My heart, I confess, gave way to a painful beating; I felt the impertinent blood rise swiftly to my cheeks; and was glad for the support of a chair. Macbeth, as Conyngham plays him, is the very soul of tragedy; and I am but too susceptible to its power.

“If it were done,” HE BEGAN, IN THE HUSHED TONE AND SLOW pace appropriate to murderous thought, turning before our eyes like a cage’d tiger—

“when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well

It were done quickly. If th’ assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With his surcease, success; that but this blow—”

(Here, a swiftly upraised hand, a clenching fist, the agony of indecision in his aspect.)

“Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We’ld jump the life to come. But in these cases

We still have judgment here, that we but teach

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return

To plague th’ inventor. This even-handed justice

Commends th’ ingredience of our poison’d chalice

To our own lips. He’s here in double trust:

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,”

(The nobility of his consciousness! The foulness of his thought!)

“Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

Who should against his murtherer shut the door,

Not bear the knife myself Besides, this Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu’d, against

The deep damnation of his taking-off;

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, hors’d

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind.”

(A long declining wail, as though uttered from within a tomb.)

“I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o’verleaps itself,

And falls on th’ other—”

The last words, whispered and yet utterly distinct, came like the gentle slip of leaves from a November bough; and his lips had scarcely ceased to move, when the applause that was his due rang forth in strenuous tumult. Every throat swelled with praise, and the madness of cheering all but blotted out Hugh Conyngham’s gentler thanks. The actor’s brilliant eye, and the fever of his cheek, spoke with firmer eloquence, however; and I read in his looks a grateful understanding. For such an one, as yet so young in the life of the stage — for he can be but thirty — to take his place among the Garricks and the Kembles, if only in the estimation as yet of Bath, must seem like glory, indeed.

The cheering did not cease; the clapping hands acquired a measured beat; and it seemed as though Hugh Conyngham must bow to the desire of the guests, and speak on — when the tenor of the hoarsest cries declined by an octave, and gained a sudden accent of horror and dismay. The acutest attention o’erspread the actor’s face; the crowd’s mood changed as perceptibly as though an icy draught had blown out the blazing fire — and I turned, to perceive a stumbling knot of bodies caught in an anteroom doorway.

“I fear some part of the Duchess’s acquaintance are but too disguised in truth,”[13] I said to Anne Lefroy. “We had best make our adieux, and summon the chairs, before this rout turns to a riot.”

“Nonsense. It is nothing but a bit of theatre — the stabbing of Duncan, I suspect.” She stepped towards the anteroom with the others, and protesting, I followed.

Craning on tip-toe, the better to discern the man who had stolen Hugh Conyngham’s scene, I comprehended a small salon to one side of the massive drawing-room, done up in Prussian blue picked out with gold. Its double doors were thrown wide and obscured by a press of bodies. The late Duke’s reception room? — Or perhaps a study? But all such observations were fleeting, for my eyes were fixed on one alone — the mettlesome Knight, my erstwhile dance partner. He strained in the grip of two stout fellows, and his reddened countenance worked in horror.

At his feet lay the White Harlequin.

The face still wore its mask, but behind the lozenge of velvet the eyes were sightless and staring. Blood pooled slowly on the Duchess’s Savonnerie carpet, as though the man called Portal had wished to exchange his white-patterned stuff for the rival Harlequin’s red.

I raised one hand to my lips to stifle a scream, and with the other, gripped Madam Lefroy’s arm. She tensed beneath my fingers.

A woman brushed past me with a flash of black curls, and fell in supplication at the Harlequin’s feet. The Medusa, Maria Conyngham. With shaking fingers she snatched at the dead man’s mask. “Richard! Oh, Richard!”

The voice of a bereaved mother, or an abandoned wife — the soul of a woman destroyed by grief. The crowd parted to admit Hugh Conyngham to the hushed circle, and he knelt at his sister’s side.

“Dead!” she cried, and fell weeping on his breast.

“Kinny?”

The voice, clear and sweet as a child’s, was the Lady Desdemona’s. She stood just behind Hugh Conyngham, on the edge of the crowd. The pallor of her face was extreme. But in her composure and the intensity of her dark grey eyes I saw something of the fierce Trowbridge will. Without even a look for the murdered Harlequin, she crossed to the Knight.

“Kinny, what have you done?”

“Nothing, Mona! I swear it! I found him just as you see!”

“Then show me what is in your hand!”

Her brother started, and released the thing, which fell clattering to the parquet floor — a bloody knife, chased in gold, as curved and deadly as a scimitar.

Chapter 2

Wilberforce Elliot Pays a Call

12 December 1804, cont.

THE UPROAR OF THE ASSEMBLED GUESTS WAS SWIFT AND sudden. The Dowager Duchess of Wilborough screamed, the Knight was wrestled into a chair, and not a few of the guests made swiftly for the door — being disinclined, one supposes, to a meeting with the constables that evening, and all the tedium it should require.

For my part, I had not the slightest hesitation in remaining. The murder of the White Harlequin had rendered Lord Harold’s business irrelevant; but he should assuredly be summoned now from London, and my observation of all in the Wilborough household should be as gold. My thoughts were suddenly diverted, however, by Anne Lefroy’s seeking a chair, her pallor extreme. Madam can never rely upon a physical courage in the face of blood, and I feared she should faint. Where were Henry and Eliza? A swift glance for a tower of birds’ nests and ship models — and I waved my sister to my side.

“Do you look to Madam Lefroy,” I enjoined, “while I attend to the murder.”

“But of course.” Eliza was all efficiency. “Henry! A glass of water, if you please — or better yet, brandy! And quickly!”

I returned to the anteroom doorway, and there found the Knight in the midst of an outburst.

“But do observe the open window! I assure you, whoever committed this dreadful deed has jumped to the paving below! Quickly, Jenkins — to the street, or he shall escape us entirely!”