MY BOUQUET.
I remember so vividly the night of my first ball. The excitement of the
toilet; mamma's and the maid's consultations and debates; the tremulous
anticipations; the "pleasing terror;" the delightful, anxious flutter,
and my final look in the tall glass. I hardly knew myself. I gazed at
myself with the irrepressible smile of elation. I never had looked so
well. There are degrees of that delightful excitement that calls such
tints to girlish cheeks, and such fires to the eyes, as visit them no
more in our wiser after-life. The enchantment wanes, and the flowers and
brilliants fade and we soon cease to see them. I went down to the
drawing-room to wait for mamma. The candles were lighted, and whom
should I find there but Mr. Carmel?
"I asked your mamma's leave to come and see you dressed for your first
ball," he said. "How very pretty it all is!"
He surveyed me, smiling with a melancholy pride, it seemed to me, in my
good looks and brilliant dress.
"No longer, and never more, the Miss Ethel of my quiet Malory
recollections. Going out at last! If any one can survive the ordeal and
come forth scathless, you, I think, will. But to me it seems that this
is a farewell, and that my pupil dies to-night, and a new Miss Ethel
returns. You cannot help it; all the world cannot prevent it, if so it
is to be. As an old friend, I knew I might bring you these."
"Oh, Mr. Carmel, what beautiful flowers!" I exclaimed.
It was certainly an exquisite bouquet; one of those beautiful and costly
offerings that perish in an hour, and seems to me like the pearl thrown
into the cup of wine.
"I am so grateful. It was so kind of you. It is too splendid a great
deal. It is quite impossible that there can be anything like it in the
room."
I was really lost in wonder and admiration, and I suppose looked
delighted. I was pleased that the flowers should have come from Mr.
Carmel's hand.
"If you think that the flowers are worthy of you, you think more highly
than I do of them," he answered, with a smile that was at once sad and
pleased. "I am such an old friend, you know; a month at quiet Malory
counts for a year anywhere else. And as you say of the flowers, I may
say more justly of my pupil, there will be no one like her there. It is
the compensation of being such as I, that we may speak frankly, like
good old women, and no one be offended. And, oh, Miss Ethel, may God
grant they be not placed like flowers upon a sacrifice or on the dead.
Do not forget your better thoughts. You are entering scenes of illusion,
where there is little charity, and almost no sincerity, where cruel
feelings are instilled, the love of flattery and dominion awakened, and
all the evil and enchantments of the world beset you. Encourage those
good thoughts; watch and pray, or a painless and even pleasant death
sets in, and no one can arrest it."
How my poor father would have laughed at such an exhortation at the
threshold of a ball-room! No doubt it had its comic side, but not for
me, and that was all Mr. Carmel cared for.
This was a ball at an official residence, and besides the usual muster,
Cabinet and other Ministers would be there, and above all, that
judicious rewarder of public virtue, and instructor of the conscience of
the hustings, the patronage secretary of the Treasury. Papa had at last
discovered a constituency which he thought promised success, he had made
it a point, of course, to go to places where he had opportunities for a
talk with that important personage. Papa was very sanguine, and now, as
usual, whenever he had a project of that kind on hand, was in high
spirits.
He came into the drawing-room. He always seemed to me as if he did not
quite know whether he liked or disliked Mr. Carmel. Whenever I saw them
together, he appeared to me, like Mrs. Malaprop, to begin with a little
aversion, and gradually to become more and more genial. He greeted Mr.
Carmel a little coldly, and brightened as he looked on me; he was
evidently pleased with me, and talked me over with myself very
good-humouredly. I took care to show him my flowers. He could not help
admiring them.
"These are the best flowers I have seen anywhere. How did you contrive
to get them? Really, Mr. Carmel, you are a great deal too kind. I hope
Ethel thanked you. Ethel, you ought really to tell Mr. Carmel how very
much obliged you are."
"Oh! she has thanked me a great deal too much; she has made me quite
ashamed," said he.
And so we talked on, waiting for mamma, and I remember papa said he
wondered how Mr. Carmel, who had lived in London and at Oxford, and at
other places, where in one kind of life or another one really does live,
contrived to exist month after month at Malory, and he drew an amusing
and cruel picture of its barbarism and the nakedness of the town of
Cardyllion. Mr. Carmel took up the cudgels for both, and I threw in a
word wherever I had one to say. I remember this laughing debate, because
it led to this little bit of dialogue.
"I fortunately never bought many things there--two brushes, I remember;
all their hairs fell out, and they were bald before the combs they sent
for to London arrived. If I had been dependent on the town of
Cardyllion, I should have been reduced to a state of utter simplicity."
"Oh, but I assure you, papa, they have a great many very nice things at
Jones's shop in Castle Street," I remonstrated.
"Certainly not for one's dressing room. There are tubs at the regattas,
and sponges at their dinners, I daresay," papa began, in a punning
vein.
"But you'll admit that London supplies no such cosmetics as Malory,"
said Mr. Carmel, with a kind glance at me.
"Well, you have me there, I admit," laughed papa, looking very
pleasantly at me, who, no doubt, was at that moment the centre of many
wild hopes of his.
Mamma came down now; there was no time to lose. My heart bounded, half
with fear. Mr. Carmel came downstairs with us, and saw us into the
carriage. He stood at the door-steps smiling, his short cloak wrapped
about him, his hat in his hand. Now the horses made their clattering
scramble forward; the carriage was in motion. Mr. Carmel's figure, in
the attitude of his last look, receded; he was gone; it was like a
farewell to Malory, and we were rolling on swiftly towards the
ball-room, and a new life for me.
I am not going to describe this particular ball, nor my sensations on
entering this new world, so artificial and astonishing. What an arduous
life, with its stupendous excitement, fatigues, and publicity! There
were in the new world on which I was entering, of course, personal
affections and friendships, as among all other societies of human
beings. But the canons on which it governs itself are, it seemed to me,
inimical to both. The heart gives little, and requires little there. It
assumes nothing deeper than relations of acquaintance; and there is no
time to bestow on any other. It is the recognised business of every one
to enjoy, and if people have pains or misfortunes they had best keep
them to themselves, and smile. No one has a right to be ailing or
unfortunate, much less to talk as if he were so, in that happy valley.
Such people are "tainted wethers of the flock," and are bound to abolish
themselves forthwith. No doubt kind things are done, and charitable, by
people who live in it. But they are no more intended to see the light of
that life than Mr. Snake's good-natured actions were. This dazzling
microcosm, therefore, must not be expected to do that which it never
undertook. Its exertions in pursuit of pleasure are enormous; its
exhaustion prodigious; the necessary restorative cycle must not be
interrupted by private agonies, small or great. If that were permitted,
who could recruit for his daily task? I am relating, after an interval
of very many years, the impressions of a person who, then very young,
was a denizen of "the world" only for a short time; but the application
of these principles of selfishness seemed to me sometimes ghastly.
One thing that struck me very much in a little time was that society, as
it is termed, was so limited in numbers. You might go everywhere, it
seemed to me, and see, as nearly as possible, the same people night
after night. The same cards always, merely shuffled. This, considering
the size and wealth of England and of London, did seem to me
unaccountable.
My first season, like that of every girl who is admired and danced with
a great deal, was glorified by illusions, chief among which was that the
men who danced with me as they could every night did honestly adore me.
We learn afterwards how much and how little those triumphs mean; that
new faces are liked simply because they are new; and that girls are
danced with because they are the fashion and dance well. I am not
boasting--I was admired; and papa was in high good-humour and spirits.
There is sunshine even in that region; like winter suns, bright but
cold. Such as it is, let the birds of that enchanted forest enjoy it
while it lasts; flutter their wings and sing in its sheen, for it may
not be for long.