There are difficulties in the way of one who would describe an event after an immortal poet has given it a setting in lines that a worshipping world will not willingly let die. A tree, it is said, is never struck by lightning more than once, and it is safe to suppose that a subject is never illumined by the rays of heaven-descended genius without being as thoroughly exhausted. Nevertheless, with our tame domestic lantern, let us endeavour to throw a little prosaic light over the details of a scene that has been irradiated by the imagination of a Byron.
It was one of the events of the season to the social world of that foreign town, but to us it is one of the events of the century. On an evening in June, 1815, in the city of Brussels, the Duchess of Richmond gave a ball on so magnificent a scale that even the gray heads of society's veteran devotees were a little turned, and the chestnut and golden pates of their juniors tossed sleeplessly on their pillows for several nights preceding it. After all, humanity is perpetually and overpoweringly interested in nothing except humanity. On the evening appointed there was a vast beautiful throng, moving through halls as beautiful and more vast; there was the witchery of soft lights and softer sounds, of odours and colours that enchant the senses; there were banks of flowers, each of whose tiny blossoms yielded its dying breath to make the world sweeter for an hour, and among them, under the starry lights, in warm human veins, flowed a thousand streams; very blue, not so blue, and even common crimson. But all flowed faster than usual, perhaps the better to warm the lovely bare shoulders and arms, or to paint the sweet cheeks above them in the vivid hues of glad, intense young life. Intermingled with the costly robes and flashing gems on the ideal figures of fair women, gleamed the brilliant uniforms of brave men. "A thousand hearts beat happily"—with one exception. This was in the possession of the second daughter of a duke. She was even then remarkable for her beauty and for a certain imperious, condescending grace. The gay throng of which she was a part was no more to her than so many buttercups and daisies; and these sumptuous apartments, so far as they concerned her, might have been a series of green meadows. At last her indifferent glance, travelling over the room, encountered an object that faintly flushed her cheek, and brightened the eyes, whose orbit of vision was now limited to the circle immediately about her. Cold indifference had changed to throbbing impatience. Ah, why did he not come! With whom was he lingering? She dared not look up lest her glance, like a swift, bright messenger, should tell him all her heart, and draw him magnetically to her side. No, he must come of his own choice, and quickly, else her mood would change. Soft strains of music arose, melting, aching, dying upon the air. Her heart melted, ached, and apparently died also, for it turned cold and hard as she glanced at her watch, and saw that it was more than a minute, nearly two minutes (two eternities they seemed to her) since she began to be glad that she had come.
The next instant her long-lashed lids were raised in spite of herself, and she confronted a singularly tall and attractive-looking gentleman, whose face, from its pensive sadness, had a certain poetic charm. He begged the honour of the next dance with her. She regretted that he was too late. He looked disappointed, but ventured to name the next one. She was sorry, but it was impossible. Had she room for him anywhere at all on her list? She shook her head prettily but inexorably. The handsomest coquette and the plainest school-ma'am have this in common, that they detest and punish tardiness. The young man was overpowered by his sense of loss. It was small comfort to stand and look at the beautiful girl. When the gates of paradise are closed against one it matters little whether they are made of gold or of iron. Inwardly he bestowed some very hard names upon himself for imagining that that peerless creature would be allowed to await a willing wall-flower his languidly deferred appearance.
Again those heavenly strains rose and throbbed upon the air. It was maddening. The keenness of his disappointment gave his face an intensity of ardent expression that certainly did not detract from its charm in the eyes of the girl who at that instant glanced up into it. The next moment he was pressed aside—very decorously, very courteously, even apologetically pushed aside, but still compelled by an insinuating patrician hand to make room for its owner, a gentleman whose extremely lofty title had already drawn the homage of a hundred admiring pairs of eyes upon him, and whose prevailing expression was a haughty consciousness of accustomed and assumed success. The young lady whom he now honoured with a request to dance did not think of his title, nor of his condescension, nor of him. She declined with characteristic indifference on the plea that she was already engaged, and turning placed her hand on the arm of Sir Peregrine Maitland, whose suddenly bewildered and enraptured heart, if it had never before given its assent to the time-worn proposition that all is fair in love as well as in war, certainly could not hesitate now. Perhaps the triumphs of the ball-room are not less thrilling than those of the battle-field. "Why were you so cruel to me a moment ago?" he murmured, looking down into eyes that but too clearly reflected the happiness of his own.
"For the same reason that I am kind to you now," she responded like a flash.
He did not ask her the reason. Perhaps he was intuitively and blissfully aware of it. Did ever maiden discover a more demurely daring way of telling her lover that she loved him?
But now, caressed by little wafts of perfume, and half-dazed by the blaze of lights and colours around and above them, they were drifting as on a tide upon soft swelling waves of music. In liquid undulations of sweet sound they floated insensibly down the windings of the waltz, nor dreamed of danger till the note of warning came. It was a prodigious note—nothing less than the boom of a cannon—and the signal for instant, perhaps life-long, separation.
"Who could guess,
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes?
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise."
But, as we know, two pairs at least of those mutual eyes were destined to meet again, and meet as gladly and warmly as when their owners danced together on the evening before the battle of Waterloo. But the chill atmosphere of a father's disapproval lay between them. It is reasonable to suppose that the fourth Duke of Richmond and Lennox was not so susceptible to the charms of pensive and picturesque young gentlemen as was his wilful daughter. Among the names on a list of invitations to a party given by the latter appeared that of Sir Peregrine Maitland, which, coming under the cold parental eye, was promptly erased. At the same time he inquired of his daughter why she permitted that undesirable gentleman to hang about her skirts—why she did not let him go. The response was that after this decided slight he probably would go; she added with a little sigh that she did not know where. The duke profanely and contemptuously mentioned a locality which shall be nameless. The young lady made no reply. She believed in division of labour, and in former domestic affairs of this sort her stern parent had invariably said what he pleased, while she contented herself with merely doing what she pleased.
Proverbially, actions speak louder than words, and the present case was no exception, for while the echo of her father's speech did not go beyond the walls of the apartment they were in, her own rash performance, which was a direct consequence of it, was a few days later noised abroad through all Paris. This was an evening call at the lodgings of Sir Peregrine Maitland. She came in unannounced, flushed, eager, defiant, lovely, letting fall the rich train of her robe, which she had caught up in a swift flight through the streets, and throwing off her enveloping cloak, which scattered a shower of sparkling drops on brow and bosom, and beautiful bare arms, for a light shower had fallen. "They would not let you come to me, so I have come to you," she declared with a daring little laugh. "I have run away from my guests. There is a houseful of them and they tire me to death. Everyone tires me to-night except you." The gentleman stood before her speechless with bewilderment. "I believe," she said with a little pout, like a spoiled child, "that you are not glad to see me."