They were a very merry company, and as time passed they grew merrier. There was Etheredge, of course, the real promoter of the whole affair, and this elegant, talented libertine who was ultimately—and at a still early age—to kill himself with drinking was doing the fullest justice to the reputation which the winecup had already earned him. There was Sedley, that other gifted profligate, whose slim, graceful person and almost feminine beauty gave little indication of the roistering soul within. Young Rochester should have been of the party, but he was at that moment in the Tower, whither he had been sent as a consequence of his utterly foolish and unnecessary attempt to abduct Miss Mallet two nights ago. But Sir Harry Stanhope filled his vacant place—or, at least, half-filled it, for whilst Rochester was both wit and libertine, young Stanhope was a libertine only. And of course there was Sir Thomas Ogle, that boon companion of Sedley’s, and two other gentlemen whose names have not survived. The ladies were of less distinguished lineage. There was the ravishingly fair little Anne Seymour from the Duke’s House, her white shoulders displayed in a décolletage that outraged even the daring fashion of the day. Seated between Stanhope and Ogle, she was likely to become a bone of contention between them in a measure as they drowned restraint in wine. There was Moll Davis from the King’s House seated on the Duke’s left, with Etheredge immediately below her and entirely engrossing her, and there was that dark, statuesque, insolent-eyed Jane Howden, languidly spreading her nets for Sir Charles Sedley, who showed himself willing and eager to be taken in them. A fourth lady on Ogle’s left was making desperate but futile attempts to draw Sir Thomas’s attention from Miss Seymour.
The feast was worthy of the exalted host, worthy of that noble chamber with its richly carved wainscoting, its lofty ceiling carried on graceful fluted pillars, lighted by a hundred candles in colossal gilded girandoles. The wine flowed freely, and the wit, flavoured with a salt that was not entirely Attic, flowed with it. Laughter swelled increasing ever in a measure as the wit diminished. Supper was done, and still they kept the table, over their wine, waiting for that belated guest whose seat continued vacant.
Above that empty place sat the Duke—a dazzling figure in a suit of shimmering white satin with diamond buttons that looked like drops of water. Enthroned in his great gilded chair, he seemed to sit apart, absorbed, aloof, fretted by the absence of the lady in whose honour he had spread this feast, and annoyed with himself for being so fretted, as if he were some callow schoolboy at his first assignation.
Alone of all that company he did not abuse the wine. Again and again he waved away the velvet-footed lackeys that approached to pour for him. Rarely he smiled as some lively phrase leapt forth to excite the ready laughter of his guests. His eyes observed them, noting the flushed faces and abandoned attitudes as the orgy mounted to its climax. He would have restrained them, but that for a host to do so were in his view an offence against good manners. Gloomily, abstractedly, his eyes wandered from the disorder of the table, laden with costly plate of silver and of gold, with sparkling crystal, with pyramids of fragrant fruits and splendours of flowers that already were being used as missiles by his hilarious guests.
From the chilly heights of his own unusual sobriety he found them gross and tiresome; their laughter jarred on him. He shifted his weary glance to the curtains masking the long windows. They draped the window-spaces almost from floor to ceiling, wedges of brilliant colour—between blue and green, upon which golden peacocks strutted—standing out sharply from the sombre richness of the dark wainscot. He strained his ears to catch some rumble of wheels in the courtyard under those windows, and he frowned as a fresh and prolonged burst of laughter from his guests beat upon his ears to shut out all other sounds.
Then Sedley in a maudlin voice began to sing a very questionable song of his own writing, whilst Miss Howden made a comedy of pretending to silence him. He was still singing it, when Stanhope sprang up and mounted his chair, holding aloft a dainty shoe of which he had stripped Miss Seymour, and calling loudly for wine. Pretty little Anne would have snatched back her footgear but that she was restrained by Ogle, who not only held her firmly, but had pulled her into his lap, where she writhed and screamed and giggled all in one.
Solemnly, as if it were the most ordinary and natural of things, a lackey poured wine into the shoe, as Stanhope bade him. And Stanhope, standing above them, gay and flushed, proposed a toast the terms of which I have no intention of repeating.
He was midway through when the twin doors behind the Duke were thrown open by a chamberlain, whose voice rang solemnly above the general din.
“Miss Sylvia Farquharson, may it please your grace.”