A girl's first ball! What words more full of ecstasy could be breathed
in this dull world! A vague, overwhelming vision of delight before she
goes into it--all brightness, and poetry, and music, and flowers, and
kind, admiring faces; everything converging towards herself as a centre,
not with any selfish sense of exclusive enjoyment, but sweetly,
spontaneously, as to the natural queen. A hundred unexpected,
inexpressible emotions go to make up this image of paradise. There is
the first glow and triumph of power which is at once a surprise to her
and a joy. The feeling that she has come to the kingdom, that she
herself has become the fair woman whose sway she has read of all her
life; the consciousness, at last, that it is real, that womanhood is
supreme in her person, and that the world bows down before her in her
whiteness and brightness, in her shamefacedness and innocent
confidence, in her empire of youth. She is the Una whose look can tame
the lion; she is the princess before whose glance the whole world
yields; and yet at the same time, being its queen, is she not the
world's sweet handmaid, to scatter flowers in its path, and dance and
sing to make it glad? All these thoughts are in the girl's mind,
especially if she be a fanciful girl--though, perhaps, she does not find
words to express any of them; and this it is which throws such a charm
to her upon the pleasure-making, which to us looks sometimes so stale
and so poor.
And it is only after a long interval--unless her case be an
exceptionally hard one--that she gets disenchanted. When she goes into
the fairy palace, she finds it all that she thought; all, with the
lively delight of personal enjoyment added, and that flattery of
admiring looks, of unspoken homage, not to the ideal princess, or
representative woman, but to _her_, which is so sweet and so new. Thus
Norah Drummond entered the ball-room at Dura House, floating in, as it
were, upon the rays of light that surrounded her--the new woman, the
latest successor of Eve in the garden, unexacting queen of the fresh
world she had entered into, fearing no rivals--nay, reigning in the
persons of her rivals as well as in her own. And when she had thus made
her entrance in an abstract triumph, waking suddenly to individual
consciousness, remembering that she was still Norah, and that people
were looking at her, wondering at her, admiring her--her, and not
another--she laughed as a child laughs for nothing, for delight, as she
stood by her mother's side. It was too beautiful and wonderful to be shy
of it.
'Pinch me, mamma, and it will all pass away like the other dreams,' she
whispered, holding fast by her mother's arm. But the curious thing, the
amazing thing, was, that it continued, and warmed her and dazzled her,
and lighted her up, and did not pass away.
'Norah, come! you are to dance this dance with me,' cried Ned, rushing
up. He had seen them come in, though he was at the other end of the
room; he had watched for them since the first note of the music struck;
he had neglected the duty to which he had been specially appropriated,
the duty of looking after and amusing and taking care of the two fair
daughters of the Marchioness, who was as good as Lady Patroness of Mrs
Burton's ball. To keep up the proper contrast, I am aware that Lady
Edith and Lady Florizel should have been young women of a certain age,
uninviting, and highly aristocratic, while Norah Drummond had all the
beauty and sweetness, as well as poverty and lowliness, to recommend
her; but this, I am sorry to confess, was not the case. The Ladies
Merewether were very pretty girls, as pretty as Norah; they were not
'stuck-up,' but as pleasant and as sweet as English girls need
be--indeed, except that they were not Norah, I know no fault they had in
Ned's eyes. But they were not Norah, and he forsook his post. Nobody
noticed the fact much except Mrs Burton. As for Lady Florizel, she had
the most unfeigned good-humoured contempt for Ned. He was a mere boy,
she said; she had no objection to dance with him, or chatter to him; but
she had in her reach two hundred as good, or better than him, and she
preferred men to boys, she did not hesitate to say. So that when Ned
appeared by Norah's side, Lady Florizel, taking her place with her
partner, smiled upon him as he passed, and asked audibly, 'Oh, who was
that pretty girl with Mr Burton? oh, how pretty she was! Couldn't
anybody tell her?' Lady Florizel was not offended. But Mrs Burton saw,
and was wroth.
Many changes had happened in those six years. At the time of the trial
and after it there had been many doubts and speculations in Helen's
mind as to what she should do. Suspecting her cousin as she did, and
with Robert's judgment against him, as recorded in that last mournful
letter, how was she to go on accepting a shelter from her cousin, living
at his very gates in a sort of dependence upon him? But she had nowhere
else to go, for one thing, and the shade of additional doubt which had
been thrown upon Burton by the trial, was not of a kind to impress her
mind; nothing had been brought forward against him, no one had said
openly that he was to blame, and Helen was discouraged when it all ended
in nothing as she thought, and had not energy enough to uproot herself
from the peaceful corner she had taken refuge in. Where could she go?
Then she had the Haldanes to keep her to this spot, which now seemed the
only spot in the world where pity and friendship were to be found.
Stephen, whom she contemplated with a certain reverence in his great
suffering and patience, was the better for her presence and that of
Norah, and their kind eyes and the voices that bade her welcome whenever
she crossed their threshold was a comfort to her. She kept herself apart
from the Burtons for a long time, having next to no intercourse with
them, and so she would have done still had the matter been in her
hands. But the matter was no longer in her hands. The children had grown
up, all of them together. They had grown into those habits which fathers
and mothers cannot cross, which insensibly affect even their own
feelings and relations. Clara Burton and Norah Drummond were cousins
still, though so great a gulf of feeling lay between their two houses.
Both of them had been, as it were, brought up with the Daltons at the
Rectory. They were all children together, all boys and girls together.
Insensibly the links multiplied, the connection grew stronger. When Ned
Burton was at Dura there was never a day in his life that he did not
spend, or attempt to spend, part of it in the Gatehouse. And Clara ran
in and out--she and Mary Dalton; they were all about the same age; at
this moment they ranged from twenty to seventeen, a group of companions
more intimate than anything but youth and this long and close
association could have made them. They were like brothers and sisters,
Mrs Dalton said anxiously, veiling from herself the fact that some of
them perhaps had begun to feel and think as brothers and sisters do not
feel. Charlie Dalton, for instance, who was the eldest of
all--one-and-twenty--instead of falling in love with Norah, who was as
poor as himself--a thing which would have been simple madness, of
course, but not so bad as what had happened--had seen fit to go and
bestow his heart upon Clara Burton, whose father dreamed of nothing less
than a duke for her, and who had not as much heart as would lie on a
sixpence, the rector's wife said indignantly; and Heaven knows how many
other complications were foreshadowing through those family intimacies,
and the brother and sister condition which had been so delightful while
it lasted. Mrs Drummond and Mrs Dalton went together on this particular
evening watching from a distance over their respective children. Helen's
face was calm, for Norah was in no trouble; but the rector's wife had a
pucker on her brow. She could see her Charlie watching so wistfully the
movements of Clara Burton through the crowd, hanging about her, stealing
to her side whenever he could, following her everywhere with his eyes.
Charlie was especially dear to his mother, as the eldest boy of a large
family, when he is a good boy, so often is. She had been able to talk to
him many a day about her domestic troubles when she could not speak to
his father. She had felt herself strengthened by his sympathy and
support, that backing up which is so good for everybody, and it broke
her heart to see her boy breaking his for _that_ girl. What could he see
in her? the mother thought. If it had been Norah Drummond! and then she
tried to talk to her friend at her side. They had come to be very fast
friends; they had leant upon each other by turns, corners, as it were,
of the burdens which each had to bear, and Mrs Dalton knew Mrs Drummond
could guess what the sigh meant which she could not restrain.
'How nice Norah is looking,' she said, 'and how happy! I think she has
changed so much since she was a child. She used to have such a dreamy
look; but now there is no _arrière pensée_, she goes into everything
with all her heart.'
'Yes,' said Helen; but she did not go on talking of Norah, she
understood the give and take of sympathy. 'I like Mary's dress so much.
She and Katie look so fresh, and simple, and sweet. But they are not
such novices as Norah; you know it is her first ball.'
'Poor children, how excited it makes them! but dressing them is a
dreadful business,' said Mrs Dalton, with her anxious look still
following her Charlie among all the changing groups. 'I need not
disguise it from you, dear, who know all about us. It was sometimes hard
enough before, and now what with evening dresses! And when they come to
a dance like this they want something pretty and fresh. You will feel it
by-and-by even with Norah. I am sure if it were not for the cheap shops,
where you can buy tarlatan for so little, and making them up ourselves
at home, I never could do it. And you know, whatever sacrifices one
makes, one cannot refuse a little pleasure to one's children. Poor
things, it is all they are likely to have.'
'At least they are getting the good of it,' said Helen. Norah's dress
was the first task of this kind that had been put upon her, and she had
been forced to make her sacrifices to dress the child who had grown a
woman; but Helen, too, knew that she could not buy many ball dresses off
her hundred a year. And it was so strange to think such thoughts in this
lavish extravagant house, where every magnificence that could be thought
of adorned mother and daughter, and the room and the walls. Mrs Dalton
answered to the thought before it had been expressed.
'It _is_ curious,' she said, 'there is Clara Burton, who might dress in
cloth of gold if she liked--but our girls look just as well. What a
thing it is to be rich!--for the Burtons you know are--' Here Mrs Dalton
stopped abruptly, remembering that if the Burtons were nobodies, so was
also the friend at her side. She herself was connected with the old
Harcourts, and had a right to speak.
'Now, ladies, I know what you are doing,' said Mr Burton, suddenly
coming up to them; 'you are saying all sorts of sweet things to each
other about your children, and privately you are thinking that there is
nobody in the room fit to be seen except your own. Oh don't look so
caught! I know, because I am doing the same thing myself.'
Doing the same thing himself--comparing his child to my Norah--to my
Mary, the ladies inwardly replied; but no such answer was made aloud.
'We were saying how they all enjoy themselves,' said Mrs Dalton, 'that
was all.'
Mr Burton laughed that little laugh of mockery which men of vulgar minds
indulge in when they talk to women, and which is as much as to say, you
can't take me in with your pretences, _I_ see through you. He had grown
stouter, but he did not look so vigorous as of old. He was fleshy, there
was a furtive look in his eye. When he glanced round him at the
brilliant party, and all the splendour of which he was the owner, it was
not with the complacency of old. He looked as if at any moment something
disagreeable, something to be avoided, might appear before him, and had
acquired a way of stretching out his neck as if to see who was coming
behind. The thing in the room about which he was most complacent was
Clara. She had grown up, straight, and large, and tall in stature, like
our Anglo-Saxon queen with masses of white rosy flesh and gold-coloured
hair. The solid splendid white arm, laden with bracelets, which leaned
on her partner's shoulder, was a beauty not possessed by any of the
slight girls whose mothers were watching her as she moved past them.
Clara's arm would have made two of Norah's. Her size and fulness and
colour dazzled everybody. She was a full-blown Rubens beauty, of the
class which has superseded the gentler, pensive, unobtrusive heroine in
these days. 'I don't pretend to say anything but what I think,' said Mr
Burton, 'and I do feel that _that_ is a girl to be proud of. Don't dance
too much, Clary, you have got to ride with me to-morrow.' She gave him a
smile and a nod as she whirled past. The man who was dancing with her
was dark, a perfect contrast to her brilliant beauty. 'They make a
capital couple,' Mr Burton said with a suppressed laugh. 'I suppose a
prophet, if we had one, would see a good many combinations coming on in
an evening like this. Why, by Jove, here's Ned.'
And it was Ned, bringing Norah back to her mother. 'I thought you had
been dancing with one of----' said his father, pointing with his thumb
across his shoulder. 'Have you no manners, boy? Norah, I am sure, will
excuse you when she knows you are engaged--people that are stopping in
the house.'
'Oh, of course I will excuse him,' said Norah. 'I did not want him at
all. I would rather sit quiet a little and see everybody. And Charlie
has promised to dance with me. I suppose it was not wrong to ask
Charlie, was it? He might as well have me as any one, don't you think,
mamma?'
'If you take to inviting gentlemen, Norah, I shall expect you to ask
me,' said Mr Burton, who was always jocular to girls. Norah looked at
him with her bright observant eyes. She always looked at him, he
thought, in that way. He was half afraid of her, though she was so
young. He had even tried to conciliate her, but he had not succeeded.
She shook her head without making any reply, and just then something
happened which made a change in all the circumstances. It was the
approach of the man with whom Clara had been dancing; a man with the air
of a hero of romance; bearded, with very fine dark eyes and hair that
curled high like a crest upon his head. Norah gave a little start as he
approached, and blushed. 'It is the hero,' she said to herself. He
looked as if he had just walked out of a novel with every sign of his
character legibly set forth. But though it may be very well to gibe at
beautiful dark eyes and handsome features, it is difficult to remain
unmoved by their influence. Norah owned with that sudden flush of colour
a certain curiosity, to say the least of it. Mr Burton frowned, and so
did his son and daughter simultaneously, as if by touching of a spring.
'I am afraid you don't remember me, Mrs Drummond,' the stranger said;
'but I recollect you so very well that I hope you will let me introduce
myself--Cyril Rivers. It is a long time since we met.'
'Oh, I remember!' cried impulsive Norah, and then was silent, blushing
more deeply than ever. To ask Charlie Dalton to dance with her was one
thing, but meeting the hero was entirely different. It took away her
breath.
And two minutes after she was dancing with him. It was this he had come
to her mother for--not asking any one to introduce him. He was no longer
a boy, but a man travelled and experienced, who knew, or thought he
knew, society and the world. But he had not yet dismissed from his mind
that past episode--an episode which had been fixed and deepened in his
memory by the trial and all the discussions in the newspapers. To say
that he had continued to think about the Drummonds would have been
foolish; but when he came back to Dura to visit the Burtons, they were
the first people who recurred to his mind. As his host drove him past
the Gatehouse on the night of his arrival, he had asked about them. And
Mr Burton remembered this now, and did not like it. He stood and looked
after the pair as they went away arm-in-arm. Norah did not answer as
Clara did as a complete foil and counter to Mr Rivers's dark
handsomeness. It was a mistake altogether. It was Clara who should have
been with him, who was his natural companion. Mr Burton reflected that
nothing but kindness could have induced him to invite his cousin's
penniless girl to the great ball at which Clara made her _début_ in the
world as well as Norah. He felt as he stood and looked on that it was a
mistake to have done it. People so poor and so lowly ought not to be
encouraged to set themselves up as equals of the richer classes. He said
to himself that his system had been wrong. Different classes had
different duties, he felt sure. His own was to get as much of the good
things of this world, as much luxury and honour, as he could have for
his money. Helen's was to subsist on a hundred a year; and to expect of
her that she could anyhow manage to buy ball dresses, and put her child
in competition with his! It was wrong; there was no other word. Mr
Burton left his neighbours, and went off with a dissatisfied countenance
to another part of the room. It was his own fault.
'I should have known you anywhere,' said Mr Rivers in the pause of the
waltzing. 'You were only a child when I saw you last, but I should have
known you anywhere.'
'Should you? How very strange! What a good memory you must have!' said
Norah. 'Though, indeed, as soon as you said who you were, I remembered
you.'
'But nobody told me who you were,' he said, 'when I saw you just now,
dancing with that young fellow, the son of the house.'
'Did you see us then?'
'Yes, and your mother sitting by that stand of flowers. You are half
yourself as I remember you, and half her.'
'What a good memory you must have!' said Norah, very incredulous; and
then they floated away again to the soft dreamy music, he supporting
her, guiding her through the moving crowd as Norah had never dreamt of
being guided. She had felt she was on her own responsibility when
dancing with Ned and Charlie; with, indeed, a little share of
responsibility on account of her partners too. But Mr Rivers danced
beautifully, and Norah felt like a cloud, like a leaf lightly carried by
the breeze. She was carried along without any trouble to herself. When
they had stopped, instead of feeling out of breath, she stopped only
from courtesy's sake, to let the others go on.
'How well you dance, Mr Rivers!' she cried. 'I never liked a waltz so
much before. The boys are so different. One never feels sure where one
is going. I like it now.'
'Then you must let me have as many waltzes as you can,' he said, 'and I
shall like it, too. Who are the boys? You have not any--brothers? Boys
are not to be trusted for waltzing; they are too energetic--too much
determined to have everything their own way.'
'Oh, the boys! they are chiefly Ned and--Charlie Dalton. They are the
ones I always dance with,' said Norah. 'And oh, by-the-bye, I was
engaged to Charlie for this dance.'
'How clever of me to carry you off before Mr Charlie came!' said the
hero. 'But it is his own fault if he was not up in time.'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Norah, with a blush. 'The fact is--he did not
ask me; I asked him. I never was at a ball before, and I don't know many
people, and of course I wanted to dance. I asked him to take me if he
was not engaged, so if he found any one he liked better, he was not to
be blamed if he forgot. Why do you laugh? Was it a silly thing to do?'
'I don't know Charlie,' said Mr Rivers; 'but I should punch his head
with pleasure. What has he done that he should have you asking him to
dance?'
And then that came again which was not dancing, as Norah understood it,
an occasion which had always called for considerable exertion, but a
very dream of delightful movement, like flying, like--she could not tell
what. By this time she was a little ashamed about Charlie; and the waltz
put it out of Mr Rivers's mind.
'Do you think I may call to-morrow?' he said, when they stopped again.
'Will your mother let me? There are so many things I should like to talk
over with her. You are too young, of course, to remember anything about
a certain horrid bank.'
'Ah, no, I am not too young,' said Norah, and the smiles with which she
had been looking up at him suddenly vanished from her face.
'I beg your pardon. I had forgotten that it was of more importance to
you than to any one. I want to talk to your mother about that. Do you
think I may come? Look here; is this Charlie? He is just the sort of
youth whom a young lady might ask to dance with her. And good heavens,
how he waltzes! I don't wonder that you felt it a painful exercise. Are
Miss Burton and her guests friends?'
'We are all great friends,' said Norah, half-displeased. And Clara
Burton as she passed gave her an angry look. 'Why Clara is cross,' she
said pathetically. 'What can I have done?'
Mr Rivers laughed. Norah did not like the laugh; it seemed a little like
Mr Burton's. There was a certain conscious superiority and sense of
having found some one out in it, which she did not either like or
understand.
'You seem to know something I don't know,' she said, with prompt
indignation. 'Perhaps why Clara is cross; but you don't know Clara. You
don't know any of us, Mr Rivers, and you oughtn't to look as if you had
found us out. How could you find out all about us, who have known each
other from babies, in one night?'
'I beg your pardon,' he said, with an immediate change of tone. 'It is
one of the bad habits of society that nobody can depend on another, and
everybody likes to grin at his neighbours. Forgive me; I forgot I was in
a purer air.'
'Oh, it was not that,' said Norah, a little confused. He seemed to say
things (she thought) which meant nothing, as if there was a great deal
in them. She was glad to be taken back to her mother, and deposited
under her shelter; but she was not permitted to rest there. Ned came and
glowered at her reproachfully, as she sat down, and other candidates for
her hand arrived so fast that the child was half intoxicated with
pleasure and flattery. 'What do they want _me_ for?' she wondered within
herself. She was so much in request that Ned did not get another dance
till the very end of the evening: and even Mr Rivers was balked in at
least one of the waltzes he had engaged her for. He drew back with a
smile, seeing it was Mr Burton himself who was exerting himself to find
partners for Norah. But Norah was all smiles; she danced the whole
evening, coming little by little into her partner's way. Pleased to be
so popular, delighted with everybody's 'kindness' to her, and dazzled
with this first opening glimpse of 'the world.'
'If this is the world, I like it,' she said to her mother as they drove
home. 'It is delightful; it is beautiful; it is so kind! Oh, mamma, is
it wrong to feel so? I never was so happy in my life.'
'No, my darling, it is not wrong,' Helen said, kissing her. She was not
insensible to her child's triumph.