And now came wintry evenings and London fogs. The linkmen were busy again, there were assemblies for every night in the week, sometimes as many as seven upon one night, and women of ton went to half a dozen parties of an evening. Fashionable beauty's sedan was a feature in the dimly-lighted streets, escorted by running footmen armed with blunderbusses and carrying torches; cheery the flare of those torches across the darkness of night, with an occasional glimpse of beauty's face behind the glass, briefest vision of sparkling eyes, flashing gems, patches, vermilion, and powder. Now came the season of Italian opera. Society began to rave and dispute about tall lanky Farinelli with his seraphic voice, and short squabby Cuzzoni, also seraphic, and paid at a rate which made Court pensioners seem the veriest paupers; albeit that this was the golden age for place-hunters, whereby Sir Robert Walpole was able by and by to provide snug sinecures of two or three thousand a year for his younger son Horace provision almost more generous on the part of Sir Robert than of the nation, were all things considered. Now came the season of masked balls, much affected by King George, and by his son's lesser but gayer Court at Richmond and Leicester Fields. Lavendale was well received at Richmond Lodge, where Pope and his literary friends were in great favour, and where the lovely Mary Lepel was now shining as Lady Hervey; where Chesterfield, Bathurst, Scarborough, and Hervey were the chief ornaments, all paying homage to the wit and wisdom of clever Princess Caroline, a lady of wide reading and strong opinions upon most points, yet astute enough always to play second fiddle to that dull dogged husband of hers, flattering him with subtlest flatteries, and maintaining her ascendency in spite of all rivalries; a calm, clever, far-seeing woman, of extraordinary power of mind and strength of purpose, standing firm as a rock amidst the quicksands of Court life; a woman of noble disposition, whose youth had known dependence and poverty, yet who had refused the heir to the German Empire rather than turn Papist.
At Lord Lavendale's advice, Squire Bosworth took lodgings in Arlington Street, over against Little St. James's Park, and brought his daughter to London, where she was presented to his Majesty by her aunt, Lady Tredgold, who treated herself and daughters to a London season, chiefly at Mr. Bosworth's expense, in order to perform this duty. Herrick heard of this London visit with an agonised heart: heard how Rena had been presented on the Prince's birthday, and had been admired at the birthnight ball. The town would change his wood-nymph into a fine lady; that sweet simplicity which was her highest charm would perish in the atmosphere of courts. How could he hope that she would be true to him when once she discovered the power of her position as an heiress and a beauty? She would be surrounded by fops and flatterers, run after by every adventurer in London. "And I shall rank among the meanest of them," thought Herrick. "What can I seem to her but an adventurer, when once she becomes worldly-wise and learns to estimate her own value? She will think that I tried to trap her into an engagement; she will begin to despise me."
Agitated by these fears and doubts, Herrick found it hard to work as steadfastly and courageously as he had been working. He found it harder still to withstand the allurements of society, the chocolate-house and the green cloth, the dice-box and the bottle; more especially as Lavendale was always at his side, tempting him, accusing him of having turned dullard and miser.
"For whom are you toiling, or for what?" his lordship asked lightly. "Do you aspire to be a poet and diplomatist, like Prior, to write verses and sign treaties, and live hand in glove with statesmen and princes? Or do you want to be the petted darling of fine ladies, like Gay? Or do you think it is in you to turn satirist, and rival Pope?—who wrote me the genteelest letter you can imagine this morning, by the way, although scarce able to hold a pen for two maimed and useless fingers, having been turned over in Bolingbroke's chariot as he was driving through the lanes between Dawley and Twit'nam on a cursedly dark night. And cursed lanes they are in bad weather, as I can affirm, having ridden through them when the mud was up to my horse's hocks. Come, Herrick, you were not made to play the anchorite. There is to be a masquerade at Heidegger's opera-house to-night, and my divinity, my wife that is to be, will be there, her first public ball. Come and be bottle-holder. I think I ought to declare myself to-night. A masquerade is a capital place for a declaration. I have been reading Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing. What a pity that fellow's comedies are so seldom acted! There is good stuff in the worst of them."
The masked ball at the opera-house was the gayest scene in London. Every one was there, and royalty was conspicuous, first in the person of the old King, "a taciturn, rather splenetic elderly gentleman," in a snuff-coloured suit with silk stockings to match, no finery but his blue ribbon and diamond shoe-buckles, accompanied as usual by her maypole Grace of Kendal, lank, ungainly, and plain, but dear to Majesty by long habit, homely Joan to royal Darby. Her grace reigned alone since the death of the Countess of Darlington, another German lady with English title and estates, who had fattened upon the wealth of Britannia; an obese elderly person, with round staring black eyes, reputed to have been in early life an amazing beauty. The more well informed of the German courtiers believed the tie between this lady and the King to be purely platonic, that she was indeed his Majesty's half-sister—an illegitimate daughter of the old Elector by his infamous mistress, the Countess of Platen.
The young Court, too, was there: handsome, high-bred Caroline, with her fine aquiline features and her clear, far-seeing eyes; meek Mrs. Howard, with a long-suffering air of submission to royal caprices, not by any means the triumphant style of a maîtresse en titre; brilliant hoydenish Mary Bellenden, now Mrs. Campbell; and sparkling Frenchified Mary Lepel, wife of John Lord Hervey; Chesterfield, airing his new title, and laying about him ruthlessly with that reckless wit which spared neither friend nor kinsfolk, heedless how deep he cut; affecting the airs of a universal conqueror also, pretending even to favours from women of the highest fashion, rank, and beauty, despite a squat ungainly person and an ugly face.
Herrick entered late upon this brilliant scene. He had waited to finish his work at the newspaper office, a dark little printer's workshop near Smithfield, and had hastily washed off the grime of the City and flung on a domino over his every-day clothes. It was a kind of pilgrim's cloak which he wore, and he had put on a pilgrim's hat like Romeo's, and carried a pilgrim's staff, when he went in quest of his Juliet.
For the first quarter of an hour his keen eyes failed to distinguish her amidst that ever-moving, ever-changing mob of masqueraders: princes and peasants, soldiers and chimney-sweepers, French cooks, Italian harlequins and columbines, Venetians, Turks, Dutchmen, and Roman emperors. The glitter and confusion of that undulating crowd, swaying to the sound of lightest music, baffled and bewildered him; but all of a sudden, in the stately movements of a minuet, he saw a form which at a glance revealed the slender gracefulness of his wood-nymph. No other form he had ever seen upon this earth had that airy motion and exquisitely unconscious elegance.
Yes, it was she, dressed as Diana, with a diamond crescent upon her brow, and her soft auburn hair coiled at the back of the perfectly shaped head, a careless curl or two hanging loosely from the coils. Her classic drapery of white and silver clothed her modestly from shoulder to ankle, revealing only the slender feet in silver sandals. In an age of monstrous headdresses and naked shoulders, powder and patches, that classic form and simply braided hair had all the charm of singularity.
Herrick glanced from his beloved to her partner. A slim, elegant-looking man in a Venetian suit, black velvet and gold, with jewelled stiletto—Lavendale without doubt. Yes, that was his dashing air of unconquerable self-possession, the easy consciousness of superiority. He offered his hand to his partner when the dance was over, and led her through the crowd, talking to her animatedly as they moved along. Herrick could see that he was pointing out the celebrities in the mob, giving his tongue full license as he described their characteristics, no doubt in a series of antitheses, as was the fashion in those days, when a modish wit depicted every man or woman of his acquaintance as a bundle of opposite qualities, a creature made up of contradictions, and as impossible as sphinx or chimæra.