So, then, we meet at last.—Harold.
As the rooms began to fill with company, costumed in every variety that taste, fancy, or absurdity could devise, many were surprised that neither was there a host to bid them welcome, nor was there any lady to perform the accustomed honors of reception. The nature of the entertainment, to a certain extent, took off from the awkwardness of this want. In a masquerade, people either go to assume a part, or to be amused by the representation of others, and are less dependent on the attentions of the master or mistress of the house; so that, however struck at first by the singularity of a fête without the presence of the giver, pleasure, ministered to by its thousand appliances, overcame this feeling, and few ever thought more of him beneath whose roof they were assembled.
The rooms were splendid in their decoration, lighted a giomo, and ornamented with flowers of the very rarest kind. The music consisted of a celebrated orchestra and a regimental band, who played alternately; the guests, several hundred in number, were all attired in fancy costumes, in which every age and nation found its type; while characters from well-known fictions abounded, many of them admirably sustained, and dressed with a pomp and splendor that told the wealth of the wearers.
It was truly a brilliant scene; brilliant as beauty, and the glitter of gems, and waving of plumes, and splendor of dress could make it. The magic impulse of pleasure communicated by the crash of music; the brilliant glare of wax-lights; the throng; the voices; the very atmosphere, tremulous with sounds of joy,—seemed to urge on all there to give themselves up to enjoyment. There was a boundless, lavish air, too, in all the arrangements. Servants in gorgeous liveries served refreshments of the most exquisite kind; little children, dressed as pages, distributed bouquets, bound round with lace of Valenciennes or Brussels, and occasionally fastened by strings of garnets or pearls; a jet d'eau of rose-water cooled the air of the conservatory, and diffused its delicious freshness through the atmosphere. There was something princely in the scale of the hospitality; and from every tongue words of praise and wonder dropped at each moment.
Even Lady Janet, whose enthusiasm seldom rose much above the zero, confessed that it was a magnificent fête, adding, by way of compensation for her eulogy, “and worthy of better company.”
Mrs. White was in ecstasies with everything, even to the cherubs in pink gauze wings, who handed round sherbet, and whom she pronounced quite “classical.” The Kenny-fecks were in the seventh heaven of delight, affecting little airs of authority to the servants, and showing the strangers, by a hundred little devices, that all the magnificence around was no new thing to them. Miss Kennyfeck, as the Queen of Madagascar, was a most beautiful savage; while Olivia appeared as the fair “Gabrielle,”—a sly intimation to Sir Harvey, whose dress, as Henry IV., won universal admiration. Then there were the ordinary number of Turks, Jews, Sailors, Circassians, Greeks, Highland Chiefs, and Indian Jugglers,—“Jim” figuring as a Newmarket “Jock,” to the unbounded delight and wonderment of every “sub” in the room.
If in many quarters the question ran, “Where is Mr. Cashel?” or, “Which is he?” Lady Janet had despatched Sir Andrew, attired as a “Moonshee,” to find out Linton for her. “He is certain to know every one here; tell him to come to me at once,” said she, sitting down near a doorway to watch the company.
While Lady Janet is waiting for him who, better than any other, could explain the mysterious meaning of many a veiled figure, unravel the hidden wickedness of every chance allusion, or expound the secret malice of each calembourg or jest, let us track his wanderings, and follow him as he goes.
Throwing a large cloak over his brilliant dress, Linton made his way by many a by-stair and obscure passage to the back of the theatre, by which the secret approach led to Cashel's dressing-room. Often as he had trod that way before, never had he done so in the same state of intense excitement. With the loss of the papers, he saw before him not alone the defeat of every hope he nurtured, but discovery, shame, and ruin! He whose whole game in life was to wield power over others, now saw himself in the grasp of some one, to whom he had not the slightest clew. At one moment his suspicions pointed to Cashel himself, then to Tiernay, and lastly to Phillis. Possibly rage has no bitterer moment than that in which an habitual deceiver of others first finds himself in the toils of treachery. There was over his mind, besides, that superstitious terror that to unbelieving intellects stands in place of religion, which told him that luck had turned with him; that fortune, so long favorable, had changed at last; and that, in his own phrase, “the run had set in against him.” Now a half-muttered curse would burst from his lips over the foolhardiness that had made him so dilatory, and not suffered him to reap the harvest when it was ripe; now a deep-breathed vow, that if fate were propitious once again, no matter bow short the interval, he would strike his blow, come what might of it Sometimes he blamed himself for having deserted the safe and easy road to ruin by play, for the ambitious course he had followed; at other times he inveighed against his folly for not carrying off Mary Leicester before Cashel had acquired any intimacy at the cottage. Burning and half-maddened with this conflict of regrets and hopes, he touched the spring, moved back the panel, and entered Cashel's room.
His first care was to see that the door from the corridor was secured on the inside; his next, to close the shutters and draw the curtains. These done, he lighted the candles on the table, and proceeded to make a systematic search through the entire chamber. “It is my last visit here,” said he to himself; “I must take care to do my work cleanly.” A mass of papers had been that morning left behind him by Cashel, most of them legal documents referring to his transactions with Hoare; but some were memoranda of his intentions respecting Corrigan, and plainly showing that Cashel well remembered he had never completed his assignment to Linton. “If Keane's hand has not faltered,” muttered he, “Master Roland's memory will not be taxed in this world at least; but where to discover the deed? that is the question.” In his anxiety on this bead, he ransacked drawers and cabinets with wild and furious haste, strewing their contents around him, or wantonly throwing them on the fire. With false keys for every lock, he opened the most secret depositories,—scarce glancing at letters which at any other time he had devoured with interest. Many were from Lady Kil-goff, warning Cashel against him; his own name, seen passingly, would arrest his attention for a second, but the weightier interest soon intervened, and he would throw the papers from him with contempt. “How shrewd! how very cunning!” muttered he, once or twice, as his glance caught some suspicion, some assumed clew to his own motives, in her well-known handwriting. Baffled by the unsuccessful result of his search, he stood in the midst of the floor, surrounded by open boxes, the contents of which were strewn on every side; rage and disappointment were depicted in his features; and, as his clenched hand struck the table, his whole expression became demoniac. Curses and deep blasphemies fell from his half-moving lips as he stood insensible to everything save the wreck of his long-cherished hope.