THE BALL
WHEN a man has not been provided by Nature with more than an average
share of personal advantages, that same process of dressing for a ball
_after_ a bachelor’s dinner-party is an affair of considerable trouble
and dissatisfaction. To devote those minutes, that are wont to pass so
pleasantly in the enjoyment of conviviality or repose, to the cares of
the toilet, is in itself a sufficient infliction; but the contrast is
rendered all the more aggravating by abortive efforts to eradicate the
effluvia of tobacco-smoke, to disguise the appearance of satiety, not to
say repletion, attendant on four courses and a dessert, with champagne
and claret at discretion, and to achieve that general aspect of light
and airy gaiety which even middle-aged gentlemen of spherical
proportions consider most captivating in the eyes of the fair.
All these difficulties had Mr. Sawyer to encounter on the night of the
Harborough Ball.
Yes, the important event had arrived at last, after much discussion by
stewards and lady patronesses, and general differences of opinion
amongst all concerned. After protestations from some that they could by
no means fill their houses, and assurances from others that nothing
would induce them to travel such distances by night in bad weather, and
declarations from all that, for their own part, they voted the whole
thing a bore, the day was at length fixed, the musicians engaged, the
supper ordered, and the room prepared.
“It was to be a capital ball,” said one, “comprising the _élite_ of
three counties, and at least as many beautiful _débutantes_.” “There
would be nobody there,” vowed another, “but the M.F.H., and the M.P.,
and old Mrs. Halfcaste, with a bevy of the townspeople.” The room would
be cold, prophesied the malcontents; the supper scanty, the roads
slippery, and the moon obscured. Miss Cecilia Dove, in talking the
matter over with her mamma, inclined first to one, and then the other of
these opinions; supporting each in turn with vigour and tenacity. Under
any circumstances, however, she had determined to go.
Behold Mr. Sawyer then, in his little smoky bedroom, struggling into a
white neckcloth, about ten P.M., and contemplating a pale face and heavy
eyes; the unattractive appearance of which he could not wholly attribute
to the bad glass which adorned his dressing-table. He was nervous, too,
was our friend John Standish Sawyer; unquestionably nervous. Of all
nights in his life this was the one when he would fain have borrowed, if
he could, the exterior of another hunting-man, a very different-looking
person, whom painters strive to represent as worthy to be the Queen of
Beauty’s choice, in their embodiment of the hapless loves of Venus and
Adonis. Alas! Mr. S. could not conceal from himself that he was anything
but a good-looking fellow.
Nevertheless, a plain exterior, like a bad farm, must equally be
cultivated at the proper season. Dress works wonders, and the tailor, if
you employ Poole, doubtless helps to make the man. Like Brummel, our
friend spoilt a good many white neckcloths before he effected _the_
desired tie. At last, however, he got it to his liking, swung himself
into a roomy dress-coat—scarlet, with silk lining—and proceeded, not
without trepidation, to the scene of action.
Is there any penalty or disgrace attached to the solecism of being
earlier than one’s neighbours at ball, concert or other public occasion
of festivity? It is wonderful what pains people will take to avoid this
appearance of over-punctuality. I cannot call to mind any occasion on
which I have thus had the room _entirely_ to myself; nor did I ever meet
any one who would confess that he had enjoyed this monopoly of vacuity.
And yet somebody must arrive first! I wonder how that desolate one
employs the long leaden moments. Does he wander about with his hands in
his pockets, trying to look as if he expected something, and scanning
the decorations with critical _sang froid_! Does he fraternise with the
musicians, who, drawn up in a row, must present, indeed, a formidable
array of eyes to a person of moderate apprehensions, and win their
eternal goodwill by performing a _pas seul_ to their voluntary strains?
or does he give way to a cowardly despair, and, retreating in disorder,
retire incontinently to bed? Probably not the latter, or the ball would
never begin.
Mr. Sawyer had none of this to confront single-handed. Loitering about
the cloak-room door, he came upon Struggles, Brush, Savage, and Co.; all
equally averse with himself to plunge prematurely into the festive
scene, and was greeted by the conclave, from whom he had parted about an
hour previously, with a boisterous cordiality born of their potations.
“He’s _meant_!” said one, talking of our friend as if he were a
racehorse in strong training, whom each had backed heavily to win.
“Got-up to the nines!” exclaimed another, scanning him from top to toe,
as an adjutant scans a recruit. “Hang it! Sawyer, you’ve done it
to-night!” laughed a third; “they won’t let _you_ out of this alive!”
And Mr. S., who rather flattered himself the general effect was
favourable, did not quite know whether to be pleased with their
approbation or to take huff at their familiarity. Meanwhile carriages
were setting down with increasing frequency. The clatter was quite
alarming in the paved streets of the little country town; the steam of
horses almost obscured the carriage-lamps, and sweet little
satin-slippered feet stepped daintily from inside, over an interregnum
of wet straw, on to a soppy foot-cloth. When ankles are neatly turned,
but not otherwise, it is surprising what a deal of holding-up is
required by the compressible and expansive _crinoline_. Warm greetings
and affectionate pressures of the hand were exchanged between such
swains as were lucky enough to intercept them and their own peculiar
damsels in the passage to the cloak-room, whither the ladies betook
themselves forthwith, there to leave their becoming and coquettish
little _burnouses_ ere they shook out their canvas and got under sail in
all the splendour of fall dress.
Mammas looked approvingly at their bridling daughters, as the latter
tripped into the ball-room before them; mammas, the very counterpart of
those blooming beauties, had you rolled up two or three into one, but
fair-shouldered, brown-haired, and comely yet, as English matrons are,
up to a very uncertain period. Papas, with white gloves and red faces,
slapped each others’ backs, and talked about yesterday’s gallop. The
musicians struck up the prettiest waltz of the last season but one;
Major Brush, with unexampled temerity, dashed into the enchanted ring
with Lady Barbara Blazer in his arms; Bob Blazer followed suit with
flirting Miss Tiptoes. A whirling maze of tulle, and wreaths, and
sparkling gems, and perfumed floating tresses pervaded the magic circle;
louder pealed the cornet-à-piston, brighter glanced the eyes, faster
flew the dancers, the top of the room began to fill, and the ball might
now be said to have fairly begun.
It is only your habitual ball-goer, however, who can thus, like some
consummate swimmer, dash in with a header and strike out at once into
the flood. Less experienced performers may be excused for shivering
awhile on the brink. Shy gentlemen congregating round the doorway fitted
their gloves on with tedious accuracy, looking over their collars
meanwhile at their future partners, with an air of melancholy defiance;
the weaker-minded ones informing each other confidentially that it was
“going to be a capital ball!” The ranks of these waverers thinned
perceptibly though, as the dance wore on, and Mr. Sawyer, who did not
waltz, found himself ere long stranded high and dry at the top of the
room amongst the grandees; a little bewildered, truly, and lost in such
a crowd of strangers, but greatly sustained, nevertheless, by Hope and
Bordeaux.
These stimulants, as might be expected, waned simultaneously. Fresh
arrivals blocked the doorway; and still she didn’t come! Not she,
indeed! Catch Miss Cissy doing anything half so green as arriving early
or staying late. No, no; if you want to be sought after, ladies, you
must be sparing of your presence and economical of your smiles. There is
no dog so obedient as the one you keep sitting up on his hind legs, to
beg for a crumb of biscuit at a time.
Mr. Sawyer was in despair. As a stranger, however, he was presented to
the grandees, and found himself, he scarcely knew how, engaged to dance
“The Lancers” with Lady Barbara Blazer, a formidable beauty, of dashing,
not to say, overwhelming manners, and who attributed to extraordinary
forwardness, for which she rather liked him, our friend’s confused and
half-unconscious request that she would favour him with her hand.
Now dancing was not Mr. Sawyer’s _forte_, and he had never before
attempted “The Lancers.” It is no wonder, then, that the intricacies of
that measure should have utterly bamboozled him, or that he should have
set to the wrong people, got in everybody’s way, and made himself
supremely ridiculous. Add to this, that in the midst of the most
difficult manœuvre, when, hunting over the set for his own partner in
vain, he caught Cissy Dove’s eyes fixed upon him with an expression of
malicious amusement; and it is needless to specify that his discomfiture
was complete: Cissy Dove looking radiant as a Peri. Oh, after that, it
was all magic and moonshine. Lady Barbara never alluded to him
subsequently as anything but “the poor queer man I met at Harborough;”
and that magnificent dame’s opinion of his intellectual attainments I
had rather not be compelled to declare.
Mr. Sawyer was no sooner released from his self-imposed penance than he
flew to the side of his charmer, whom he found, as might be expected,
hemmed in by Mamma and Papa, surrounded by a bevy of female
acquaintances, and receiving the homage of one or two elaborate dandies
of considerable calibre and pretension.
She shook hands with him, however, across young Vainhopes; after which
he was forced to fall back upon Parson Dove, whom he accosted with great
cordiality and affection.
A man never shows to such advantage as in the presence of his
ladye-love. How many a Hercules have we not seen holding her silks for
Omphale; his lion-front looking sheepish—not to say asinine; his
strength degenerated to clumsiness; his whole exterior denoting helpless
subjection and dismay! Mr. Sawyer was no exception to the general rule.
He pulled at his neckcloth; twitched his gloves on and off; looked at
his boots! listened to the Parson’s platitudes, without hearing a word;
finally, made a desperate plunge, and entreated Miss Dove to dance the
next quadrille with him.
Miss Dove was engaged.
“Well, the one after that.”
Miss Dove glanced at a tiny list of running horses, so to speak, that
she held in her hand.
“Dear me; she was engaged for that too!”
Our friend was disgusted beyond measure: he fell back with a mortified
bow, and resolved he would not speak to her for the rest of the night.
It would be a poor pastime to watch the dancers from a remote corner
without participating in their amusements; nevertheless he entered at
once on the self-inflicted penance. The ball, however, went on none the
less gaily for his abstinence. Lady Barbara nearly swept him off his
legs in a whirlwind of crinoline as she waltzed by him at the rate of
forty miles an hour. The Tiptoes and the Vainhopes and the rest seemed
as unconscious of his presence as if he had never left The Grange, and
Cissy Dove, herself dancing with a succession of dandies, each more
resplendent and more taken up with himself than another, never glanced
but once in the direction of her disappointed swain. That single look,
however, had in it something of a pleading expression, that found its
way through the embroidered plaits of Mr. Sawyer’s best shirt-front, and
mollified the stern heart beneath. It brought him out of his corner; it
induced him to think more favourably of life in general, and of the
Scotch quadrilles, now striking up merrily, in particular; it even
prompted him to select the youngest Miss Hare, a blushing virgin making
her first appearance in public, as his partner; and, lastly, tempted him
to request Miss Dove and her cavalier, no less a swell than Bob Blazer,
to be their _vis-à-vis_.
Cissy watched him pretty narrowly during the dance. Ladies, as we all
know, have the abnormal faculty of seeing without looking. I am bound to
confess that his dialogue with little Polly Hare was of so harmless a
nature as could not have excited the ghost of an apprehension in the
most jealous disposition. It proceeded something in this wise.
Mr. Sawyer, with his whole attention absorbed in the lady opposite: “Are
you fond of dancing?”
The youngest Miss Hare: “Oh! very.”
Mr. S.: “What a pretty room this is!”
Miss H.: “Yes, very.”
Mr. S.: “The music is remarkably good for a country band.”
Miss H.: “Oh! very.”
[Grand Round strikes up, much to their joint relief, and promises to put
a speedy termination to the solemnity.]
But in the revolutions of this highly-exciting pastime there is one
figure which admits of the gentleman and lady opposite saying nearly
three words to each other; and it is needless to insist on the necessity
of condensing as much meaning as possible into so short a sentence.
“Why so cross?” said Miss Cissy, as she approached her adorer at this
propitious moment; and, although Mr. Sawyer had neither presence of mind
nor opportunity to make an appropriate reply, he looked like a different
individual henceforth, and almost forgot to return his little partner,
none the worse for her excursion, to the maternal wing.
Little did Mr. Sawyer dream, as she thanked him with her demure curtsey,
how that sly puss, who had been indeed the life and soul of the
school-room she had just left, would act the whole scene over again that
night in her dormitory for the edification of three elder sisters and a
Swiss maid; how she would mimic to the life his stiff shy manner and
preoccupied demeanour; nay, make her very draperies stick out like the
square tails of his coat. In virtue of her sex, the little minx detected
his secret, and saw through him at a glance, though she was but sixteen.
He thought it was very good of him to dance with her, and she was making
a study and a character of him the whole time. Dear, dear! how little we
know of them! Happy the man who wraps himself in a waterproof garment of
vanity; who is determined to ignore the reflection, that the smile he
resolves to accept as approval may be nothing better than derision after
all; who leaves them to their own devices, and thanks his stars that he
has served his apprenticeship and is “out of his time!”
A quadrille with Miss Dove put everything to rights. She seemed resolved
to make amends, and she did it so prettily. She gave him her fan to
hold, and her bouquet to smell, and asked his opinion of the different
beauties, and smiled upon him and petted him, till her dancing-bear was
in thorough subjection once more. He almost made up his mind he would
propose to her in the tea-room. An eligible spot for the purpose, as it
was likely to contain about fifty couples wedged together in the closest
possible proximity. He could hardly be mistaken, he thought, this time;
yet a cold shudder crept over him as he recollected Miss Mexico. If this
business should have the same termination, he felt he had lived long
enough. He would go and drown himself in the Whissendine, or retire to
the mountain fastnesses of Wales, there to hunt with the Plinlimmon
harriers and that united pack, the glory of three districts, whereof no
mortal tongue can pronounce the names.
He drew her nervously with him towards the tea-room. Ere they reached
its entrance they were intercepted by young Vainhopes—all gloves and
studs and curls and chains and smiles.
“_Our_ waltz at last, Miss Dove,” said he, with a captivating grin;
“thought you’d forgotten me; quite in despair; waited all the evening.”
And he carried her off, amidst a running fire of such complimentary
phrases as constituted his usual conversations with the fair, and which
they were quite willing to accept at their real value.
It needs little knowledge of chemistry to be aware that cold water
poured on hot iron generates steam. I think Mr. Sawyer showed his sense
in retiring to blow his off, with one or two convivial spirits, who
finished the evening in the Honourable Crasher’s rooms on cigars and
brandy-and-water; the latter gentleman, who had asked Lady Barbara to
dance, and then forgotten all about it, having made an early retreat to
those comfortable quarters.
Here we may leave these choice spirits to their potations. Mr. Sawyer,
as his friends remarked, was noisier that usual, and mixed his glass
remarkably strong. He did not feel inclined to go to bed, but was quite
determined not to return to the ball. Perhaps, without knowing it, he
could not have adopted a more judicious resolution.
Cissy looked for him everywhere. She even excused herself from dancing,
more than once, in expectation of his return—meaning, however, to pay
him off to some purpose when he _did_ come back. But even at the
cloak-room door there was no Mr. Sawyer. Bob Blazer got her shawl and
Savage called the carriage, and Vainhopes put her into it. Yet Cissy
felt out of spirits and out of humour. Though she declared she had never
enjoyed a ball so much, her mamma thought she was very silent all the
way home; and she took her bedroom candle and retired upstairs the very
moment they arrived at the Rectory.
It was a “new sensation” to Miss Dove not to have everything entirely
her own way.
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