Chapter XV: The Masqued Ball in Prospect

Captain Fane, though he _was_ rational, and had a regard for consequences, was fallible, and did not cease to frequent his cousin’s house in Cleveland Court, because of that very inconsiderate look of Lady Bell’s.

On the contrary, he who was no dangler in drawing-rooms, and was wont to improve his time in town by going afresh over the libraries and museums, and by attending every gathering and discussion of scientific men, began to haunt Lady Sundon’s rooms, until even that hospitably-disposed kinswoman could not refrain from an uneasy private comment, “Something’s going to happen to Harry Fane; he is turning up for ever, like a new farthing. He used to make himself as scarce and hard to find as a gold guinea, but now he has become dirt-cheap, and is always lying about in everybody’s way. Lady Bell, Lady Bell, I hope you understand that I only bade you sort my cousin in jest. I hope that you have not to answer for a brave sailor’s undoing. He has enough of knocking about in the open sea, without being run down in the harbour; and I consider Harry like a son of my own, since his own folk are all dead and gone.”

Lady Bell bore the unspoken charge as if she were perfectly innocent, save that even a more brilliant bloom than she had shown lately, glowed in her cheeks and was reflected in her eyes.

Lady Bell was full of a gaiety of the season in which she was about to take a part, and which was novel to her. “I dare say I shall soon have had enough of the gay world—my fling, as you call it, Lady Sundon—but I have not yet been to a masquerade,” explained Lady Bell; “I confess that I am dying with curiosity to see what it is like. Only fancy one’s ordinary neighbours and friends as sultanas and chimney-sweeps, Queen Elizabeths and Richard the Thirds. Oh! I think it must be charmingly romantic and diverting—that fun of finding people out, and of baffling their curiosity, while you may be as witty as you please and can.”

“All very fine, my dear; but Cornely’s masquerades were not exactly the place for seeing proper company”—Lady Sundon played the monitor for once—“and at the old Pantheon masquerades, Covent-Garden women and highwaymen used to mix with the regular guests. How could it be otherwise, when nobody could tell who was who?”

“Yet you all went to these places, my dear Lady Sundon,” Lady Bell coaxed her friend, “and riots have gone out of fashion. Besides, this masquerade is to be given by the gentlemen of White’s. They are to have lady patronesses. At an hour fixed upon, each lady and gentleman is to unmask, so that one could not be safer in a private house. Indeed I am very glad that the gentlemen of White’s are to be prodigiously gallant, and give a masquerade ball this year, when I happen to be in town. Tickets must be procured for you and Nancy and Lyddy, Lady Sundon; of course they must. I’ll never rest till the deficiency is supplied; I’ll not stir a foot, or order a costume, without you.”

Lady Bell referred to the circumstance that in consequence of the run on masquerade tickets, and the ultra exclusiveness of the set issuing them, only one ticket to Lady Bell Trevor had found its way to Cleveland Court. “So Nancy and Lyddy are down in the mouth,” Lady Sundon said; “and for myself, I own I’m an old fool; but if the affair is to be above board, I’d give my two ears yet to see the play.”

There was less difficulty for gentlemen in getting admittance, and when Lady Bell, the moment the club masquerade was announced, raised her eager voice in its favour, Captain Fane had only to speak to a brother officer, who was a member of the club, in order to have a ticket. Harry Fane made a specious excuse to Lady Sundon for his haste to countenance this vanity.

“It is not that I approve of such an entertainment; I have heard from yourself that it is one of the most lax and perilous in an age of ridottos and public gardens—the more reason why as many sober and virtuous people as can make an entrance, should use their right to confront the foolish and vicious, and protect the innocent and unwary.”

“Harry, don’t draw scores before my nose,” objected Lady Sundon emphatically, and when the gentleman moved away discomfited, she concluded her remark for her own benefit, “as if you would have been in such a case to act as a bodyguard even to me and Nancy and Lyddy! The grand passion has much to answer for, in playing such pranks with a staid, sensible fellow, who has very little patrimony besides his pay, and ought to know he is not a fit match for my Lady Bell. I meant that his comb should be cut, for he carried it over high; but I’m frighted that it is done only too closely. And he’s my own flesh and blood, though Lady Bell is a charming young woman, and I could eat her, I have taken to her so hugely. Besides, it is a credit and pleasure to show her about in town, which is in the habit of thinking naught of the wares of a country body like me.”

Lady Bell’s influence would have gained the tickets which were wanting, but, in the interval before the ball, there came the threat of a family calamity that effectually prevented the Sundons’ attendance, and very nearly put a stop to Lady Bell’s making acquaintance with the delights of a masquerade.

Word arrived that Lady Sundon’s only child, the son and heir of the family, had met with a dangerous accident, by a fall from a tree, in one of the meadows near his grammar school, a week before. He had not recovered his senses when the letter was written, though the chances were, from the number of days which had elapsed, that the hurt must have yielded, so far, to medical skill. A fatal termination would have caused the despatch of a special messenger, who would have reached London and preceded the announcement of the accident in the slow course of post.

But great was the flurry and distress. Poor Lady Sundon prepared to set out instantly for the scene of the accident, to nurse her son, should she find him alive to be nursed by her.

The Misses Sundon, who had been wont to utter, as loudly as the plaintiveness of their reproaches would permit, charges of undue preference on the part of Sir Peter for his boy over his girls, and of gross indulgence and spoiling on the part of the boy’s mother, were sufficiently kindly women, in spite of their follies, to be cut up by their half-brother’s danger, and to forget altogether, in their roused and alarmed affection, that they had insisted on electing themselves the young master’s rivals.

Lyddy Sundon, who was the more energetic of the sisters, would not hear of any other arrangement than that she should accompany Lady Sundon in her journey, and remain with her, to assist in nursing the little lad.

Lady Sundon, whose rosy, elderly face was purple with subdued excitement, while she could not keep the moisture out of her eyes by the repeated furtive movement of her hand across her face, did not fail to be touched by the token of respect and regard. “I’m sure it’s very good of you, Lyddy,” the mother said, with all her heart. “I ain’t likely to forget it, no, nor your father neither; and I trust my Ned will remember it when he is a man, for, by God’s mercy, he may live to see us out yet.”

Nancy Sundon undertook to devote herself, in his wife’s absence, to the care of Sir Peter, naturally suffering more than ever, though he was driven for the moment to forget his own sufferings.

“But our trouble, which may end well, for all that is come and gone, please God, is not your trouble, Lady Bell, so go to your masquerade yourself, my dear,” the good-natured woman told Lady Bell at parting. “I’ll take ‘The Cries of London’ to amuse Neddy, as you wish, and thank you heartily for the thought. But I am sure it would vex any child of mine on his bed, as it would vex me, if he could know that he was keeping you, who have nothing to do with him, poor boy, save in your good will, from a grand treat. Go when it is your day, and enjoy yourself with the best, Lady Bell, bless you! We don’t grudge you the enjoyment, though we have come to grief.”

“Sure, you don’t; but never think of me, my dear Lady Sundon; may a blessing and the best of luck go with you. I hope and pray that you will find your boy a great deal better than you expect, and that we shall all have such a merry meeting again that the finest masquerade will be thrown into the shade.” And Lady Bell fully meant to give up the masquerade.

But scarcely had Lady Sundon and Lyddy set out, when another deliberate post letter arrived in Cleveland Court, with the cheering tidings that the sufferer was doing well, and was likely to recover without sustaining any material and permanent injury from his fall.

The chief source of anxiety was removed, and Lady Bell was free to resume her intention of being present at the ball, and was not reduced to eclipse its splendour by being absent, as a throng of the givers of the feast were ready to profess. Miss Sundon might have accompanied Lady Bell, but the former preferred, on the whole, after the late shock to her nerves, to remain a martyr to her new responsibility, and to relapse into luxuriating tenderly over the last grievance.

Lady Bell, in her widowed dignity, could dispense with a companion. She knew, moreover, with an idle, exultant throb, that in addition to her many admirers, more or less fervent, and more or less men of many ties, with their hearts split into segments, and distributed pretty equally over a select circle of fashionable belles, there was one man who would only see her in the motley company, who was in it for her sake, who, crusty, cantankerous sailor as she had judged him at first, needed but a wave of her hand, and a glance of her eye, to be at her side, at her feet.

Lady Bell, whether she confessed it to herself or not, went on to draw conclusions from the significant circumstance that Captain Fane, of his own free will, departed from his rule and put himself about to be one in a scene so unpalatable to his tastes as this masquerade.

Lady Bell did more. She looked within, and she recognised with a breathless flutter of mingled wonder, trepidation, and bliss, an astounding fact. The chief glory of the masquerade to her would be the presence of this quondam growling and grave young officer.

Lady Bell was perfectly aware that Harry Fane, though well-born, was poor, and that—while she believed he was an excellent officer, and while she had heard him speak like a natural philosopher to a man of genius—he was a fellow of no mark in her fashionable world. His very profession was against him in some respects.

Lady Bell well knew that Captain Fane would be reckoned a most unsuitable match, the poorest _parti_ for a beauty, a Lady Bell, a young widow who had begun her career of worldly prosperity very fairly, and had then taken the world by storm. Was she to end by wantonly squandering her advantages, for which she had paid dearly enough in her day; was she to slight the great matches that might be in store for her, the coronets, the amorous squires, richer than Trevor of Trevor Court, the exquisite beaux like Sir George Waring, for so sober and in the world’s eye so insignificant a figure? Was she, as a lovely widow, rather to copy the example of the Duchess of Manchester with her Irishman, of whom all the world had talked, or that of the Duchess of Leinster with her Scotchman, of whom all the world was talking, in stooping to confer grace, than follow the lead of Lady Waldegrave in aiming as high as the gusty neighbourhood of a throne? Lady Bell laughed in mockery of herself a little hysterically. She made a feint of trying to find time and heart to scold herself, and at the same time she blushed like a rose at the mere thought, and trembled with a newly-discovered happiness.