Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Summer/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
"Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; robes and furr'd gowne hide all."
Nine o'clock is striking, and I am standing before a looking-glass, admiring myself with a hearty appreciation that it would be folly indeed to expect any one else to feel. For the first time in my life I am en grande tenue. With something of the recklessness of a man who decides that, if he must be hung, it may as well be for a sheep as a lamb, I am arrayed with a sublime disregard for such vulgar considerations as pounds, shillings, and pence, as might well set the governor dancing a fandango if he were but here to see; not but what he will dance it safely enough over the bill. Out of my glistening dress of gauzę poppies burn redly, in great bunches at my side, and on my shoulder, and in my hair; they even twinkle cheerfully on my little white satin shoes, that look vastly pretty, but pinch most horribly.
A tap at the door, and enter Milly's maid with a bouquet, "With Mr. Vasher's compliments." As she retires I take it my hand. It is of blood red and yellow gold roses with a few ferns, and they look out of place with my vagrant wild flowers. I shall carry them though for all that. A supremely happy, well-dressed, blessed young woman I look as I take up my fan and gloves, and run lightly down the stairs.
My first ball! Will it be as disappointing, I wonder, as the fulfilment of most earthly wishes usually is? I make my way to the ball-room, wide and cool and lovely with the beauty of fair proportions, and delicate, brilliant dazzle of flowers.
The musicians are in their places, but nobody is visible, not even that mythical personage, the first arrival. Was ever any one known to confess that he or she arrived first anywhere! And yet somebody must, unless indeed several people race each other to the hall door, and from the hall door to the reception room, and burst in on the host and hostess simultaneously, "like three jolly butchers all of a row." I have laid down my bouquet, and am fighting with the fourth button of my long gloves (I think I rather overdid them, they nearly reach to my elbow), when Milly sails in, majestic, beautiful, with the value of the clothes of twenty ordinarily well-dressed females on her back.
"Good gracious!" she says, catching sight of me, "how—how decent you look!"
"Yes," I say with delight, "is it not wonderful? I had no idea so much virtue lay in a gown!"
"Upon my word!" says Alice's gay voice behind me. "Talk about the ugly duckling———"
I turn round to look at her, a dainty apparition in pale amber, with sapphires twinkling on her arms, neck, and hair. Alice is one of those fortunate people whom each colour seems to suit better than the last. Dress her in blue she is heavenly; in pink she is ravishing; white sets her off to perfection; and I have even known her emerge radiant from a bilious bottle-green serge that might have puzzled the fairness of Cytheræa herself.
"Do not revive that stale, stale old story," I say, entreatingly. "I know it is my clothes, not me; but let us try and shut our eyes to the fact. Let us for one evening indulge in the pious fiction that I am good looking!"
"I don't know that it is altogether your dress," says Alice, considering. "I have seen you look astonishingly well once or twice lately. If I had not always been so used to the idea that you were plain, Nell, I should say you were rather pretty."
Profoundly as I have been admiring myself, this unexpected praise makes me feel modest, and I turn the conversation with considerable haste.
"Has any one seen Silvia yet? I suppose she will be in something wonderful."
"Was Silvia Fleming ever known to waste her sweetness on the desert air?" says Alice, seating herself. "When the company is assembled, and the music strikes up, she will appear, not before!"
"I do wish Fane would come down," says Milly, who is arranged in the expectant attitude of a hostess, on a high and ample crimson velvet chair, that to the vulgar eye bears a wonderful resemblance to a throne. "He always behaves in this way: it is too bad."
Like other women, Milly likes to be supported when she is receiving her guests; but Fane, doting lover and obedient spouse that he is, distinctly objects to the process of standing still and saying, "How do you do?" for an hour at a stretch, and when it is his plain and bounden duty so to do—makes himself scarce. Here come the Listers! Lister mère in a low (save the mark!) black velvet, with uncommonly fine diamonds resting on her withered, brown, fleshless old collar-bones. I suppose mahogany is a better foil to the precious stones than alabaster, since it is so much oftener seen. Her daughters wear apple-green silk and apple-blossom flowers, harrowing contrast! and the eye aches as it rests on the inharmonious whole. Will our matrons and maids ever, I wonder, learn to drape their garments, following the lines of the figure as a sallow Frenchwoman does, instead of breaking out all over in angles, tags, bumps, and excrescences?
A confused sound in the distance heralds an arrival.
"Nell," says Milly, hastily, "will you find Fane, and make him come here at once?"
Rather a difficult matter that; I set out, however, with a bold front, and a regret that I have not been able after all to see the first people walk in Ascending the stairs, I hear cackles and sounds of merriment above me. Looking up, I discover Fane and that other choice spirit, Captain Oliver, cutting capers on the landing, and evidently prepared to d camp at a moment's notice, if any emissary from Milly appears upon the scene.
"Milly says———" I begin, rebukingly.
"I know," says Fane, swinging me round to his side in a manner that may be indicative of brotherly affection, but certainly is not good for my gauze trappings.
"Now, Nell, did you ever see so much back as that before?"
Following his example, I crane my head and body over the banisters until I nearly precipitate myself into the hall below, and am rewarded by the sight of a dowager, who looks as though her enemy had assaulted her from the rear, and robbed her of half her clothes.
"The older she gets," says Fane, "the more she shows; and the Lord only knows what further revelations Time may have in store for us!"
"She couldn't go much farther," I said, comfortingly. "I never knew before that middle-aged people's backs were of a rich coffee colour, did you, Fane? Who is that shambling little man?"
"Bareback's husband. She might wear him as a bustle, and never know he was there."
The stream below widens, swells; people come pouring past in tens and twenties, sleek, and clean, and glossy, freshly powdered, freshly crimped, freshly smiling. What a pity that they will all be so draggled, and hot, and untidy in two hours' time! Fat mammas, portly papas; pretty young girls, well preserved old ones; young boys, old boys, middle-aged boys; women white-backed, yellow-backed, brown-backed; women dressed by Elise, women dressed by themselves, well-groomed, ill-groomed, over-dressed, under-dressed, and not dressed at all. Truly it is a "motley crowd," and from our vantage ground we criticize them with the unripe sarcasm of our not over-wise youth.
I wonder why the young, and those who have only had the bright side of life turned to them, are so pitiless to the peculiarities, the faults, and the follies of others? It is only the old who are tolerant and merciful, speaking more kind words of their fellow-mien than malicious ones.
After a quarter of an hour's impartial survey of the charms passing beneath us, "I think," says Fane, "I may venture down now without being let in by Milly for twenty-five duty dances."
Rum-tum-tum-tiddy! goes the music.
"Come along," cries Fane, "you and I will have the first together, Nell!"
"Miss Adair is engaged to me for this," says Paul's voice behind me. How long has he been there, I wonder? "I have been looking for you everywhere," he says, as Fane and Captain Oliver go downstairs. "I thought your toilette must have proved a wonderfully complicated affair."
"Do you like me?" I ask, stepping back from him, and holding out my skirts in my hands. "You chose it for me you know; and, to tell you a secret, to-night I am not Helen Adair at all: I am Howell & James!"
"Like you?" he says, coming a pace nearer and looking at me keenly from head to foot, and from foot back to head again; "No, I don't like you!"
"I am sorry," I say disappointedly. "I thought I looked so nice! I was so charmed with myself!"
"I like your poppies," he says, touching those upon my shoulder with the tip of his finger. They make these things very well, do they not?"
"I will never ask you anything again as long as I live," I say, with dignity. "You might have tried, at any rate, to say some thing just a little polite;" and I march away.
But he catches my hand, flowers and all; and then I remember that I have not yet thanked him for his bouquet.
"Did I vex her," he says, looking down on my flushed face. "Was she such a vain little soul after all? Nell, Nell! after all the times I have exhorted you not to care about being pretty!"
"I am not vain," I say, turning my head away: "I never had anything to be vain of! But when one has been quite ugly for a very long while, and been told so every day of one's life, it is very disheartening, just as one begins to think one can look decent, for a person to say your dress looks nice, not you."
"There will be plenty of men to tell you that when you get downstairs, Nell," he says. "Can it make any difference to you what I think?"
"No, of course it does not!" I say, magnanimously, and ashamed of my temporary fit of vanity. "I could not expect you to say what you did not think, could I?"
"If I were to tell you all I thought," he says, looking down on me, "I should frighten you, perhaps, and you would not understand. Perhaps you will let me tell you some day."
"Let us go down," I say, with a sudden shrinking away from him; "the first dance is already over."
"Yes, it is over, and in the hall the people are pacing up and down, backwards and forwards, talking, laughing, flirting, in all the first gloss of their smartness; the men reduced to the smallest possible quantity of clothes, the women swelling forth in a lavish prodigality that mocks at "yards" and makes light of "breadths." Among them all I do not see any face I know; but a great many people nod and bow, and call acquaintance with Paul Vasher.
The haunting, matchless strains of "Blue Danube" come floating out to meet us as we enter the ball-room, and Paul puts his arm about my waist and we glide away, the first couple. After all, it is not difficult to dance when one has a perfect partner: perhaps he adapts his step to mine-at any rate, we move in harmony As the room becomes crowded we stop and sit down to look around us. Truly the scene is amusing enough, for everybody is revolving who has the means, without any question as to suitability in the age or size of that means: tall men dancing away from little partners, little men convulsively clutching tall women, old men and young maids, married women and young boys, fat girls dancing with Don Quixotes, Sancho Panzas, puffing round with lean virgins. Everybody seems to have got the wrong partner and not to mind it in the least. There are couples who rush round and round the room, crashing through every obstacle, and leaving overturned bodies, sore shins, and angry hearts behind; leisurely couples who tread their measures delicately, and are invariably overtaken and run down by the more bustling couples who come behind; couples who aimlessly drift about and are knocked to and fro by the rest. . . .
"I never saw myself dancing," I say to Paul, "but do you think I ever looked like that?" I glance at Miss Lister, whose head is wandering all over her partner's shirt front, seeking rest and finding none.
"I will look at you presently when you are dancing with somebody else, and tell you," he says.
"How well she dances!" I exclaim, nodding towards a mountain of fat that is going by, held together by a whipper-snapper whose arm refuses to go any farther than the last hook and eye. "Can you tell me why those enormous women go round so sweetly? They seem to turn on a pivot! What a pity it is this one does not live in a place I once heard of, where women are sold by the pound—flesh, not good looks, being considered the most marketable commodity!"
"Only she might object to being sold," says Paul, laughing. "Shall we go on again?"
"Look at St. John," says Paul, as we pause to take breath. "However earnest his solicitations, do not be prevailed upon to dance with him: he has a knack of making spectacles of his partners."
"But I have promised," I say, with some dismay. "He asked me at dinner, and of course I was obliged to say yes. Do you not know that anything in the shape of a partner is better than none at all?"
"You will know plenty of people presently," he says. "Don't believe all the nonsense they will talk to you, Nell."
"But I like nonsense: it is far more amusing than heavy common sense; besides, ball-room conversation is never expected to be very wise, is it?"
The music has ceased, and we are walking down the room, past the wall-flowers-prim and patient, with their white, white boots, that by-and-by will be their shame not their glory, and their sweet little smile that ems to say, "We are sitting down, certainly; but only because we much prefer doing so to dancing!"—past the portly, coffee-backed observant dowagers, and so to Milly, who is looking with real indignation at Fane's rapidly vanishing heels, which he has been shaking with much agility ever since he came downstairs. She is talking to a long, lean, liver-coloured gentleman whose name I hear is Viscount Bingley. We are all standing together when Silvia Fleming comes slowly past, the eye of every man and woman present following her. She wears white brocade slashed with crimson, and her fairness shows more dazzlingly than ever against Sir George Vestris' dark beauty.
"Are you not going to dance with Miss Fleming to-night?" I ask, as we move away. "If so, you had better be quick in asking her, for in five minutes her card will be full."
"Therefore I will not presume to ask so great an honour," he says. "And now, Nell, will you let me see your card?"
It is hanging at my side—an unmarked expanse as spotless as the wallflowers' boots; and I feel rather ashamed of it.
"You will keep all your waltzes for me?" he says, scribbling down his initials at somewhat short intervals. Yes; that is to say, if you do not meet with somebody whose waltzing you prefer to mine."
We walk about and make confidential remarks to each other concerning the company. We agree that those bare-necked, plumed old dowagers are unpleasant spectacles; but that the decorous, high-gowned, middle-aged folk who wear their own hair, and not too many fal-lals, are good to look upon, and by no means to be pitied, since they have had their fun, danced their jigs, and now, youth's fits and fevers, ups and downs past, cannot surely be sorry to sit down in their comfortable prosperity and rest. We agree that it would be a kindness on the part of any one present to fetch a shawl to cover Mrs. Lister's unveiled charms; but on my suggesting that Paul should take a neighbouring antimacassar to her with his own compliments, he proves himself to be greater at discretion than valour. We think it would be a hard nut for a philosopher to crack if he were called on to decide why so many ancient, purblind, doting old people persist in going to balls, where they are neither useful nor ornamental, and are divided in opinion as to whether supper or scandal are the attractions, or an absolute determination not to confess themselves too old for society and conviviality, is at the root of the matter. We decide that the lack of tournure in the girls present is appalling (although, for the matter of that, I am about as well qualified for giving an opinion on that point as a South Sea Islander); and that whenever one sees a good figure it is generally capped by a plain face; and that the pretty-faced miss almost always has her head very ill set on her shoulders, and wears a badly made gown.
"I have often wished I were a man," I say, as we turn back into the drawing-rooms, "but I never wished it as heartily as I do to night. Even that silly-looking boy, propping himself up against the door yonder, is free to choose his partners, while I have to wait until some one or other condescendingly fetches me out."
"But you can always say 'No!'"
"Not in the face of this half-filled programme," I say, glancing down at it where it sprawls widely open across the front of my dress. "It looks very like an advertisement, does it not?"
"Shall I tell you something," says Paul, looking down upon me with half-pleased, half-vexed eyes. "It is great nonsense; but then you like nonsense, do you not?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, I heard one man say to another, a moment ago—'Does any one know who is that pretty little creature in the poppies?' And the other answered, 'No; but I am determined to be introduced to her before I am half an hour older.'"
"You are making it up!" I say quickly. "Did you think it would please me?"
"Nell," says Milly's voice beside me, 'I have brought some gentlemen to introduce to you," and she goes through half a dozen introductions and sails away. My card is produced and duly written upon by them all, then they make their bows and retire.
"I should not know one of them again if it were to save my life, so it is to be hoped they will claim me all right," I say with some dismay as they vanish.
"I don't think they will forget," says Paul reassuringly. "And now here comes St. John to fetch you; it was the third round you promised him, was it not?"
"Our dance, I think Miss Adair," says the little man, and I put my hand under his arm and go away, with a rueful look at Paul.
John Peel is ringing forth in glorious fashion as we enter the ball-room. Can anything be more maddening, I wonder, than good music and a bad partner? Lord St. John does not wait for an opening, but gripping me round the waist, plunges wildly into the melée. On watching him I had been struck by the way in which he appeared to run away from his partner: on careering with him, I find that—proud and happy as I should be to be left out of his gyrations altogether—there is no such luck, for he holds on to me like grim death, "without any regard to my squalls or my kicks" (as a poet once wrote of a victim very little worse off than I), and that fast as he tears round me I am forced into a very similar and indecently hasty appearance of likewise tearing round him. In vain I ask him to stop. . . . I am, indeed, too deeply engaged in the all-absorbing business of holding on, and praying that Providence will bring me out of this galére without the loss of my front teeth, to say much; so on we rush, running full tilt at the company; dashing into the couples before us, recoiling violently on to those behind; landing with convulsive energy on the wallflowers' toes, taking headers into the wall or space, pelted with blows, harassed with return kicks, abraded with sharp elbows, verily we run a race as perilous as ever did Dick Turpin, but are not, like him, clothed with honour, but disgrace!
"Stop!" I cry loudly, when we have upset our fourth couple, and only saved ourselves from rolling upon their prostrate forms by a succession of aërial bounds that would not have done discredit to Taglioni. "Stop!" And being tired by his exertions, he looses me, and I tumble into a chair, and go very near to weeping. There is a smile on the countenances of the lookers on, the very wallflowers are grinning—nasty little wretches, who would not object to be twirled round like mops, rather than not dance at all! Examining into the extent of my injuries, I find that I have a lump on my forehead that will probably be black and blue to-morrow, a partially-skinned arm, and a tolerably severe cut over my left elbow, which I have indeed been using as an active weapon of offence and defence, as is the wont of women-kind in a ball-room skirmish.
"Poor little soul!" says Paul's voice beside me, and looking up with eyes that are filled partly with anger, partly with tears, I see that his face is dark with wrath, and that his glance at Lord St. John is of no very friendly character.
"You should have taken better care of Miss Adair," he says, sternly. "Do you see how you have hurt her?"
Poor little Lord St. John! He has no idea but that he has distinguished himself in a very spirited and successful manner, and is mopping his forehead preparatory to doing it all over again.
"Is she tired?" he asks, with genuine astonishment. "And we got on so well, too!"
"She is too tired to dance the rest of this galop," says Paul, impatiently. "Miss Lister is not dancing, I see. Why do you not ask her?"
Lord St. John is essentially docile, he always does as he is bid, so he fetches the young lady, and starts off again with much zeal, if little discretion.
"I should like to thrash that little fool," says Paul, looking at my scratched arm, and making a sudden movement towards it that he as quickly checks. "Dairymaids and cooks should be his partners, not delicate girls like you."
"I have one mercy to be thankful for," I say, sitting up and putting my hand to my head to see if my poppies still bloom there," he did not let me down!"
"Miss Lister will not be so fortunate then; for if they don't go down before they are five minutes older I am much mistaken. Look at them now!"
I do look. Lord St. John and his unhappy partner are taking a header straight down through the room; and another couple equally daring and unconscious, are also taking a header from the opposite end; and, alas! before either couple has time to get out of the way of the other, they meet with a violent impetus that scatters all four to the winds of heaven, or rather to the polished oak shades of the earth below. They may be severely damaged—no doubt they are; but the laugh of the multitude is ever against those who cry out under misfortune, so they all jump up again in a trice—all, that is to say, but Miss Lister, who sits on the ground and weeps bitterly, displaying a good quarter of a yard of flat ankle, that considerably mars the effect of her pearly tears. In vain her unfortunate partner assures her of his sorrow in reducing her to such a plight—in vain her friends hold out friendly hands to help her up: there she sits and weeps.
"Perhaps if Oliver were to come to the rescue she would be persuaded," says Paul; and as he speaks that gallant warrior, attracted by the crowd, and not having seen the catastrophe, approaches with much interest, and peeps over. At the sight that meets his gaze—to his shame be it spoken—he turns tail and runs.
"It must have been her ankle!" says Paul, in deep disgust. "I wonder they do not call in two stout footmen."
She gets up at last, though, with unavailing tears running down her hot angry face, and her apple-blossom wreath cocked rakishly over one eye, as though it rather enjoyed her miserable condition than otherwise.
"Let me see your card," says Paul, stooping over it; "ours is the second from this. I see your next is with Sir William Aldous."
"Was not he the man who was all nose and no legs?" I say, considering; or the one with a big forehead and no chin?"
"You are very disrespectful to your admirers," says Paul, laughing, "considering your charms brought the assemblage together."
"My charms!" I say, laughing aloud, "Are they then un fait accompli? Are they placed beyond the region of doubt? Well, I am proud, really proud of the collection my charms brought together! Take me back to Milly, please, before my partner comes to fetch me."
On our way Silvia passes us on Viscount Bingley's arm. His sallow face is alight with admiration.
"He seems to admire her very much," I say.
"He loves every pretty woman he sees," says Paul, with a queer smile, "whether she be white, brown, or black. If the love of woman is really a 'liberal education,' then he reflects great discredit on your sex, child; for the older he gets the worse he grows!"
I am scarcely by Milly's side when Sir William Aldous comes to claim me for the Lancers, and I find myself excellently well-amused, for he turns out to be a fool of the finest quality and most exquisite water. All through these sober, decorous old Lancers (how much longer will they be permitted, I wonder, in this age of break-downs and fast dances? The nineteenth century stands them; but will the twentieth?) he amuses me charmingly; for fools may be divided into two classes—those who know it, and those who do not. My partner is of the latter class; therefore, since his silly remarks are always uttered with a perfect air of good faith, and are neither recalled nor repented of, he is boundlessly fresh, inexhaustibly amusing, as no wise man could be with solid reason, admirable logic, and weighty pro and con. It is tolerably easy to guess at what a sensible man will do, under any given circumstances; but I defy any one to forecast the words and acts of a downright talking fool. He will unconsciously say things that are almost like flashes of genius, his words will be the very inspiration of folly, and he will scale heights and plumb depths before which wise men have stood silent and abashed.
The dance over, we go into the hall, and so to the refreshment room, where he leaves me in a comfortable chair, and departs in search of claret-cup. Close to me a group of men are discussing the charms of their late partners, with a freedom that should delight those ladies, if they were by to hear.
"Give you my word of honour, Dalrymple," says one, "she had an entirely new set for this evening. Only had a very few teeth left—remaining stumps were taken out yesterday—new set put in this morning—here to-night!"
"Don't believe any mortal woman could stand it," says another.
"Then she's immortal, my dear fellow," says the first speaker, "for I know it to be a fact. She's engaged too. Rather awkward person to kiss—eh? Things may come to a dead lock."
"Or lock-jaw."
"I hope this is right," says Sir William, appearing before me. "I did not quite like the flavouring, so I have been showing the butler how to improve it."
So that accounts for the disgusted expression on Birkhead's face. Evidently he does not appreciate a fool as keenly as I do!