CHAPTER IX
THE WEARING OF THE GREEN
THAT night was the night of Devonshire’s great ball and all Newmarket was agog, streets were blocked with fours and sixes—the great coaches jammed in rows, with fighting, swearing coachmen and postilions. As for the chairs, they were blocked in so closely that half the chairmen had black eyes or bloody noses in the morning; and the link-boys, let loose in this carnival, ran hither and yon, with their lanthorns flaring in the wind like ministering imps in an inferno, while the country people and the tavern tipsters and the market women filled up the last crevices, to see beauty and fashion pass in and out the flaring doorway, whence came strains of music and the sounds of laughter. The king, it was true, would not be there; his cough—or despatches from France, it was whispered—would keep him in bed that festive night, but Lady Marlborough was there and in her train the Princess Anne. People had begun already to put the pair in this sequence, and laughed, in their sleeves, at it and at William’s tolerance, for no one despised my Lord Marlborough more than that astute, cool-headed monarch, who knew him to be as false as he was brilliant.
Excepting only the king himself, the whole world of fashion was at the ball, and the house was dressed with green boughs and flowers, rushes and sweet seg, and a wassail bowl stood in the hall wreathed with blossoms. The band was stationed on the staircase landing, the musicians clad for the occasion in scarlet waistcoats and shorts, deep clocked scarlet stockings, and coats of yellow velvet stamped on the back with red roses and on the left breast with the Devonshire arms. There were female attendants, too, attired quaintly in gay flowered silks and wearing vizards, who served the fyne of pocras, sobyll bere and mum below stairs, while above the rooms were lighted by flambeaux and the floors polished like mirrors for the dancers. There were to be dances of every sort, from the country romp, “cuckolds all awry,” with “hoite come toite,” and the more stately galliard, to “Trenchemore” and the cushion dance and “tolly polly.”
Her Grace of Marlborough, in towering headdress and a gown of red velvet over a petticoat of cloth of gold, led the first dance with his Grace of Devonshire, the Princess Anne and the duke being vis-à-vis, but only a poor spectacle by comparison.
The whole house overflowed with the throng. The greatest of the court were there, Bedford and Ormond and Hartington,—and there, too, were Godolphin and Somers and a bevy of beauty; ruffles of lace and gleams of jewels, and here and there the rosy cheeks of the daughters of the country squires. Old dames looked on from the wall, smiling and delighted when a daughter danced and frowning at a more favored neighbor, and the young beaux had no rest, but danced in their tight French shoes and bowed until their backs were doubled.
But the greatest stir was when Lady Clancarty led the galliard with her noble host, my lady all in white and gold, with one pink rose in her hair, her eyes shining, and her cheeks fresher than the rose. Down the long room they came and her feet scarcely seemed to touch the floor, and she held her head so high that it almost overlooked his grace, who bowed smilingly toward her, a stately figure himself as he moved in his splendid dress down the space left by the dancers, the music scarcely drowning the murmur of applause. Her Grace of Marlborough was outshone and she bit her lip and tossed her head.
It was after this, when my Lady Clancarty, flushed and lovely, stood surrounded by a throng that the Irishman, Mr. Trevor, pushed through them all to her side. A handsome figure, too, and one which had won more than one admiring glance that night; a graceful figure clad in white satin, self-possessed, accomplished. French in manner; he had caught the trick at Versailles, and his gray eyes looked straight into hers. The strains of the dance floated up the stairs; my Lord Savile pressed forward.
“Our dance, my lady,” he said, almost imperatively thrusting between.