CHAPTER XXIII. A SMALL SUPPER PARTY.
THE great ball at the Mazzarini Palace “came off” just as other great balls have done, and will continue to do, doubtless, for ages hence. There was the usual, perhaps a little more than the usual, splendor of dress and diamonds; the same glare and crash and glitter and crowd and heat; the same buoyant light-heartedness among the young; the same corroding ennui of the old; taste in dress was criticised, looks were scanned, flirtations detected, quarrels discovered, fans were mislaid, hearts were lost, flounces were torn, and feelings hurt. There was the ordinary measure of what people call enjoyment, mixed up with the ordinary proportion of envy, shyness, pretension, sarcasm, coldness, and malice. It was a grand tournament of human passions in white satin and jewels; and if the wounds exchanged were not as rudely administered, they were to the full as dangerous as in the real lists of combat. Yet, in this mortal conflict, all seemed happy. There was an air of voluptuous abandonment over everything; and whatever cares they might have carried within, as far as appearance went, the world went well and pleasantly with them. The ball was, however, a splendid one; there was everything that could make it such. The salons were magnificent in decoration; the lighting a perfect blaze. There was beauty in abundance, diamonds in masses, and a Royal Highness from the Court, an insignificant little man, it is true, with a star and a stutter, who stared at every one, and spoke to nobody. Still he was the centre of a glittering group of handsome aides-de-camp, who displayed their fascinations in every gesture and look.
Apart from the great flood-tide of pleasure, down which so many float buoyantly, there is ever on these occasions a deeper current that flows beneath, of human wile and cunning and strategy, just as, in many a German fairy tale, some curious and recondite philosophy lies hid beneath the little incidents related to amuse childhood. It would lead us too far from the path of our story were we to seek for this “tiny thread amid the woof;” enough for our present purpose if we slightly advert to it, by asking our reader to accompany us to the small chamber which called Albert Jekyl master, and where now, at midnight, a little table of three covers was laid for supper. Three flasks of champagne stood in a little ice-pail in one corner, and on a dumbwaiter was arranged a dessert, which, for the season, displayed every charm of rarity. A large bouquet of moss-roses and camellias ornamented the centre of the board, and shed a pleasant odor through the room. The servant, whose dress and look bespoke him a waiter from a restaurant in the neighborhood, had just completed all the arrangements of the table, placing chairs around it, and heaped fresh wood upon the hearth, when a carriage drew up at the door. The merry sound of voices and the step of feet were heard on the stairs, and the next moment a lady entered, whose dress of black lace, adorned with bouquets of blue flowers, admirably set off a figure and complexion of Spanish mould and character. To this, a black lace veil fastened to the hair behind, and worn across the shoulders, contributed. There was a lightness and intrepidity in her step, as she entered the room, that suited the dark, flashing, steady glance of her full black eyes. It would have, indeed, been difficult to trace in that almost insolent air of conscious beauty the calm, subdued, and almost sorrow-struck girl whom we have seen as Nina in a former chapter; but, however dissimilar in appearance, they were the same one individual; and the humble femme de chambre of Kate Dalton was the celebrated ballet-dancer of the great theatre of Barcelona.
The figure which followed was a strange contrast to that light and elegant form. He was an old, short man, of excessive corpulence in body, and whose face was bloated and purple by intemperance. He was dressed in the habit of a priest, and was in reality a canon of the Dome Cathedral. His unwieldy gait, his short and labored respiration, increased almost to suffocation by the ascent of the stairs and his cumbrous dress, seemed doubly absurd beside the flippant lightness of the “Ballarina.” Jekyl came last, mimicking the old canon behind his back, and putting the waiter's gravity to a severe test by the bloated expansion of his cheek and the fin-like motion of his hands as he went.
“Ecco me!” cried he out, with a deep grunt, as he sank into a chair and wiped the big drops from his forehead with the skirt of his gown.
“You tripped up the stairs like a gazelle, padre,” said the girl, as she arranged her hair before the glass, and disposed the folds of her veil with all the tact of coquetry.
A thick snort, like the ejaculation a hippopotamus might have uttered, was the only reply, and Jekyl, having given a glance over the table to see all was in order, made a sign for Nina to be seated.
“Accursed be the stairs and he that made them!” muttered the padre. “I feel as if my limbs had been torn on the rack. I have been three times up the steps of the high altar already to-day, and am tired as a dog.”
“Here is your favorite soup, padre,” said Jekyl, as he moved the ladle through a smoking compound, whence a rich odor of tomato and garlic ascended. “This will make you young again.”
“And who said I would wish to be young again?” cried the priest, angrily. “I have experience of what youth means every day in the confessional, and I promise you age has the best of it.”