CHAPTER XXXV.
The Ball-room.—A Noble Family.—The Interruption.—Unexpected End of Learmont’s Fête.
Clapping his hands as a signal to the attendants, who were in waiting, the whole of one end of the saloon vanished, as if by magic, being slid away like a scene at a theatre, and disclosed the magnificent ball-room, brilliantly illuminated, and adorned with the most exquisite plants and flowers. A murmur of delight and astonishment at the suddenness of the change arose among the guests, and then the younger portion eagerly pressed forward to enjoy the delight of the dance.
A choice band of music struck up in an enlivening strain, and in a few moments, scarcely a guest remained in the first saloon, in which, the numerous domestics began to lay a costly supper.
Even the apathetic Georgiana Brereton condescended to remark to her noble mother that the poor man, meaning Learmont, ought not to be blamed or despised, for he was evidently doing his best, to which the mother replied, in an affected languid tone,—
“Certainly, my dear. They say he is very rich. I declare it’s quite sinful for people with no names at all to have the means of doing these things.”
“Papa says,” added the young lady, who, by-the-by, was thirty years of age, “papa says that the Learmont family came in with the conquest, as a Learmont was a standard-bearer to William.”
“Indeed, my love! Well, there is something in that, and should he propose, we can make inquiry.”
“Exactly,” drawled the daughter.
The ball-room was now filled with the guests, and altogether, a more brilliant spectacle could scarcely be conceived.
Learmont made a signal to the musicians to cease playing, while the partners were chosen for the dance. With a gallant air, he stepped up to the Brereton party, and offered his hand to the Honourable Georgiana, which was graciously accepted, so far as the tips of that young lady’s fingers extended.
All eyes were upon him and his patrician partner as he led her across the richly-chalked floor. There was an impressive silence for a few seconds, when from a side-door a servant appeared, and gliding among the guests, approached Learmont, and stood for a moment as if he had something to say to him.
“Well, knave!” cried Learmont, his face slightly flushed with anger, at being interrupted at that moment.
“An please you, sir, there—there—is—”
The Honourable Georgiana tossed her plumed head with a look of great displeasure, and Learmont forgetting everything on the impulse of the moment, cried angrily,—
“Speak your message, sirrah!”
“A message from the Old Smithy,” said the trembling servant.
Learmont’s cheek blanched in an instant, and his lips quivered with agitation.
“How dare you?” he gasped.
“An please your honour,” said the man, in a submissive tone, “your honour ordered that—the—the—message from the Old Smithy should be always brought to your honour, and—he—he won’t go away—he—has knocked out two of Timothy’s teeth, your honour, besides, he—he—”
“Peace!” cried Learmont. “Peace, I say. Ho! Music there—music!”
The band immediately struck up an enlivening air, and the guests gazed at Learmont with bewildered looks, for he presented more the appearance of a madman than the high-bred courteous gentleman he had seemed during the evening.
The servant slowly retreated, but Learmont could not, dared not, let him go without some answer to the savage.
“Will your ladyship excuse me one moment?” he said to the Honourable Georgiana Brereton, in an agitated manner.
“For as many as you please, sir,” answered the haughty damsel, with a tone of pique and insolence.
Learmont strode after the servant, and just as the latter reached the door, he caught, him, and said,—
“Tell him to wait.”
“Yes, your honour,” said the servant.
Learmont hurried back to where he had left the honourable lady, but she was not there. He glanced hurriedly around him, and saw her with her noble relatives at a distant part of the room. In a minute he was with them.
“Pardon my rudeness,” he said, “in leaving you. I am a bachelor, and have so many troublesome domestic matters to arrange that I am compelled sometimes to appear rude where I would most of all wish to be otherwise.”
“The interruption,” said the young lady, “was so very extraordinary.”
“Yes—a—a—rather an ill-bred knave,” said Learmont. “My servants want a mistress sadly.”
“Such a strange thing in a ball-room,” added Georgiana.
“Eh!” said Lord Brereton. “If it be pronounceable, my dear, what was it?”
“Oh, a mere nothing,” said Learmont; “an absurd mistake. Is not that a divine strain they are playing?”
“Delightful!” said the lady. “But the words were a message from the Old Smithy!”
“The old who?” exclaimed Lord Brereton, with a shrug.
“The Old Smithy. I cannot pretend to know what it means.”
“Frightful!” exclaimed Lady Brereton.
Learmont tried to smile, but the distortion of his features looked as if occasioned by some acute pain rather than any sensation approaching to the mirthful.
“It was most absurd,” he said, “and might make one angry, but that it is too laughable.”
As he spoke a voice behind him said in a tone of trembling apprehension,—
“And it please your honour—he—he—”
Learmont positively gasped, and clutched the back of a chair for support, as he turned and faced another servant, the former one being afraid to venture into the presence of his fiery master again.
“W—what now?” he said.
“He won’t go, an it please your honour.”
“Won’t go?” echoed Learmont, in such a confusion of mind that he scarcely knew what he said, and the servant, emboldened by the apparent placidity of his master, added,—
“No, your honour, and he says he won’t wait either.”
“Thrust him from my door,” shrieked Learmont; “kill him—no—no—tell him to come to-morrow—yes, to-morrow.”
Learmont’s noble guests looked at each other in mute surprise. The voice in which Learmont had spoken was loud and strange, and attracted all eyes to the spot on which he stood. A glance around the ball-room at once showed him that he was the observed of all, and he felt the necessity of controlling his passion.
“The dance, the dance,” he cried; “the most precious hours of gladness and joy. The dance! The dance!”
These words were scarcely spoken, when his attention was arrested by an unusual commotion at the further end of the saloon, accompanied by cries, the trampling of feet, and a few oaths, which sounded strangely in that gaudy scene.
Learmont’s heart sunk within him, and at that moment he suffered a pang greater than any he had ever power to inflict, as the conviction came across his mind that Britton was forcing his way into the ball-room, despite of every obstacle.
This was an event which could not have happened under ordinary circumstances, but the whole of Learmont’s household were aware that the strange man who came with the message from the Old Smithy had some sort of power over their master and their ignorance of its extent, paralysed their exertions in opposing his entrance to the ball-room, although had they felt themselves free to act, he would never have reached beyond the hall of the mansion.
Thus it was that the proud, wealthy, and haughty Learmont, surrounded by troops of servants, and evidently exercising the most despotic sway over them appeared to his assembled guests in the curious and anomalous position of being unable to keep a drunken brawler from the very penetralia of his mansion.
Too well the squire knew the voice of the smith not to feel convinced that it was he, who in some freak of wilfulness or drunkenness was thus invading his gay saloons. Defy him, he dared not; kill him he dared not; nay, it was questionable if he dared even be rude to the burly, and perhaps infuriated savage. A deep groan burst from Learmont’s labouring breast, as the conviction came across his mind quicker than we can relate the various steps of thought that led to it, that he would always be subject to these visitations, even in his hours of greatest enjoyment, when he was making the attempt to drown reflections in a crowd of the gay and the trifling.
None of the guests seemed disposed to place themselves in the way of Britton, and when the contest ceased between him and the servants, which it did at the door of the ball-room, he found himself free and unimpeded.
With a reeling gait he walked to the very centre of the splendid apartment, and for the space of about a minute he seemed confused and half stupified by the glare of light around; and the brilliant costumes and decorations that everywhere met his drunken gaze.
“Hulloa!” he cried at length, “the squire’s coming out at last. A dance, by h—ll I’m your man—I’ll dance with the best of you; I tread on no one’s toes if they avoid mine; I’ve had a little drop, but what matters? There are lights enough here to make a sober man’s brain dance again; what do you all stare at me for? I came with a message from the Old Smithy—tell that to the squire, and then hear what he says. Ho—ho—ho! We are old friends, very old friends, but he didn’t invite me to-night: it was d—d shabby; but here I am—the messenger from the Old Smithy, at ten guineas a visit. What do you think of that? If anybody says I’m drunk, I’ll take his life—his life I say—Hurrah for a dance! A dance! Hurrah!”
Britton had all the ball-room nearly to himself, for the guests shrank from him on all sides, and Learmont seemed for the moment completely unmanned and powerless.
Shaking off, however, by a violent effort the confusion of his senses, he suddenly advanced and confronted Britton.
The smith shrunk for a moment before the pale face of Learmont, in which was an expression of concentrated rage and hate that might well have appalled even a far bolder man.
Britton, however, was not in a state to admit of any moral control; drink was inflaming his brain, and there was a recklessness about him that, if not carefully treated, might involve both Learmont and himself in one common destruction.
The haughty squire felt fully the precarious situation in which he stood, and therefore was it that in the midst of a wild passion that made him tremble, he felt obliged to temporise with the man whose life’s blood flowing at his feet would scarcely have satisfied his feelings of awful hatred.
“Andrew Britton,” he said, in a half-choked voice, which he wished no one to hear but the smith.
“Well, Squire Learmont,” replied the ruffian, endeavouring to stand steadily the fixed gaze of the other.
“For your own life’s sake go away from here—you are drunk, and know not what you do.”
“Drunk, am I? Well, there’s many a better man been drunk before to-day!”
“What do you want?”
“Ten—ten—guineas and—a (hiccup) dance; I tell you what it is—it’s infernally unfriendly of you not to invite me. You know I’m a gentleman now. Never—never—never—to show me—your nobles—curse me if I—stand it. In—introduce me to the rest of the gentlefolks, can’t you, and be d—d to you. I—I ain’t such a sneak as that cursed Jacob Gray. No—no, I’m a gentleman every—every inch a gentleman. Hurrah! Hurrah!”
“Are you mad?” said Learmont.
To his agony the squire now observed that, impelled by curiosity, his guests were slowly creeping closer around him and the savage smith. He raised his voice suddenly and cried—
“My noble and honoured guests, this is a poor mad fellow, who from motives of charity, I support. I do not like to commit violence on one so afflicted by Heaven. Here, take this purse and go.”
“Oh, yes,” hiccupped Britton; “that’s all very well as regards the purse, but I don’t mean to go yet. I’ll have a dance. Let me see—I’ve got something to say to you, squire.”
“Another time,” cried Learmont.
“No—no—time like the present. Life is so very un—uncertain. I tell you what—you—you recollect that infernal Frank Hartleton?”
“Mad,—mad—quite mad,” said Learmont, striving to stop the smith.
“Beware,” said Britton, with drunken solemnity. “I say beware. He’s on the look-out—curse him—and that infernal mad woman too—curse her! They want to hang us—curse all the world. Beware, I say, that’s all—never mind me, ladies and gentlemen—I’m a gentleman—I live on my means—I’m King Britton, and hope to see you all at the Chequers. Thank you ma’am.”
This last observation was addressed to the Honourable Georgiana Brereton, who having given her head a toss of disdain upon meeting the anxious eye of the confounded Learmont, imparted such a nodding reaction for some seconds to her feathers that the intoxicated smith took it as a complimentary acknowledgment of his invitation to the Chequers.
Some of the guests now began to laugh, and others to complain to each other in no very measured terms of the intrusion among them, of so very questionable a character as the smith appeared to be; while several, among whom were the Brereton family, made a move to depart, fearful how the singular scene would end.
For a moment Learmont had his hand on his sword hilt, and the turn of a hair would have induced him to plunge the weapon, at all risks, into the heart of Britton, but the latter seeing the Honourable Georgiana Brereton, who he supposed had been so civil to him, about to depart, made a sudden rush forward, and before any one could be aware of his intentions, he clasped her round the waist with one arm, and commenced dragging her along in a wild dance, entirely of his own invention. A general rush now took place to rescue the shrieking female, and a scene ensued of the greatest confusion.—
Britton grew absolutely furious, and dealt blows and oaths about him with equal liberality. In the midst of all this Learmont was in a state of mind bordering on distraction. He rushed into the midst of the throng, and seizing Britton by the throat, tore him from among the guests, nor relaxed his hold till he had dragged him through the outer saloon, and flung him into a small ante-room, the door of which he locked and placed the key in his pocket. Partly with the fumes of what he had drunk, and partly with the heavy fall Learmont had given him, the smith dropped into a lethargic state of half insensibility and half sleep, so that at all events he was for a time quiet in the room where he was thrown.
Dispirited, angry, and his apparel disarranged, Learmont returned to his ball-room. His guests would not, however, be persuaded to remain, and despite all his protestations that the “madman” was properly secured, he could not restore the confidence or hilarity of the company.
Upon one excuse or another, they one and all departed, and not a single dance took place in the elaborately and expensively prepared ball-room of the ambitious and mortified squire.
With a forced civility he saw the last of his numerous guests to his door. The lights were still blazing in his saloons, but there was silence and loneliness in the midst of all his splendour, which now looked such a mockery of gaiety.
He sunk upon a chair, and buried his face in his hands for many minutes in an agony of painful reflection.
Learmont’s first grand fête was over, and a signal failure.