In an instant all was confusion. Everybody sprang to their feet--ladies
shrieked in chorus, gentlemen swore and drew their swords, and looked
to see if they might not expect a whole army to drop from the sky upon
them, as they stood. No other battalion, however, followed this forlorn
hope; and seeing it, the gentlemen took heart of grace and closed around
the unceremonious intruder. The queen had sprung from her royal seat,
and stood with her bright lips parted, and her brighter eyes dilating in
speechless wonder. The bench, with the judge at their head, had followed
her example, and stood staring with all their might, looking, truth to
tell, as much startled by the sudden apparition as the fair sex. The
said fair sex were still firing off little volleys of screams in chorus,
and clinging desperately to their cavaliers; and everything, in a word,
was in most admired disorder.
Tam O'Shanter's cry, "Weel done, Cutty sark!" could not have produced
half such a commotion among his "hellish legion" as the emphatic debut
of Sir Norman Kingsley among these human revelers. The only one who
seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise was the prisoner, who was
quietly and quickly making off, when the malevolent and irrepressible
dwarf espied him, and the one shock acting as a counter-irritant to
the other, he bounced fleetly over the table, and grabbed him in his
crab-like claws.
This brisk and laudable instance of self-command had a wonderful and
inspiriting effect on the rest; and as he replaced the pale and palsied
prisoner in his former position, giving him a vindictive shake and
vicious kick with his royal boots as he did so, everybody began to feel
themselves again. The ladies stopped screaming, the gentlemen ceased
swearing, and more than one exclamation of astonishment followed the
cries of terror.
"Sir Norman Kingsley! Sir Norman Kingsley!" rang from lip to lip of
those who recognized him; and all drew closer, and looked at him as if
they really could not make up their mind to believe their eyes. As
for Sir Norman himself, that gentleman was destined literally, if not
metaphorically, to fall on his legs that night, and had alighted on
the crimson velvet-carpet, cat-like, on his feet. In reference to his
feelings--his first was one of frantic disapproval of going down;
his second, one of intense astonishment of finding himself there with
unbroken bones; his third, a disagreeable conviction that he had about
put his foot in it, and was in an excessively bad fix; and last, but
not least, a firm and rooted determination to make the beet of a bad
bargain, and never say die.
His first act was to take off his plumed hat, and make a profound
obeisance to her majesty the queen, who was altogether too much
surprised to make the return politeness demanded, and merely stared at
him with her great, beautiful, brilliant eyes, as if she would never
have done.