Mohawks: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3

"She owes her life, under Providence, to Mrs. Bridget's excellent nursing," said Dr. Denbigh – commendation which brought sudden tears to Bridget's eyes. This praise was thoroughly deserved, for the nurse had devoted herself to her duties with untiring devotion, and had scarcely enjoyed a night's sleep during the four weary weeks of uncertainty that followed Linda's funeral. She grieved for the child that was gone with a deeper sorrow than might have been anticipated, seeing that her own particular charge, the child she had nursed from its birth, had been given back to her as if from the very jaws of death. She did her duty to the survivor with unstinted devotion; but it would have almost seemed that her heart was in the grave of that child which had been taken.

Squire Bosworth's conduct in many of the relations of life changed in a marked degree after this period of peril, in which his child's life, and as it were his own fate, had trembled in the balance. He became a more affectionate father, a better landlord, and a kinder master. He still appeared on 'Change every week, still speculated and laboured for the increase of his vast fortune, still hoarded and calculated and hung fondly over his piles of debentures and securities, mortgages and New River shares. The very bent and habit of his mind was too deeply engrained in him to be changed at forty years of age; but he became less miserly in many things, and he placed his establishment upon a more liberal footing, although retaining Mrs. Layburne at the head of affairs. For his daughter he spared nothing. He gave her toys, lap-dogs, and a pony, and never allowed a day to pass while he was at Fairmile without spending some portion of it in the little girl's society. For the rest he was as much a recluse as ever, shunning all his neighbours, and never sharing in any of those field-sports which are, and ever have been, the chief bond of union between country gentlemen.

CHAPTER IV

"HOW BRIGHT SHE WAS, HOW LOVELY DID SHE SHOW!"

To be a fashionable beauty, with a reputation for intelligence – nay, even for that much rarer quality, wit; to have been born in the purple; to have been just enough talked about to be interesting as a woman with a history; to have a fine house in Soho Square, and a mediæval abbey in Hampshire; to ride, dance, sing, play, and speak French and Italian better than any other woman in society; to have the finest diamonds in London; to be followed, flattered, serenaded, lampooned, written about and talked about, and to be on the sunward side of thirty: surely to be and to have all these good things should fill the cup of contentment for any of Eve's daughters.

Lady Judith Topsparkle had all these blessings, and flashed gaiety and brightness upon the world in which her lot was cast; and yet there were those among her intimates – those who sipped their chocolate with her of a morning, before her head was powdered or her patches put on – who declared that she was not altogether happy.

The diamonds, the spacious house in Soho Square, with its Turkey carpets and Boule furniture, its plenitude of massive plate and Italian pictures, its air of regal luxury and splendour; the abbey near Ringwood, with its tapestries, pictures, curios, and secret passages, were burdened with a certain condition which for Lady Judith reduced their value to a minimum.

All these good things came to her through her husband. Of her own right she was only the genteelest pauper at the Court end of London. Her blood was of the bluest. She was a younger daughter of one of the oldest earls; but Job himself, after Satan had done his worst, was not poorer than Lord Bramber. Lady Judith had brought Mr. Topsparkle nothing but her beauty, her quality, and her pride. Love she never pretended to bring him, nor liking, nor even respect. His father had made his fortune in trade; and the idea of a tradesman's son was almost as repulsive to Lady Judith as that of a blackamoor. She married him because her father, and society in general, urged her to marry him, and, in her own phraseology, "the matter was not worth fighting about." She had broken just a year before with the only man she had ever loved, had renounced him in a fit of pique on account of some scandal about a French dancing-girl; and from that hour she had assumed an air of recklessness; she had danced, flirted, talked, and carried on in a manner that delighted the multitude, and shocked the prudes. Bath and Tunbridge Wells had rung with her sayings and doings; and finally she surrendered herself, not altogether unwillingly, to the highest bidder.

She was burdened with debt, and hardly knew what it was to have a crown-piece of ready money. At cards she had to borrow first of one admirer and then of another. She had been able to get plenty of credit for gowns and trinketry from a harpy class of tradespeople, India houses in the City and Court milliners at the West End, who speculated in Lady Judith's beauty as they might have done in some hazardous but hopeful stock; counting it almost a certainty that she would make a splendid match and reward them bounteously for their patience.

Mr. Topsparkle saw her at Bath in the zenith of her charms. He met her at a masquerade at Harrison's Rooms, followed and intrigued her all the evening, and at last, alone in an alcove with her after supper, induced her to take off her mask. Her beauty dazzled those experienced eyes of his, and he fell madly in love with her at first sight of that radiant loveliness – starriest eyes of violet hue, a dainty little Greek nose, a complexion of lilies and blush-roses, and the most perfect mouth and teeth in Christendom. No one had ever seen anything more beautiful than the tender curves of those classic lips, or more delicate than their faint carmine tinge. In an epoch when almost every woman of fashion plastered herself with vermilion and ceruse, Lord Bramber's daughter could afford to exhibit the complexion Nature had given her, and might defy paint to match it. Lady Judith laughed at her conquest when she was told about it by half a dozen different admirers at the Rooms next morning.

"What, that Topsparkle man!" she exclaimed – "the travelled cit who has been exploring all sorts of savage places in Spain and Italy, and writing would-be witty letters about his travels! They say he is richer than any nabob in Hindostan. Yes, I plagued him vastly, I believe, before I consented to unmask; and then he pretended to be dumfounded at my charms, forsooth! dazzled by this sun, into which you gentlemen look without flinching, like young eagles."

"My dear Lady Judith, the man is captivated – your slave for ever. You had better put a ring in his nose and lead him about with you, instead of that little black boy for whom you sighed the other day, and that his lordship denied you. He is quite the richest man in London, and he is on the point of buying Lord Ringwood's place in Hampshire – a genuine mediæval abbey, with half a mile of cloisters, and a fishpond in the kitchen."

"I care neither for cloisters nor kitchen."

"Ay, but you have a weakness for diamonds," urged Mr. Mordaunt, an old admirer, who was very much au courant as to the fair Judith's history and habits, had lent her money when she was losing at basset, and had diplomatised with her creditors for her. "Witness that cross the Jew sold you t'other day."

Lady Judith reddened angrily. The same Jew dealer who sold her the jewel had insisted on having it back from her when he discovered her inability to pay for it, threatening to prosecute her for obtaining goods under false pretences.

"Mr. Topsparkle's diamonds – they belonged to his mother – are historical. His maternal grandfather was an Amsterdam Jew, and the greatest diamond merchant of his time. He had mills where the gems were ground as corn is ground in our country, and seem to have been as plentiful as corn. Egad, Lady Judith, how you would blaze in the Topsparkle diamonds!"

"Mr. Topsparkle must be sixty years of age!" exclaimed the lady, with sovereign contempt.

"I believe he is nearer seventy; but nobody supposes you would marry him for his youth or his personal attractions. Yet he is by no means a bad-looking man, and he has had plenty of adventures in his day, I can assure your ladyship. Il a vécu, as our neighbours say. Topsparkle is no simpleton. When he set out upon the grand tour nearly forty years ago, he carried with him about as scandalous a reputation as a gentleman of fashion could enjoy. He had been cut by all the straitlaced people; and it is only the fact of his incalculable wealth which has opened the doors of decent houses for him since his return."

"I thank you for the compliment implied in your recommendation of him to me as a husband," said Lady Judith, drawing herself up with that Juno-like air which made her seem half a head taller, and which accentuated every curve of her superb bust. "He is apparently a gentleman whom it would be a disgrace to know."

"O, your ladyship must be aware that a reformed rake makes the best husband. And since Topsparkle went on the Continent he has acquired a new reputation as a wit and a man of letters. He wrote an Assyrian story in the Italian language, about which the town raved a few years ago – a sort of demon story, ever so much cleverer than Voltaire's fanciful novels. Everybody was reading or pretending to read it."

"O, was that his?" exclaimed Judith, who read everything. "It was mighty clever. I begin to think better of your Topsparkle personage."

Five minutes afterwards, strolling languidly amidst the crowd, with a plain cousin at her elbow for foil and duenna, Lady Judith met Mr. Topsparkle walking with no less a person than her father.

Lord Bramber enjoyed the privilege of an antique hereditary gout, and came to Bath every season for the waters. He was a man of imposing figure, at once tall and bulky, but he carried his vast proportions with dignity and ease. He was said to have been the handsomest man of his day, and had been admired even by an age which could boast of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and the irresistible Henry St. John. Basking in that broad sunshine of popularity which is the portion of a man of high birth, graceful manners, and good looks, Lord Bramber had squandered a handsome fortune right royally, and now, at five-and-fifty, was as near insolvency as a gentleman dare be. His house at Bath was a kind of haven to which he brought his family when London creditors began to be implacable. He had even thoughts of emigrating to Holland or Belgium, or to some old Roman town in the sunny south of France, where he might live upon his wife's pin-money, which happily was protected by stringent settlements and uncorruptable trustees.

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