Volume Ii Part 23 (1/2)
”'I can perceive none at present. I have attended her Grace of Cleveland for the same malady; and when the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth returned to France she insisted on carrying my prescriptions with her.'
”I had no confidence in an old twaddler of this order, whose gold-headed cane and embroidered velvet suit were apparently his strongest qualifications. I looked from him to Fetis, who, in spite of his silken smoothness, had, I thought, a more anxious air than usual. He was very pale, and his hollow eyes indicated a night of watching.
”'I will not leave this house until I have seen my granddaughter,' I said, resuming my seat in the hall; whereupon Fetis whispered to the physician, who presently approached me and informed me with a solemn air that although Mrs. Topsparkle's bodily health was in no danger, her spirits were much affected, and that the agitation of an interview with a relative might throw her into a fever.
”Alas, I knew that my presence could not bring calmness to that wounded spirit. Unless she had been well enough to get up and follow me out of that accursed house a meeting between us could be of no avail. I had the physician's word that she was in no danger; and though I put him down as a pompous pretender I yet gave him credit for enough skill and enough honesty to answer such a plain question as I had asked him. So I left the house soon after the doctor, Fetis promising that if his lady were in calmer spirits next day I should be allowed to see her.
”When I went to the house at noon next day she was a corpse. She had gone off suddenly in a fit of hysterics soon after midnight, Mr.
Topsparkle and her waiting-woman being present. Mr. Topsparkle was shut up in his room in an agony of grief, and would see no one.
”Had there been any medical man called in at the time of her death? I asked. No, there had been no one. It was too sudden; but the physician had been there this morning, and had endeavoured to explain the cause of the death, which had taken him by surprise.
”I asked to see the dead; but this privilege was refused to me. I inquired for Fetis, and was told he had gone out on business, and was not expected back for some hours. The key of the room in which Margharita was lying was in his possession. There were lights burning in the room, but there was no one watching there. There had been no religious ministrations. My granddaughter had perished as the companion of an infidel, surrounded by infidels.
”I sat in the hall for some hours, despite the sneers and incivilities of the servants, waiting for the return of Fetis; but he did not reappear until I was worn out by agitation and fasting and the misery of my position as the mark of insolence from overfed lackeys. I left the house broken-hearted, and returned there next morning only in time to see the coffin carried to the pompous hea.r.s.e with its tall plumes and velvet trappings and six Flanders horses. I followed on foot to a graveyard in the neighbourhood, where my granddaughter was buried in a soil crowded with the dead. Topsparkle was not present. He was too ill to attend, I was told; and there were hootings and hissings from the crowd as the funeral procession, with Fetis at its head, went back to Soho Square.
”I followed him to the threshold of his master's house.
”'Do you know why the rabble hooted you?' I asked him, as we stood side by side within the doors, which the porter shut quickly to keep out the crowd.
”'Only because they are rabble, and hate their betters,' he answered.
”'They hooted you because a good many people in this neighbourhood suspect that which I know for a certainty. They suspect you and your master of having murdered that unhappy girl.'
”He called me an idiot and a liar; but I saw how his face, which had been white to the lips as he pa.s.sed through the crowd, now changed to a still more ghastly hue.
”'O, you forget that it was I who armed your a.r.s.enal of murder. It was in my laboratory you learnt all the arts of the old Italian toxicologists--the poison, and the antidote, and the drug that neutralises the antidote. You were laborious and persevering; you wanted to master the whole science of secret murder. You had no definite views of mischief then, only the thirst for evil, as Satan has, revelling in sin for its own sake, courting iniquity; but you soon found a use for your wicked power. First you snared your victim, and then you killed her--you, the pa.s.sionless hireling of a profligate master, the venal slave and tool.'
”He made a sign to his underlings--the stalwart porter and three tall footmen--and they came round me and thrust me out of the house, flung me on to the pavement, helpless and exhausted. There was no constable within call; the crowd had dispersed. I had nothing to do but crawl back to my lodging, an impotent worm.
”Next day I was visited by a constable, who told me that I had narrowly escaped being sent to gaol for an a.s.sault upon the confidential servant of a gentleman of high position. He warned me of the danger of staying any longer in the town, where I had already made myself an object of suspicion as a foreign spy and a dangerous person.