THE RIDOTTO.
The 'ridotto,' the Italian word then fashionable for an entertainment
of music and dancing, at the huge old red-brick villa of the Heer van
Otterbeck, Minister of State, in the vicinity of the Hague, was one
of the gayest affairs of the season.
The Prince of Orange (whose son afterwards became King of the
Netherlands) was not present, but all the rank, the wealth, and
beauty of the Hague were represented; and among those present were
many officers of the Scots Brigade, including the Earl of Drumlanrig,
General Dundas, in after years the captor of the Cape of Good Hope;
and there too was the Conservator of Scottish Privileges at Campvere,
John Home, then the celebrated author of the nearly forgotten tragedy
of 'Douglas.'
A band of the Dutch Guards furnished music on the lawn, and there
dancing was in progress in the bright sunshine of the summer
afternoon; and, in the fashion of the time, many of the guests were
arrayed in what they deemed the costume of Arcadian shepherds and
shepherdesses.
People danced early in the evenings of the eighteenth century, and
were abed about the time their descendants now begin to dress for a
ball. Ices were unknown; no wine was dispensed, but the liveried
servants of the Heervan Otterbeck regaled his guests on coffee, green
tea, orange tea, and many kinds of cakes and confectionery in the
intervals of the dancing, in which Dolores (all innocent and unaware
of the plots in progress against her peace, even her honour and
liberty--one of them born of avarice, wounded vanity, and foiled
desire) indulged joyously and with all her heart.
For the information of the ladies of the present day we shall detail
the dress worn by Dolores on that evening as described in the _Hague
Gazette_, and they may imagine how charming she looked:
'Her body and train were silver tissue, with a broad silver fringe;
her petticoat was white satin covered with the richest crape,
embroidered with silver, fastened up with bunches of silver roses,
tassels, and cords. Her pocket-holes were blonde, her stockings were
blue, clocked with silver, and her hair was twisted and plaited in
the most beautiful manner around a diamond comb.'
Seated under a tree, flushed with a recent dance, she was alternately
playing with her fan and silver pomander ball, with a crowd of
admirers about her, and looking alike pure and bright, with 'a skin
as though she had been dieted on milk and roses.'
'No wonder it is, perhaps, that Lewie loves me,' thought the girl, as
she looked at the reflection of her own sweet face in a little bit of
oval mirror in the back of her huge Dutch fan; 'I _am_ pretty!'
She might have said 'lovely,' and more than lovely; and then she
smiled consciously at her own vanity.
Under the genial influence of her surroundings the heart of the girl
was full of happiness, and had but one regret that Lewie Baronald was
not there. Yet, she thought, 'to-morrow I shall see him--to-morrow
be with my darling, who at this moment is thinking of me.'
And amid the brilliance of the scene, so rich in the variety of
colour and costume, the strains of the music and beauty of the old
Dutch pleasure-grounds, she almost longed to be alone, with the
grass, the birds, the insects, and the flowers--alone in the sweet
summer evening with the perfume of the roses, the jasmine, and the
glorious honeysuckle around her.
On one hand, about a mile distant, was the Hague, with all its Gothic
spires and pointed gables; on the other spread the landscape so usual
in that country of cheese and butter--church-towers and wind-mills,
bright farmhouses, long rows of willow-trees, their green foliage
ruffling up white in the passing breeze; the grassy dykes and
embankments, a long continuity of horizontal lines, which seemed so
tame and insipid to the mountaineers of the Scots Brigade, and to all
but the Dutch themselves.
Among the groups around her, Dolores, as usual now, heard the growing
political quarrel between Great Britain and Holland openly and freely
discussed, together with the consequent and too probable departure of
the Scots Brigade from the latter for ever. That seemed almost a
settled thing--a certainty, if the quarrel became an open one, and
the probabilities wrung the girl's affectionate heart.
How would all this affect her lover and herself? Alas! she knew not
that the doom of the former for foreign service was nearly a fixed
thing now! And she was fated to receive her first mental shock that
evening, all unwittingly, from the Earl of Drumlanrig, who drew near
her, and with the stately manner of the time lifted his hat with one
hand, and with the other touched her hand as he bowed over it.
The golden light of the setting sun fell full upon her hair, flecking
its bronze with glorious tints, and giving her beauty a brilliance
that, to the Earl's appreciative eye, was very striking.
'You look like one of Watteau's beauties, waiting to hear herself
addressed in the language of Love,' said the old peer, smiling.
'Love has three languages, my lord,' observed Dolores.
'Three?'
'The pen, the tongue, and the eyes.'
'True; but I am too old to use any of these now,' said the Earl,
shaking his powdered head.
'The evening is a lovely one,' observed Dolores, after a pause.
'And the landscape yonder, as it stretches away towards Delft, is
wonderfully steeped in sunshine; and but for its flatness----' the
Earl paused.
'Your Scottish eyes cannot forgive that,' said Dolores laughing, as
she recalled some of Lewie Baronald's complaints on the same subject;
'but people cannot live on scenery.'
'So the great Samuel Johnson has written.'
'Who is he?' asked Dolores.
'A great lexicographer--a wonderful English savant--who believes in a
ghost in London, yet discredited the late earthquake at Lisbon. I
think I have seen you at the Vyverberg with Lewis Baronald of my
battalion; he has the honour of being known to you.'
'He visits us,' replied Dolores, the flower-like tints of her sweet
face growing brighter as the Earl spoke.
'He is a fine and handsome fellow, young Baronald; but it is strange
that he should wish to quit the Hague when it possesses such peculiar
attractions,' said the Earl markedly, and with a courteous bow.
'Quit the Hague!' repeated Dolores, as if she had not heard him
aright.
'I do not know whether the desire to do so, has any connection with
his uncle's scheme for the recapture or restitution to Holland of the
Island of Goree, off the coast of Senegal, in defiance of the old
Treaty of Nimeguen, which gave it to France, a scheme which will win
him the favour of their Mightinesses; but young Baronald's name was
sent, through me this morning, to the Director-General of Infantry,
for instant foreign service.'
'Foreign service!' whispered Dolores, in an almost breathless voice,
while her white throat gave a sharp nervous gasp, and her long lashes
drooped over her beautiful eyes. 'Surely, my lord, this must be some
mistake. Lewie--he had no desire to leave Holland, in any way--he
dreaded nothing so much as the departure of the Brigade to Britain;
and this--this----'
'No mistake, I assure you,' interrupted the Earl, all unaware of the
astonishment he was exciting and the pain he was inflicting, and both
of which he must have perceived had not the Heer van Otterbeck,
fortunately for Dolores, approached at that moment, and tapping and
proffering his Sèvres china snuff-box, 'buttonholed' him on the
inevitable subjects, the quarrel between Britain and Holland, Paul
Jones in the Texel, and Commodore Fielding's conduct in firing on the
Dutch fleet in the Channel, which the Commodore did with hearty
goodwill.
But for Dolores, the charms of the ridotto had vanished now; and in
sore perturbation of spirit and anxiety of heart, she bade her host
and hostess a hurried farewell, summoned her sedan, and took her
departure homeward.
The lights, the music--the music of Lulli; the _minuet de la cour_,
and the gaiety of the ridotto, faded away behind her as the heiress
took the somewhat lonely road that led to the villa of her mother.
She was escorted to her sedan by an officer of the Brigade, a friend
of Lewie's, who, as he closed the roof of it over her, thought that
she looked like--as he vowed to some others--'a lovely queen in
wax-work done up in a glass-case.'