THE PRUDE
On the evening of the day that had seen the meeting between Holles
and Tucker, at about the same hour that Sir John Lawrence was vainly
representing at Whitehall the expediency of closing the theatres and
other places of congregation in view of the outbreak of plague within
the City itself, His Grace of Buckingham was sitting down to supper
with a merry company in the great dining-room of Wallingford House.
Eleven sat down to a table that was laid for twelve. The chair on the
Duke’s right stood empty. The guest of honour, Miss Farquharson, had
not yet arrived. At the last moment she had sent a message that she
was unavoidably detained for some little time at home, and that, if on
this account it should happen that she must deny herself the honour of
sitting down to supper at his grace’s table, at least she would reach
Wallingford House in time for the reading with which his grace was to
delight the company.
It was in part a fiction. There was nothing to detain Miss Farquharson
beyond a revival of her uneasy intuitions, which warned her against
the increase of intimacy that would attend her inclusion in the Duke’s
supper-party. The play, however, was another affair. Therefore she
would so time her arrival that she would find supper at an end and the
reading about to begin. To be entirely on the safe side, she would
present herself at Wallingford House two hours after the time for which
she had been bidden.
His grace found her message vexatious, and he would have postponed
supper until her arrival but that his guests did not permit him to
have his own way in the matter. As the truth was that there was
no first act in existence, for the Duke had not yet written a line
of it and probably never would, and that supper was to provide the
whole entertainment, it follows that this would be protracted, and
that however late she came she was likely still to find the party at
table. Therefore her late arrival could be no grave matter in the end.
Meanwhile, the empty chair on the Duke’s right awaited her.
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.”
There was a momentary pause as of surprise; then louder than ever rose
their voices in hilarious acclamation of the announcement.
Buckingham sprang up and round, and several others rose with him to
give a proper welcome to the belated guest. Stanhope, one foot on his
chair, the other on the table, bowed to her with a flourish of the
slipper from which he had just drunk.
She stood at gaze, breathless and suddenly pale, on the summit of the
three steps that led down to the level of the chamber, her startled,
dilating eyes pondering fearfully that scene of abandonment. She saw
little Anne Seymour, whom she knew, struggling and laughing in the arms
of Sir Thomas Ogle. She saw Etheredge, whom she also knew, sitting with
flushed face and leering eyes, an arm about the statuesque bare neck of
Miss Howden, her lovely dark head upon his shoulder; she saw Stanhope
on high, capering absurdly, his wig awry, his speech halting and
indecorous; and she saw some others in attitudes that even more boldly
proclaimed the licence presiding over this orgy to which she had been
bidden.
Lastly she saw the tall white figure of the Duke advancing towards her,
his eyes narrowed, a half-smile on his full lips, both hands outheld in
welcome. He moved correctly, with that almost excessive grace that was
his own, and he at least showed no sign of the intoxication that marked
the guests at this Circean feast. But that afforded her no reassurance.
From pale that they had been, her cheeks--her whole body, it seemed to
her--had flamed a vivid scarlet. Now it was paling again, paling this
time in terror and disgust.
Fascinatedly she watched his grace’s advance for a moment. Then
incontinently she turned, and fled, with the feelings of one who
had looked down for a moment into the pit of hell and drawn back in
shuddering horror before being engulfed.
Behind her fell a dead silence of astonishment. It endured whilst you
might have counted six. Then a great peal of demoniac laughter came
like an explosion to drive her fearfully onward.
Down the long panelled gallery she ran as we run in a nightmare, making
for all her efforts but indifferent speed upon the polished, slippery
floor, gasping for breath in her terror of a pursuit of which she
fancied that already she heard the steps behind her. She reached the
hall, darted across this, and across the vestibule, her light silk
mantle streaming behind her, and so gained at last the open door,
stared at by lackeys, who wondered, but made no attempt to stay her.
Too late came the shout from the pursuing Duke ordering them to bar
her way. By then she was already in the courtyard, and running like
a hare for the gateway that opened upon Whitehall. Out of this the
hackney-coach that had brought her was at that moment slowly rumbling.
Panting she overtook it, just as the driver brought it to a halt in
obedience to her cry.
“To Salisbury Court,” she gasped. “Drive quickly!”
She was in, and she had slammed the door as the Duke’s lackeys--three
of them--ran alongside the vehicle, bawling their commands to stop. She
flung half her body through the window on the other side to countermand
the order.
“Drive on! Drive quickly, in God’s name!”
Had they still been in the courtyard, it is odds that the driver would
not have dared proceed. But they were already through the gateway
in Whitehall itself, and the coach swung round to the left in the
direction of Charing Cross. Here in the open street the driver could
defy the Duke’s lackeys, and the latter dared not make any determined
attempt to hinder him.
The coach rolled on, and Miss Farquharson sank back to breathe at last,
to recover from her nameless terror and to regain her calm.
The Duke went back with dragging feet and scowling brow to be greeted
by a storm of derision upon which in more sober mood his guests would
hardly have ventured. He attempted to laugh with them, to dissemble the
extent to which he had been galled. But he hardly made a success of
it, and there was distinct ill-temper in the manner in which he flung
himself down into his great chair. Mr. Etheredge, leaning across Miss
Howden, laid a white jewelled hand on his friend’s arm.
He alone of all the company, although he had probably drunk more deeply
than any, showed no sign of intoxication beyond the faint flush about
his eyes.
“I warned you,” he said, “that the little prude is virtuous, and that
she will require much patience. This is your chance to exercise it.”