration itself had been really fine and had vividly impressed those who heard it, but it was rather that such dignified opposition, such grave invective, and sound logic came from a survivor of the Mohawk and of the Calf's Head Clubs, a notorious rake and reveller, a man whose name five years ago had been a synonym for modish profligacy. It was as when Lucius Junius Brutus startled the Roman Forum; it was as when Falstaff's boon companion, wild Prince Hal, flung off his boyish follies and stood forth in all his dignity as the warrior king; it was a transformation that set all the town wondering; and Lavendale, who had plunged again into the whirlpool of society, found himself the fashion of the hour, a man with a new reputation.
Yes, he had gone back to the bustling crowded stage of Court life: he had emerged from the hermit-like seclusion of laboratory and library, from the wild walks and woodland beauties of Lavendale Manor. He was of the town again, and seemed as eager for pleasure as the youngest and gayest of the bloods and beaux of Leicester Fields and St. James's. He attended half a dozen assemblies of an evening, looked in nightly at opera or playhouse, gambled at White's, talked at Button's, dawdled away an occasional morning at Dick's, reading the newest pamphlet for or against the Government. He was seen everywhere.
"Lavendale has been in Medea's cauldron," said Captain Asterley. "He looks ten years younger than when I saw him last summer."
"I believe the man is possessed," replied Lady Polwhele; "he has an almost infernal gaiety. There is a malignant air about him that is altogether new. He used to be a good-natured rake, who said malicious things out of pure light-heartedness; but now there is a lurking devilry in every word he utters."
"He is only imitating the mad Irish parson," said Asterley. "Your most fashionable wit, nowadays, is a mixture of dirt and malignity such as the Dean affects. Everybody tries to talk and write like Cadenus, since it has been discovered that to be half a savage and more than half a beast is the shortest road to a woman's favour."
"I believe all you men are jealous of the Dean," retorted her ladyship, "and that is why his influential friends have conspired to keep him on the other side of the Irish Channel. He is a fine personable man, and if he has his savage gloomy moods, be sure he has his melting moments, or that poor Miss Vanhomrigh would not have made such a fool of herself. I saw her once at an auction, and thought her more than passable, and with the manners of a lady."
There had been no more spurts of jealousy on the part of Mr. Topsparkle. His wife and he had lived on the most courteous terms since last midsummer, Lavendale's disappearance from the scene had appeased the husband's anger. He concluded that his remonstrances had been taken in good part, and that Lady Judith had dismissed her flirt. That Lavendale had been anything more than her flirt Mr. Topsparkle did not believe; but from flirt to lover is but a swift transition, and there had assuredly been an hour of peril.
Mr. Topsparkle also had a rejuvenised air when he came up to town and made his reappearance in distinguished circles; but what in Lavendale was a caprice of nature, an erratic flash and sparkle of brilliancy in a waning light, was in Topsparkle the result of premeditated care and the highest development of restorative art. He had vegetated for the last three months at Ringwood Abbey, leaving his wife to do all the hard work of entertaining visitors, and sleeping through the greater portion of his existence; and now he reappeared in London full of energy and vivacity, and with an air of superiority to most of the younger men, who were content to show themselves in their true colours as exhausted debauchees, men who had drained the cup of sensual pleasure to the dregs, and whose jaded intellects were too feeble to originate any new departure in vicious amusements.
Though in society Mr. Topsparkle affected to be only the connoisseur, dilettante, and man of fashion, there was a leaven of hard-hearted commercial sagacity in his mind, an hereditary strain which marked his affinity to the trading classes. Keen though he was as a collector of pictures and curios, he was still keener as a speculator on 'Change, and knew every turn in the market, every trick of the hour.
He loved London because it brought him nearer to the money market, brought him, as it were, face to face with his millions, which were for the most part invested in public securities, Alderman Topsparkle having had no passion for adding field to field at two and a half per cent per annum. The alderman put out his wealth safely, in the New River Company and in the best National securities.
Vyvyan Topsparkle had done nothing to hazard those solid investments or to jeopardise his hereditary income; but he liked to trifle with the surplus thousands which accumulated at his banker's, and which even Judith's extravagance could not exhaust; he liked to sail his light bark over the billows of speculation, fanned by the summer winds of chance and change, and glorying in his skill as a navigator. Ombre and quadrille had very little excitement for him, but he loved to watch the fluctuations of a speculative stock, and to sell out at the critical moment when a bubble was on the point of bursting. He had been either wonderfully clever or wonderfully lucky; for he had contrived with but few exceptions to emerge from every risky enterprise with a profit. Such trivial speculations were but playing with money, and made no tangible impression upon the bulk of his wealth: but as the miser loves to hoard his guineas in a chest under his bed and to handle and toy with them, so Mr. Topsparkle loved to play at speculation, and to warm the dull blood of age with the fever of the money market.
He was sitting before a boule bureau, with three rows of pigeon-holes stuffed with papers in front of him, and a litter of papers on his desk, when Fétis entered, carrying his master's periwig. The room was spacious, half dressing-room and half study, with panelled walls richly adorned with old Italian pottery, and a fireplace in an angle of the room, with a mantelpiece carried up to the ceiling by narrow shelves and quaint divisions, all filled with curios; delf and china, India monsters, Dutch teapots, German chocolate-pots, jars, and tea-cups. In one window stood the toilet-table, a veritable laboratory, before which Mr. Topsparkle sat for an hour every morning while his complexion was composed for the day. In the corner opposite the fireplace was the triangular closet in which Mr. Topsparkle's full-bottomed wig was besprinkled with maréchale powder. The atmosphere of the room was loaded with various perfumes, including a faint suggestion of burnt rappee, a kind of snuff which had been fashionable ever since a fire at a famous tobacconist's, which had thrown a large quantity of scorched snuff upon the market, and had given the bucks a new sensation and a new taste.
Fétis put the wig on a stand near the dressing-table, adjusted the feathery curls carefully with delicate finger-tips, fell a step or two back to contemplate his work, gazing at it dreamily as at the perfection of beauty, suggesting the august countenance of its wearer, who was looking over a sheaf of documents and seemed preoccupied.
His valet watched him deferentially for some minutes, and then coughed gently as if to attract attention.
Topsparkle looked up suddenly. He had not heard the cautious opening of the door or the velvet tread of his slave.
"Your wig is quite ready, sir."
"I am not ready for it yet."
"Could I speak with you, sir, for a minute?"
"Of course, you can always speak with me. What do you want?"
Mr. Topsparkle laid down his papers, and faced about as he asked the question.
"I am sorry to say, sir, that fortune has been against me since I came back to London. I have lost heavily at basset, and I am in sore need of money."
"Again!" exclaimed Topsparkle impatiently; "you are everlastingly a loser. What right has a fellow of your quality to gamble? Dice and cards are a diversion for gentlemen, sir."
"Fellows of my quality are human, sir, and have minds that are subject to temptation and example. We can but imitate our betters. As for cards and dice, I am drawn into play by gentlemen who come to my house and are gracious enough to invite my company."
"They should know their position better than to associate with a lodging-house keeper."
"O sir, these are gentlemen of rank; dukes, marquises, earls, who have no fear of derogating by low company. They stand