Mohawks Volume Ii Part 20

He was speaking in broken sentences, full of pa.s.sionate excitement, pacing backwards and forwards across the empty s.p.a.ce in front of the furnaces. The high wide windows were luminous with the first faint glow of dawn. In that clear light both faces looked wan and haggard; but the face of the pupil was touched with indications of decay which showed not in the wrinkled visage of the master. The face of the young man told of life that had been wasted, health and vigour for ever gone. The face of the old man told only of time and labour, a parchment mask, lighted by the flame of hope and expectancy, keen, intent, watchful.

"I will trust you fully," answered Vincenti, after a long pause. "I have always intended to perpetuate my knowledge of that man's infamy, and of his instrument in baseness, Louis Fetis. If I have trifled with my purpose it has been that I have sacrificed all earthly thoughts to the hope of the discoverer--merged all individual griefs in the anxiety of the searcher after truth. And then I had been told that Topsparkle was in a monastery, doing penance for his wicked life--antic.i.p.ating Divine Judgment by the scourge and the hair-shirt--and I could afford to let my revenge sleep. But your description of his renewed youth, his insolence of wealth and splendour, his triumph in the possession of a handsome wife and the flattery of the town, was too much for my patience. Yes, that roused the sleeping lion. I have thought of him much since that night--I have thought of her who loved and trusted him."

"She was of your own blood!" exclaimed Lavendale; "I guessed as much even that night when you first spoke of her. You would have scarcely felt a stranger's wrong so keenly."

"You were right. She was my granddaughter, my only son's only daughter--the crystallisation of many generations which had been slowly dwindling to a point. She came of one of the good old families of Venice, a race as old as the Medicis, and more honourable, for it was unstained by treachery or crime. Shortly after her father's death, when the memory of that double murder was still fresh in my mind, when grief was still at its keenest period, I wrote out a record of the wicked story, which you shall read."

"At once?"

"Yes, there is no occasion for delay. The paper is in yonder chest, and I can easily find it for you. Read it, and imprint every word upon your memory, and then bring me back the ma.n.u.script. I have not yet made up my mind as to its ultimate destination. Vyvyan Topsparkle's guilt is beyond the reach of the law, but I may at least unmask him."

"True," said Lavendale, "the publication of that story would brand him with infamy, and all but the very lowest cla.s.s of fawners and sycophants must needs fall away from him. But to revive that half-forgotten slander would be to degrade Lady Judith. As matters now stand she can at least enjoy the price for which she was bought: splendour, luxury, modish society, the consideration of the great world. Take from her those advantages, and she were indeed desolate."

"You blow hot and cold," said Vincenti. "A little while ago you were eager to be revenged upon the man who stole your sweetheart."

"Yes, if I could strike him without injuring her; but reflection tells me that I cannot. Her position as a fine lady is her most vulnerable point. To degrade him were to abase her. But pray let me have your ma.n.u.script. I will restore it in an hour, unless it is much longer than I suppose."

"No; it is not a long story," answered Vincenti, going over to an old oak chest which he had filled with books and papers.

The ma.n.u.script was in an iron strong-box at the bottom of the chest.

Vincenti had to remove a heap of papers before he arrived at the box, which he unlocked with a key that hung on his watch-chain. The ma.n.u.script consisted of about half a quire of letter-paper, closely covered with a small regular penmanship, the ink paled by the pa.s.sage of years.

"That record was written forty years ago," said Vincenti, as he gave it to Lord Lavendale.

"And you were then old enough to have a grown-up granddaughter," said Lavendale, curious about a subject upon which he had never dared directly to question his friend.

"I was then seventy years of age. You see that however imperfect my knowledge may be, I have at least learnt the secret of prolonging life beyond its ordinary limits."

"You are a wonderful man."

"I have not wasted vital power upon the follies men call pleasure,"

replied Vincenti calmly, as he went back to his alembic, and concentrated his attention upon the process in hand.

It was in some wise a relief, in some wise a disappointment to the disciple, to discover the exact measure of the master's existence. He had half expected to be told of a life stretching backward into the darkness of past centuries, an existence that had begun in the age of the earlier experimentalists, while chemistry was still in its infancy; a memory which could recall the living presence of Albertus Magnus or Nicolas Flamel. The years which Vincenti claimed to have lived were beyond the common limit, but were not more than a man of exceptional vigour and exceptional temperance might contrive to enjoy upon this planet, spinning out his thread of life by the careful avoidance of every perilous influence. There was nothing necessarily supernatural in the fact that Vincenti had reached his hundred and tenth year, and had but the appearance of seventy-five.

CHAPTER XII.

"BY FOREIGN HANDS THY DYING EYES WERE CLOSED."

Alone in his library Lavendale devoured the contents of the ma.n.u.script.

It was written in Italian, a language he knew perfectly, and in which he often conversed with the adept.

"In the year 1686, being the year before last, I, Nicolino Vincenti, goldsmith, lived at Venice, on the Grand Ca.n.a.l, with my only son Filippo Vincenti, and his only child and most beloved daughter Margharita, a girl of remarkable beauty and as remarkable talent; I may say that she was born with the gift of music, since she gave token of musical genius at so early an age that it seemed rather a reminiscence of the heavenly spheres than knowledge acquired upon earth. She had been educated at a convent, where her gifts had been highly cultivated. She sang better than La Boverina, who was then prima donna at the Venetian Opera House, and she played the harpsichord with exquisite taste. It was her father's delight to hear her play and sing, his pride and pleasure to watch her growing beauty; and had he been in independent circ.u.mstances he would have given his whole life to her companionship; but he had his business as goldsmith and jeweller, upon which he was dependent for the means of life. He had saved a little money, just enough to secure him from an old age of penury; but he was not rich, and never hoped to be rich. He was too much of an artist, too much above the average tradesman in intellect and refinement, ever to make a fortune. He had not the mercantile bent of mind.

"At this time I, Nicolino Vincenti, after practising the goldsmith's craft during the earlier years of manhood, and learning many secrets concerning the properties of precious metals and their meaner alloys, had withdrawn myself altogether from that craft, and devoted all my energies and all my means to experimental chemistry. I had a s.p.a.cious laboratory upon an upper floor over my son's shop and dwelling-house; and here I spent almost the whole of my time, having a pallet in a corner where I lay after late watchings, rather than disturb the sleeping household by descending to my bedchamber on the lower floor.

Gradually as the years went on I came to live almost entirely in my laboratory, which I only left for an occasional stroll in the twilit streets, or at the importunity of my granddaughter, who would sometimes insist upon my spending an hour in the family sitting-room.

"The all-absorbing researches upon which I had now entered had gradually drifted me away from family life, and almost from natural human interest in my kindred or my fellow-men. I tried to resist the current, and was sometimes horrified at the thought that my heart was gradually hardening itself against those whom I had once loved; but it was in vain that I struggled against the magnetic attraction of the science which absorbed all my hopes and dreams and thoughts. There came a time when my son's voice had a far-away sound, even when he was close at my elbow talking earnestly to me, and when my granddaughter's lovely face was seen dimly like a face in a dream.

"There was but little sympathy between my son and me. He was an artist, a craftsman, whose genius lay in his fingers rather than in his brain.

He had no leaning to abstract science, none of the eager curiosity of the discoverer. He was active and energetic, and wanted quick results; was ambitious, but with an ambition which to me seemed narrow and petty.

He wanted to excel in the creation of beautiful objects, like Benvenuto Cellini--to be remembered as the maker of drinking-cups and monstrances.

But though there was little resemblance in our tastes, there had been much affection between us as father and son, and I had mourned with him when he lost his young wife shortly after the birth of their only child.

That child seemed to me the concentrated expression of all the best attributes in a highly-gifted and vanishing race. I could trace every quality and characteristic of her mind and nature to their source in the characters of her ancestry. I found in her all which her father lacked--an ardent sympathy with me in my loftiest aspirations, a yearning for knowledge beyond the narrow boundaries of common life, a profound belief in the supernatural. I would have given much to be allowed to train her, to make her the confidante and a.s.sistant of my labours, as Flamel's wife was to him; but Filippo was narrow-minded and priest-ridden, and he had a pious horror of my laboratory, and of experiments which his ignorance condemned as diabolical.

"Thus deprived of the one sympathiser whose society I should have cherished, my life grew daily more and more apart from that of surrounding humanity, and, absorbing as were the hopes and dreams that led me on from link to link in the chain of occult knowledge, there were yet times when I felt my isolation, and when the silence and gloom of my laboratory weighed heavily upon me.

"It was in vain that I sought relief in the society of the family sitting-room. The air of every-day life oppressed me even worse than the sense of isolation--or I may say that I felt my isolation most keenly when I was among my fellow-men. What I yearned for was not company, but sympathy. The companionship of those who had nothing in common with my pursuits only fatigued and irritated me.

"My one pleasure in the household room was Margharita's singing or playing. There were quaint old sixteenth-century melodies which soothed me with an almost magical power. I have sat in the twilight listening to her with tears streaming down my cheeks. Her voice thrilled and yet calmed my troubled brain.

"My evening walks had but one motive, health. I had long made that a consideration, even when my studies were most enthralling; for I knew that the only way to long life was to husband the oil in the lamp. Every evening, in good or bad weather, I walked about the streets and quays of Venice, and generally ended my promenade by taking a cup of coffee at a respectable resort, where I heard all the news of the city and of the external world. It was not because I was interested in the world outside my laboratory that I listened keenly to the gossip of worldlings, but I was always on the watch for any new discovery or invention that might have some bearing on my pursuits. Science has many branches curiously interwoven, and the scientific world was at this period peculiarly active. I listened to discussions upon all the new facts and new theories which were upon men's tongues in those days--listened while ignorance dogmatised and folly argued, and religiously held my peace. I had no wish to be known as a disputant or an experimentalist. Scarcely half a dozen people in Venice knew of the existence of my laboratory.

The Venetians are fonder of pleasure than of science--a gay and idle people, spending their nights in casinos, dividing their energies between the fever of high play and the excitement of secret intrigues; not a people to watch the progress of discovery with any profound interest. They gossiped about Newton and Descartes just in as light a tone as they discussed the last European war or the last revolt in Turkey.

"One evening the conversation was about an English millionaire who had hired a palace on the Ca.n.a.l Reggio, and whose wealth and splendour were the talk of the city. He was young, handsome, elegant, an accomplished musician, and a great linguist. He travelled with a secretary and twenty servants of different nationalities, and had engaged half a dozen gondoliers, and as many more miscellaneous attendants, in the city. One of the gossips whispered that, not content with the palace where he lived in an almost royal state and before the public eye, and where he received all the n.o.bility of Venice, the Englishman had imitated our native manners so far as to engage a small suite of apartments in a quiet nook behind the Piazza, so hidden from the public eye that as yet even gossip had not been able to identify the exact position of this secret haven. Rumour a.s.serted that there were days and nights when Mr.

Topsparkle disappeared altogether from his palace, and was yet known not to have left the city. These mysterious disappearances might be easily accounted for in Venice, where it is a common thing for a wealthy profligate to provide himself with a secondary and secret establishment whose whereabouts is known only to the initiated.

"I had no interest in hearing of the rich Mr. Topsparkle, and listened with the utmost indifference to those minuter details of his life which the company at the coffee-house discussed with a keen relish, merely because this young man happened to be inordinately rich.

"It was not long after the advent of Mr. Topsparkle, and while the stories about his excellent manners and his worse than doubtful morals were still on every lip, that I met a young Frenchman at the coffee-house, whose conversation, addressed to a person at the next table, at once interested me.

"They were talking of the latest discovery in chemistry, which had been made at Munich by the great Johann Becher; and by the Frenchman's conversation I gathered that he was a good practical chemist, and had an intelligence which went far beyond his actual knowledge. He was just the order of neophyte to interest a worker who longs for some younger mind with which to share his developing ideas. Almost for the first time since I had frequented the coffee-house I joined unasked in the conversation of two strangers. I ventured to correct an a.s.sertion of the Frenchman's, and he received my correction with a modesty that delighted me. I enlarged upon the subject, and his interest was so much engaged that he walked with me to my door, listening respectfully to all I could tell him.

"We met again and again. The Frenchman told me that he had been educated as a chemist and apothecary, but, disliking the beaten tracks of medicine, had given up his profession, and was now maintaining himself by his attendance as secretary upon a travelling gentleman. I was so interested in the young man himself and his aspirations that I was entirely unconcerned as to his employer, and it certainly never occurred to me that he could be in the service of the rich Mr.

Topsparkle.

"I asked my new friend his name. 'Louis,' he told me. 'What, Louis only--no surname?'

"He shrugged his shoulders. 'A waif, sir,' he said; 'there are many such in Paris.'

"I was content to accept him as a waif, and to know him only as Louis.

"After meeting him about a dozen times, I invited him to my laboratory, first exacting from him a promise that he should tell no one in Venice of anything that he saw there, or indeed of the existence of such a chamber under my son's roof.

"He came upon many evenings, and sometimes worked with me till daybreak.

I was disappointed on finding that his chief interest was in the lower branches of chemistry--that his ardour for great discoveries was less than my own. He took an ardent delight in the more curious kinds of drugs, whether of a curative or a poisonous nature. He was keenly interested in the secrets of Don Antonio Medici, whose skill in poisons was famous in the early part of the century; and he pored with delight over the records of execution by poison as ordered by the Council of Ten; and in the experiences of Brother John of Ragusa, who suggested to the Tribunal various admirable methods of mysteriously causing death. He had strange theories about the poisons and medicines of the ancient world and of the Middle Ages, and asked my permission to experiment with certain vegetable and mineral poisons upon stray curs and rabbits which he brought secretly to my laboratory. I think it was his callousness to the pain of these animals which first gave me a feeling of revulsion against him.

"One evening, when he left me rather earlier than usual, the door of the family sitting-room was open as I conducted him down-stairs, and he was surprised at the beauty of my granddaughter's voice. She was seated at her harpsichord, singing an _Agnus Dei_, and he could see her in the lamplight as we pa.s.sed the door. He pretended to be enraptured by her singing, but was discreet enough to make no remark upon her beauty, which was very striking as she sat with uplifted countenance, her face radiant in the lamplight, her soul looking out of her eyes in a religious ecstasy.

"A week pa.s.sed after this, in which I saw Louis only on two evenings, during both of which he occupied himself chiefly in his study of toxicology. On one occasion, when I had been particularly disgusted by the tortures he had inflicted upon a helpless cur which he had captured in his evening walk, and upon which he had been trying the effect of small doses of aconite, I taxed him with the brutality and uselessness of his experiments.

"'I grant that the taste is somewhat morbid,' he said; 'but since I have been in Italy I have been studying the history of your Borgias and your Medicis, and I have a philosophical pleasure in imagining their ideas and realising their excitement in little. I can imagine now that this stray cur is a powerful enemy whose life I am slowly sapping. I can feel as your Italian Catherine, our Queen-mother, felt when her son's frail body wasted slowly under her diabolical arts, to make way for that other son whom she loved so much better.'

"'Such a woman was incapable of love!' I exclaimed; 'she was made up of policy and self-interest, and if she preferred Henry to Charles it was because she thought she could more easily govern France with Henry for her mouthpiece.'