Mr. Salter and his two daughters, the former equipped in a new wig, the
latter in two new dresses, expressly for the occasion, were parading up
and down the yet vacant public ballroom.
The lights were burning, the waiters in attendance, and the orchestra
playing; while, peeping over the shoulder of the double bass, appeared a
particularly smart bonnet, decorated with numerous bows of quite new
ribbon, and further graced by a very handsome black lace veil.
"What can all the people be thinking of?" said Mr. Salter at last; "I
have a mind to order the lights to be put out, and go away home to my
bed. It would be just a proper punishment for them all. And pray," he
added, looking at his daughters' dresses, "what are these gig-meries to
cost?" At this crisis resounded the welcome sounds, "Sir Matthias and
Lady Whaleworthy:" with quickened steps and delighted countenances, our
trio hastened towards the bottom of the room, to receive their guests,
now, as by magic, flowing in altogether.
Introductions were endless; every leading bird was followed by a flock,
which neither host nor hostess had ever seen before; while, from time to
time, the promised titles, those stars which were to give brilliancy to
the night, made their appearance, sprinkling the common herd with
consequence. Lady Flamborough! Sir William Orm! Sir Henry and Lady
Shawbridge! Next appeared poor old General Powel and half blind Sir
Francis Brierton, poking his little sharp nose into everybody's face,
and smirking his recognition, when by so doing he had discovered who
they were; and though last not least, Sir James Lindsey; least in
consequence we mean, for he was a very little, very ugly man, the
express image of the knave of spades. He was, however, a vastly
important personage, a bachelor baronet, with fifteen thousand a-year,
and a man of good family too, so that there was no objection whatever to
him, except that he was a fool, and that when he danced he so capered
and kicked up behind, and rounded his elbows, and, in short, made
himself so completely the butt and laughing-stock of the whole room, it
was with difficulty that even his fifteen thousand per annum could
procure him a partner.
We rather suspect, however, that there were ladies who, though they
shrank from sharing with Sir James the unprofitable ridicule of the
hour, would have had no objection to share with him for life his fifteen
thousand a-year, for, in that case, they could afford to be laughed at.
Sir James had a brother, a very fine young man, remarkably handsome and
equally clever; perhaps a little too hot-headed, but warm-hearted
withal; an enthusiast in beauty, painting, music, scenery, every thing
in short at which a glowing imagination takes fire; the very material
for a frantic lover, yet condemned by his circumstances, either to lead
a single life, or possibly at least contract a marriage with the purse
of some old rich widow, fitter to be his mother than his wife. For Henry
Lindsey was one of the many living sacrifices hourly immolated on the
altars of _pride_, and how many a holocaust has been offered up upon
those altars!
How often have we heard persons, who could argue rationally enough on
other subjects, gravely assert, in reply to every argument which good
feeling or justice could urge, "A family must have a head."
In this particular instance the head, or _pride_ of the family, had
proved its disgrace, yet standing laws and previously made settlements
could not be altered. Fifteen thousand per annum, therefore, must be
melted down, to make a golden image of poor little silly Sir James,
while Henry, with the pittance which as a younger child was his portion,
was obliged to purchase the privilege of being shot at; for the younger
brother of an old baronet _could not disgrace his family_ by doing any
thing likely to provide _comfortably for himself_.
Thus do the _prejudices_ of society seem to have been invented for the
express purpose of hunting down and crushing those whom its laws have
robbed and oppressed.
Children of the same parents must be defrauded of the birthright, by
natural justice theirs, to heap all on one brother! And for what
purpose? That he may keep alive, by being its living representative,
that _pride_, that _curse_, which forbids to those so defrauded, the use
of honest means for earning honest bread!
If, instead of this, all property which had been a father's, were, at
his death, equally divided among his offspring, without revolution or
confiscation, extravagant disparity of station would gradually
disappear, and with it _pride_, that destroys the happiness, with its
whole array of _prejudices_, waging eternal warfare against rational
contentment.
How many are there who might still, even as the world now is, dwell
within a very garden of Eden, of peaceful and natural delights, and yet
who virtually turn themselves out of the same; and, at the mere mandate
of some _prejudice_ of society--some _by-law_ of _pride_, become
wanderers through the thistle-grown wildernesses of discontent, or weary
pilgrims amid the thorny paths of petty mortification.
But to return to our ball: by this time so fair a proportion of the
company had arrived, that it was thought advisable to commence dancing.
For this purpose Mr. Salter, with a feeling of exultation which made him
forget, for the time, what the whole entertainment was likely to cost,
led Lady Flamborough to the head of the room. Her ladyship had evidently
been pretty in her youth; but though the remains of a fine woman may
sometimes be viewed with a blending of admiration with our veneration,
mere prettiness seldom grows old gracefully. In Lady Flamborough's case
it certainly did not. Her once nicely rounded little figure had now
outgrown all bounds, not excepting those of the drapery which ought to
have concealed its exuberance. Her once infantine features were now
nearly lost in the midst of a countenance disproportionally increased in
its general dimensions; while in manner she still played off numberless
once becoming, but now disgusting, airs of artless innocence;
languishing, lisping, and rolling her eyes; and childishly twisting her
fingers through the ringlets of her hair, while looking up in her
partner's face, and saying silly things.
Had it been possible to have checked coquetry in Lady Flamborough, the
sight of the senseless bloated countenance on which she was thus casting
away those interesting appeals of her visual orbs, one would have
thought might have done so.
Mr. Salter's head was in shape something like a sugar loaf: the region
denominated fore-head, and appropriated by phrenologists to the
intellectual faculties, being so confined, that it nearly came to a
point, while the descent widened as it approached the organs of
gustativeness, and all that called itself face, concluded without any
distinct line of demarcation, in a jole, much resembling that of a
cod-fish.
The eyes were colourless, and owed all the brilliancy they possessed to
an inflammation of the lids, which never forsook them. The efforts of
their owner, on the present occasion, to give them a languishing roll,
that should correspond with that of her ladyship's, was truly ludicrous.
As to his mouth, it bisected his countenance from ear to ear, which
rendered his endeavours to spread it wider by that bland movement
designated a smile, nearly abortive.
A few additional lines of circular or spherical trigonometry were
conspicuously marked upon cheeks that yielded in carnation hue to nought
save the nose; while this rallying point of the vital powers, like
certain well-known altars of the ancients, never allowed the flame to
go out.
Mr. Salter was exceedingly proud of his legs, (not that he had seen them
himself for the last ten years), and though short for his body, which
by-the-by had precisely the appearance of a Brobdingnag melon on
castors, the legs themselves, when you were distant enough to have a
view of them beneath the inflated balloon that otherwise concealed them,
were certainly formed according to the rules of beauty; that is to say,
they had very large calves, and very small ankles.
We suppose it must have been the combined effect of the personal charms
and the elevated rank of his partner, which raised Mr. Salter's spirits
to so inconvenient a degree, as to produce in his mind a most frisky
longing to behold, once more, this long remembered attraction of his
own--his said handsome legs. Accordingly, while setting to the lady, he
made several kicks out in front, with accompanying jerks forward of the
head, in the vain hope of catching a glimpse; but, alas, in one
unfortunate effort more strenuous than the rest, he lost his balance;
out flew his feet, and down he came on his back, so much to the
amusement of the whole room that no one for a time had the presence of
mind to pick him up: while there he lay, sprawling and puffing, his own
endeavours to rise being quite as fruitless as those of a beetle usually
are, when placed in the same reversed position by a mischievous
school-boy. Neither was the evening by any means one of unmixed delight
to the Misses Salter. It was but too evident that even on the present
occasion, when, if ever compliment was due to them, that the gentlemen
evinced any thing but impatience to secure the felicity of being their
partners. On the contrary, it was generally when a quadrille was nearly
made up, and the last added couple were in great distress for a
_vis-à-vis_, that some one who had previously made up his mind not to
dance, was pressed into the service, and given a hint that one of the
Miss Salters was sitting down.
Even Sir James, though he did dance a set with each sister, did not do
so till he had been shaken off by nearly every other woman in the room.
The Scotch proverb says, "It's a lucky lass that's like her father."
But we must confess, we never could discover that it was any advantage
to Miss Salter to be so strikingly like her father as she certainly
was. Miss Grace Salter was altogether of a different style; she was
under-sized, pitiably thin, and extremely dark, with an expression of
countenance as if she had just swallowed something unseasonably bitter,
and was making a face at its disagreeable flavour. The set with Sir
James could not much sooth the vanity of either sister, for no sooner
did he commence operations, than a ring was immediately formed for the
avowed purpose of laughing at him; while he, mistaking the general
attention he drew for admiration, seemed gratefully determined to spare
no pains to give the greatest possible satisfaction to his numerous
spectators.
The Misses Salter had also another source of uneasiness this evening. At
all times their greatest earthly apprehension, next to that of not
getting husbands themselves, was, lest their father should marry, and
cut them out of a small sum, which not having been swallowed up in the
purchase of the estate for John, he had promised to divide between them
unless indeed he married again. His doing so seemed this evening more
probable than ever it had done before. The roll of his eye, while
looking at Lady Flamborough, had become quite ominous, while her
ladyship's air of condescension was truly alarming.
"Now it would be too bad, would it not?" said Miss Salter to Miss Grace
Salter, as they were undressing, "if after all, this ball that we have
been so long teazing at my father to give, and that he thinks so much
about the expense of, should turn out to be our own ruin in the end."
"Why, I am afraid, to be sure," replied her sister, "if he marries he
won't leave us the money, or else it would be a grand connection!
wouldn't it? We'd be sure to be visited by every body then."
"That we should, no doubt," said Miss Salter, "but what of that, we
shouldn't have a shilling in the world, comparatively speaking, when my
father dies--and as for John--"
"He wouldn't give us a shilling if we were starving!" observed Miss
Grace.
By John, they meant their brother. And, by-the-by, one of the reasons,
in addition to their want of beauty, why these ladies were paid so
little attention to by the gentlemen, was, that it was well known, Mr.
Salter had a cub of a son, on whom he meant, in imitation of his
betters, to heap the earnings and savings of his life, for the purpose,
as he himself expressed it, of making a family: and, for that matter he
didn't see why a man mightn't be prouder of being the first of his name
to do so, than if he was come of a family ready made to his hand a
thousand years ago! for sure, they must all have had a beginning one
time or other.
But as to being the first of his name to have a rise in the world, he
was not so clear of that neither: he had often heard talk of a Lord
Salter or Salisbury, or something beginning with an S; and he might
become a lord, one time or other, for any thing he knew to the contrary.
But be that as it may, "he wasn't going to have his money, that he had
been a lifetime scraping together, squandered by idle fellows that were
nothing at all akin to him, but would just come and marry his daughters
to get hold of the cash."
"But supposing, Sir, we shouldn't get married at all," said Miss Salter
one day.
"Nothing more likely," replied her father. "As for Grace, she is
certainly as plain a girl as I'd desire to see any day. And I don't know
how it is, you're not very handsome neither, tho' you're thought so like
me."
These observations of Mr. Salter's about being the first of his family
were, by the particular desire of his daughters, strictly confined to
his own fireside. There was no occasion, they argued, to make any such
confession in a place like Cheltenham, where nobody knew anything about
people, but what they choose to say of themselves. Accordingly, they
made family their constant theme; and inquired with the most
consequential airs about the connections of every one they heard named;
always winding up their harangue by observing, that of course it was
very natural for a man like their father, of such an ancient and highly
respectable family, to be very particular about who they visited,
particularly in those sorts of places where people of every description
congregated.
"It's no harm, you know," said Miss Salter to her sister, "to have the
name of being particular, it makes people of consequence; at the same
time I'd have us get acquainted with every creature we can, and go
everywhere; there's no knowing where one might find one's luck."
"Talking of luck," answered Grace, "I read in one of the new novels the
other day, that 'luck knocks once at every one's door;' I wish it would
knock once at mine, I know, and it shouldn't have to knock again."
"And, by-the-by, was it quite prudent of us, on your plan, to cut Mrs.
Dorothea Arden as we have done?"
"Oh, yes; what's the use of an old maid, she can have no sons, you know;
besides, we didn't cut her till Lady Whaleworthy, and Lady Flamborough,
and Lady Shawbridge, and all of them, had called; and then I thought we
could spare such old lumber as Mrs. Dorothea."
"Why, to be sure, as you say, she can have no sons; indeed I never even
heard her speak of a brother or a nephew; and as to her expecting this
Lady Arden that she is always talking about, I am sure its nothing but a
boast."
"Nothing more you may be certain! And then I was afraid my father would
have taken a fancy to her at last, for he was always saying, she was a
fine woman for her years."
"She was very useful however at first," said Grace.
"Oh yes she was, certainly," replied Miss Salter, "but now you know we
don't want her."