Now it is quite clear that however brilliant might have been the prospects of the Flybekins, the peer and his lady wished them any where but in London; and, rather than invite them to Grosvenor-square to dinner, the former would have been glad to be let off with a writership for one of the sons in India.
Their carriage was ordered at ten, to convey them to the Duchess of R.'s party, and Lord B. proposed to make a friendly call upon their relations before waiting on Her Grace. Accordingly thither they drove, accompanied by two footmen bearing flaming flambeaux, the custom of the great in those days, when the town was not so well lighted as in the present age. The signs of this custom are indeed still to be seen in the extinguishers attached to the railings in front of many houses, which served for the footmen to extinguish their lights.
Meantime the Flybekins slept on, not dreaming of the honour intended them, and were as sound asleep as Duncan in Macbeth's castle, when a long thundering rap at the door startled them amid their slumbers. The diminutive, bandy footman had gone home with the coachman and horses, the landlady and her family had followed the example of the lodgers; and before any one could rise to unbar and open the door, to ascertain the cause of such an unusual alarm, a second louder and longer rap had been made upon it, and which awoke the sleepers to an instinctive idea that the house was on fire; a notion confirmed by the strong glare of red light reflected against their windows, and illuminating the apartment, as the footmen impatiently shook thousands of sparks from the flambeaux.
As Bonaparte observed upon another occasion, "From the sublime to the ridiculous is but one step." So it was with the Flybekins. From the most sublime repose they hurried into the ridiculous fire-escapes, in the full conviction that the lower part of the house was on fire; and without waiting to dress, or inquire into the real state of affairs, they gave the signal-word "Now!" and both descended in all the freshness of their fears to the pavement before the door!
The wondering lord and lady, and still more wondering footmen, glared upon the apparition before them with the most inexplicable amazement, totally at a loss to conceive the cause of such a novel reception. The terrified pair were, like Othello, "perplexed in the extreme," when they found themselves, instead of being in the confusion of a fire, deposited beneath the windows of a magnificent carriage, attended by footmen with white torches, and a full dressed lady and gentleman inquiring after them, and the meaning of the extraordinary descent. A few minutes served to explain the mal à propos mistake; the detected pair sought refuge in the hall of the house, with some such feeling as our first parents experienced when they had tasted the fatal apple in the garden of Eden. The carriage rolled away with the tittering coachman and footmen, and the ill-suppressed mirth of their master and mistress, who quickly disseminated the story throughout the fashionable throng of the party whither they were bent, and which remained for the rest of the season a standing joke wherever Lord and Lady B. appeared.