"I protest," said her ladyship, as stepping ashore she put on her mask, in which she was copied by the others-"I protest the very sound of the fiddles squeaking makes me long for a dance. Mr. Fane," she said, turning to that gentleman, who formed the last member of the party, "am I to have you for a partner to-night?"
Fane bowed and responded politely that he only trusted his old age and stiff joints would not prevent him from making himself acceptable, on at least one occasion, to her ladyship; while Sir Charles Ames, turning to Kitty, desired to know if she would so far favour him as to give him a dance.
But Lady Belrose, who had already gathered from her friend that she only made one of the party because of a serious and grave interview which she anticipated having with a gentleman whom she might meet at the fête, here interposed and, in a few well-chosen words, gave the baronet to understand that to dance was not Lady Fordingbridge's desire that evening. "She is not well," she said, "and will simply be an onlooker. Meanwhile, doubtless I can find you a sufficiency of partners among other friends." To this the young man protested that there was no need for Lady Belrose to endeavour to find him partners among her friends, since, if she would but condescend to be his partner, he could not possibly desire any other, and so, with these interchanges of politeness, they entered the gardens.
On this particular night at Vauxhall-the opening masquerade of the season-the fashionable world, as well as those who, though not in that world themselves, loved to gaze on the happier beings who were of it, assembled in large numbers and in a variety of costumes. Scaramouches in their black dresses, toques and masks, with rush lances in their hands, mingled with dancing girls clad in the Turkish costumes still known in these days as "Roxanas," in memory of the infamous woman who had first worn this garb; shepherdesses walked arm-in-arm with men dressed as grave and reverend clergymen; assumed victims of the Inquisition, invested in the San Benito, pirouetted and twirled with brazen-faced and under-clad Iphigenias and Phrynes-for the world was none too modest in those days! – mock soldiers, knights and satyrs, harlequins, and men in wizard's garments danced and drank, laughed and shouted with milkmaids, nuns, and Joans of Arc. And to testify, perhaps, the fact that they had not forgotten the dangers through which the country had recently passed, and also, perhaps, to hurl one last taunt at their crushed and broken foes, many of the maskers had arrayed themselves in the garbs of their late enemies-for some strutted round and round the orchestra pavilion and banqueting room dressed as Highlanders or French officers, others as miserable Scotch peasants having in their hands flails and reaping hooks. Others, again, had even attempted to portray the character of the unhappy Charles Edward, now in hiding in the Scotch wilds, and, as they danced and sang or drank their glasses of ale and ate their twopenny slices of hung-beef, and endeavoured even by their conversation to ape what they imagined to be the Scotch dialect. At the same time, outside all this seething, painted, and bedizened crowd were many others of the better classes, such as those who formed Lady Belrose's party, or visitors of a similar degree, who contented themselves by concealing their identity with masks, vizards, and dominos, or with hoods and laces.
In a somewhat retired spot beneath where stood a noble statue of Handel, now nearing his last days, executed by Roubiliac, and at the back of which were a small wooded green and bosquet in which were many arbours, Lady Belrose and her friends sat down to watch the kaleidoscopic crowd. Here, Sir Charles Ames, summoning a waiter, bade him bring refreshments for the party-viz., some iced fruits and a flask of champagne-and they being partaken of, he invited her ladyship to honour him by becoming his partner in a quadrille de contredanse, a new style of dancing introduced into the French ballets a year or so before, and but just come over to London. This the sprightly lady accepted at once, having already perfected herself in the new divertissement under Duharnel's tuition; but, on her other cavalier desiring also the honour of Lady Fordingbridge's hand, Kitty refused, on the ground that she knew not the dance, and neither was she very well.
"I' faith, Kate," said Lady Belrose, as she shook her sack over her great balloon-shaped hoop and fastened her mask more tightly under her hood, "yet have you lost but little to-night. The quadrille is well enough in our own houses or on our country lawns; here, I protest, the noise, the dust, and the stench of the oil lamps, to say nothing of the unknown and, doubtless, unclean creatures with whom we rub shoulders and touch hands, do not recommend it overmuch. However, lead me to it, Sir Charles, since you will have it so," and in another moment she, with her partner and the others who formed the sets, were bowing and curtseying to each other.
Meanwhile Mr. Wynn, Lady Belrose's second string, having begged that he might be allowed to find a partner and himself join in a set, since Lady Fordingbridge was so obdurate (he, too, had been learning the new dance from Monsieur Duharnel), took himself off, so that Kitty and her father were left alone together. And now it was that she, after scanning each male figure that was "more than common tall," began to tremble a little in her limbs and to feel as though she were about to faint. For in that portion of the crowd which was not dancing and which still followed its leaders round and round the orchestra pavilion, thereby illustrating the words of Bloomfield, a poet of the period, who wrote:
First we traced the gay circle all round,
Ay-and then we went round it again-
she saw two forms that, she doubted not, were those for whom she looked-partly in eagerness, partly with nervousness.
These maskers did not walk side by side, but one behind the other, and, possibly, to ordinary onlookers would not have appeared to have any connection with each other. Yet Kitty knew very well that, inseparable in almost all else, they were now equally so. The first, who was the tallest, was clad in a costume, perhaps unique that night in the Spring Gardens, perhaps almost unique among the many costumes that have ever been assumed since first masquerades were invented. It was that of the headsman. Arrayed in the garb of that dismal functionary, a rusty black velvet suit, with the breeches and black woollen stockings to match, the masker might yet have failed to inform those who saw him of the character he wished to portray, had it not been for at least one other accessory. On his back, strapped across it, he carried the long, narrow-bladed axe used for decapitation, its handle fringed and tasselled with leathern thongs. Yet there were other tokens also of the part he represented. In a girdle round his waistcoat he bore a formidable knife having a blade a foot long and an inch and a half deep-the knife with which the doomsman finished his ghastly task if the axe failed to do its duty, as had too often happened. His mask, too, was not that of the ordinary reveller at such places as this, not a mask made ostensibly to conceal the features, yet, as often as not, revealing them almost as clearly as though it had not been assumed; instead, it was long and full, covering not only the eyes and the bridge of the nose, but also the whole of the upper part of the face, and leaving only visible the lower jaw and the two ends of a thick brown moustache that hung below it. Alone by that moustache would Kitty have known the wearer, if by no other sign. It had been pressed too often against her own lips for her to forget it! Yet, also, would she have known him without it. His companion, the man who followed after him, was not so conspicuous by his appearance. He, indeed, wrapped in a long brown woollen cloak which descended to his shoes and must have been more than warm on such an evening as this, with at his side a Scotch claymore, or broadsword, and on his head a Scotch bonnet-the mask, of course, being worn-passed among the crowd as an excellent representative of their now despised and fallen enemies. Yet, had that crowd known that amongst them stalked in reality one whose prowess had been terribly conspicuous when exhibited against their own soldiers, they might not have gazed as approvingly as they now did on Douglas Sholto.
As Kitty regarded these two figures-still trembling and feeling as though she were about to faint-she saw the eyes of the former one fix themselves upon her, and observed him hesitate for a moment ere continuing his course, then, in an instant, he went on again in the stream that continued to revolve round the orchestra pavilion. And she knew that a few moments would bring him again before her.
"Father," she said, nerving herself to that interview which she so ardently desired, yet which, womanlike, she almost feared now, "the green behind looks cool and inviting, especially now that the sun is gone and the lamps are lit. I will stroll down there awhile and take the air. Meanwhile, rest you here-there is some more champagne in the flask-and keep these seats until the others come back. The contredanse will be finished just