He turned from the curtseying truckling throng with a bitter sigh and a bitterer sneer, thinking how fine a triumvirate might have been formed in the year Fourteen, if he and Oxford and Marlborough had combined their forces. He told himself that he had been born either too late or too soon. He should have lived in the old Roman days when talent was power; or in some enlightened England of centuries to come, when all hereditary distinctions should be swept away to make a clear stage for genius and ambition.
Queen Caroline and a brace of young princesses moved about the rooms, with Lord Hervey and Mr. Topsparkle, Lady Hervey and Mrs. Clayton in attendance upon her majesty's footsteps; the master of the house proud to exhibit his curios and elucidate his pictures; Majesty showing herself supremely gracious, with a superficial smattering of art which went a long way in so charming a woman and so admirable a Queen. She had a smile for every one, kissed her hand to a score of friends, approved of Signor Duvetti's scraping on the violin, of Herr Altstiefel's organ tones on the 'cello, and of Signora Burletti's birdlike soprano in a scena of Lulli's and of Signor Omati's buffo bravura. There was a concert in progress in one of the inner apartments which the royalties honoured by their presence for at least a quarter of an hour, the princesses chattering all the time, and Princess Caroline so engrossed by the whispered nonsense of Lord Hervey, who happened to be standing behind her chair, as to be unconscious of her mother's reproachful frowns.
"I wonder whether the mature queen or the precocious princess is fondest of that man?" whispered Bolingbroke to Pulteney.
"O, the younger lady is fondest. She is romantically in love, while her mother uses Hervey as she uses all the world, for her own convenience and advantage," answered Pulteney; "yet I must needs wonder what is the charm of that sickly face and that effeminate manner, that all the women should adore him?"
"I think the charm is a kind of finnicking cleverness, a concatenation of petty talents which women understand. If Hervey had devoted himself to statecraft, he would have been a second-rate politician. His parts in great things would have seemed at best respectable; but by concentrating his abilities upon trivialities he appears a genius—and then, again, a man has but to flatter and fawn for the women to think him an intellectual giant, magnified by their vanity—just as a flea under a microscope seems a monster."
It was three o'clock in the morning, and Lady Judith's assembly was over, save for a few intimates who lingered in front of the fireplace in the hall, while the Swiss porter snored in his chair, and the last of the linkmen waited despairingly for the departure of the latest guest. A couple of chairs were waiting on the pavement outside—Lord Bolingbroke's and Lord Lavendale's. Tom Philter was the only other loiterer, and those spindleshanks of his were to carry him back to Gray's Inn Lane.
The royalties had eaten heavily and departed, much pleased with their entertainment.
"I thought the supper-table looked like a larder," said Lady Judith, fanning herself indolently, as she half reclined in a great carved oak chair. "Any one but a German would have been nauseated by such a plethora of food."
"But 'twas just what they like," replied Philter. "I saw your ladyship had all his Majesty's favourite dishes."