OUR BALL.
All the children and young folk round about us had parents who, if they
went into town of a morning, were safe to return at night. Most of them
had mothers and aunts who lived at Dalkey all the summer. Only we were
happy enough to be so neglected by indifferent parents as to possess a
large house at our exclusive disposition four or five entire days and
nights of the week. Picture our rare and wild abuse of that freedom, and
imagine the envy it inspired in the bosoms of other children, of natures
as independent as ours!
"I say," proposed the red-headed chief, "what a capital idea if we had a
ball in your house some evening when they're away."
Between my eldest sister and me were two little maids, less of the
rascal and less of the saint than either of us. Pauline, the teller of
wonderful tales at Lysterby, seized upon the notion with avidity. A
ball! our own ball, given by ourselves, and all the vagrant band
between the dances refreshed by our ingenious efforts and exploits! It
was a grand idea. How we clapped our hands, danced, and stamped our feet
in the exuberance of content.
At first Saint Agnes demurred. She, after all, was the head of the house
by deputy. Not only was she responsible for our immortal souls, but for
our fragile bodies; above all, was she responsible for the state of the
larder. It was she who told the servant what to order at the general
grocer; she who drew attention to the condition of the cellar, in
provision for the horde of Sunday visitors, and the interminable file of
eager friends who made a point of inquiring after the health of my
parents and their progeny on band nights.
You never understand how extremely popular you are until you are in a
position to entertain at a pleasant seaside resort, within easy distance
of the metropolis, where a fashionable gathering meets twice a-week to
listen to the evening band, and where there are regattas. The most
distant acquaintance suddenly remembers that he is your dearest friend.
Troops invade your garden; your drawing-room is never empty. Shoals
devour the refreshments of your dining-room. At ten o'clock, when you
are on the point of barricading your too hospitable doors, men arrive
cheerily to bid you the time of day, and claim a whisky-and-soda. I
speak of Dublin, naturally, where, as a rule, we begin our afternoon
calls at midnight, and where the early awakened lark is safe to find us
snoring. Inhabit that same seaside place in winter, and even your
dearest friend will forget to remember that he knows you. Irish
hospitality is justly famous. There is nothing to match it on the face
of the earth. But Irish abuse of hospitality is, perhaps, insufficiently
recorded, and there is nothing more speedily forgotten than the
unlimited favours of "open house."
My parents kept "open house" with a vengeance, which is the reason
to-day that none of us possess the needful sixpence to jingle on the
traditional tombstone. It was the reason also that, when our ball came
off, we children were in a position to offer our thirty or forty
miniature guests flowing bowls of innocuous lemonade by the dozens,
ham-sandwiches, boxes of Huntley & Palmer's biscuits, baskets of apples
purchased by the hundred by my stepfather from his friend the judge,
whose orchards we daily pillaged. There was also claret and soda-water,
and even genial port and sherry, for that portion of the community we
regarded as "the grown-up,"--Arthur, the red-headed boy, Saint Agnes,
Pauline, and a few others of both sexes.
We discovered that my parents designed to sit out a play on a certain
evening, which meant that they would never give themselves the trouble
to catch the last train, and would sleep in town. Invitations were
instantly despatched, Saint Agnes giving her consent reluctantly, but
young enough to enjoy the prospect of the escapade. The ball was to open
as soon as possible after the seven o'clock tea, for at Dalkey, in those
days, all the children dined at two o'clock and sat down at seven to a
meal of tea and bread-and-butter, with barmbrack and buttered toast on
high holidays.
By eight o'clock the long drawing-room was full. We lit the clusters of
tapers round the walls, which were reserved for the pleasures of our
elders. The gas flared in every jet of the big chandelier. You might
have fancied we were celebrating a Royal birthday, such was the
brilliancy of our illuminated ball-room. Arthur had brought down, before
tea, bunches of flowers from his father's hothouse, and Saint Agnes was
ever a veritable witch in the arrangement of flowers.
The red-haired chief, as master of the ceremonies, wore a huge peony in
his buttonhole, and with what gusto he marshalled us about, told off
couples, and shouted "Lancers now," or "Look out now, the Caledonian
Quadrille." Three quaint little girls had been allowed to come with
their governess, who entered heartily into the spirit of the thing, and
never left the piano. Quadrille after polka, waltz after schottische,
"Sir Roger de Coverley," mazurka, and gallop. And, between the dances,
what riotous fun, when we cast ourselves upon the refreshments, and
noisy boys risked death and assassination as they opened lemonade and
soda-water bottles with a splendid flourish! Our elders might drink
themselves to frenzy on whisky and yet remain more sober than we were as
we capered and laughed and quaffed big draughts of harmless fluid. And
the sandwiches we ate, the biscuits and apples we devoured, the
bread-and-butter we munched, and flick, flack! there was Miss Montgomery
at the piano, and dozens of little feet were again twinkling about the
floor.
I, proud being, danced twice with Arthur. We floundered in amazing
fashion through a set of Lancers, the master of ceremonies shouting the
while indignantly at our heels. And later he invited me to go through
some mysterious measure he called a gallop, which consisted in a wild
charge for the other end of the room, helter-skelter, couples knocking
each other down delightedly, rolling over each other, and picking one
another up in the best of tempers.
And then, as we mopped our faces, and drank lemonade, somebody proposed
that I should give an imitation of Mr. Parker. Arthur and I were the
only travelled personages of the assembly. He had been to Eton and I had
been to Lysterby, and it was his slightly sarcastic voice that
determined me. "Oh, I say, by all means. I hear he was a capital fellow
that dancing-master of yours, and you do him to a T."
To prove that I did, I began the _chassé-croisé_, to the tune of an
imaginary violin, chanting Nora Creina, amid shrieks of approbation. How
often since have my friends lamented my missed vocation! On the stage,
whether actress or dancer, my fortune would long ago have been made, and
as an acrobat I should have won glory in my teens. But old-fashioned
parents never think of these things. If you are a girl, and fortune
forsakes the domestic hearth, they tell you to go and be a governess,
and bless your stars that, thanks to their good sense, you are enabled
to earn a miserable crust in the path of respectability. When they find
a child with extraordinary mimic capacities, an abnormal physical
suppleness, and a passion for the ballet, it does not occur to them that
it would be wiser and more humane to seek to turn these advantages to
some account, instead of condemning the little wretch to future misery
and self-effacement as a governess.
Pauline, who knew every moment of the famous Mr. Parker by heart,
wandered out into the front garden with a lad of her own age to look at
the stars and talk of their ideal. It was a few minutes after the hourly
train from Dublin stopped at Dalkey, and as they sat on the wall
discussing their favourite book of the hour, Manzoni's "Betrothed," they
saw a large and lofty figure steadily approach the gate. Good heavens!
It was my mother. Pauline was a creature of resource, and she had some
understanding of that formidable person.
"Quick, quick, Eddie," she whispered. "Run in and tell Agnes to get them
all out by the pantry window, which shows into the laneway. I'll keep
mamma outside talking about the stars."
Effectively, when my mother opened the gate, she encountered the solemn
sentimental regard of a student of the stars. Nothing enchanted my
mother more than an unexpected revelation of intelligence in one of her
children. She was a woman of colossal intelligence, of wide knowledge, a
brilliant talker, and at all times, whatever her temper, you could put
her instantly into good-humour, and wean her thoughts from the
irritating themes of daily life, by addressing yourself to her
intellect, and speaking of remote subjects like the constellations,
South Africa, the Federal war, Belgian farming, or the German Empire.
She knew everything, was interested in everything, had read everything,
could talk like a specialist on any given subject, except mathematics
and metaphysics, which she professed to hold in contempt. Another mother
would have been staggered to find a girl of thirteen alone beneath the
new-lit stars; but my mother found nothing at all odd in being begged to
deliver a lecture on astronomy at that hour, and fell into the trap with
ingenuous fervour.
And now I beseech you to conceive the scene inside. Ten minutes to clear
the house of some thirty excited children, obliged to make a
precipitous exit through a narrow pantry window, stifling with
hysterical laughter, and in danger of breaking their limbs upon the hard
ground as they dropped into the lane that ran alongside the garden into
the highroad. Ten minutes to clear the drawing-room of empty bottles and
glasses and plates, and put the chairs and tables and couches into
order. Ten minutes for us to scamper up-stairs, and get into our
night-gear in the dark. Good Lord! what fun! One would willingly endure
again the thrashing for those ten brave minutes of fire and fury.
"It was grand!" said Arthur next day to Pauline, after he had tried in
vain to look woe-begone over our castigation.
Only the body of the red-headed chief rebelled against the limited space
of the pantry window. What puffing and blowing and pushing to get his
fat carcass through! "Steady!" shouted the servant, Bridget, a big-boned
country girl; and with a bound she ran head-foremost like a charging
bull, who meditates the destruction of his enemy. A crash outside, and
we thrust anxious heads out of the window to ascertain if the
unfortunate youth lay in pieces upon the ground. But no; with smothered
laughter he was tearing down the lane for dear life.
With the last evidences of our feast effaced from view, we little ones
trod on each other's heels in our flight up-stairs, and staid Agnes went
outside, by the way, to induce her mooning sister to go to bed. She
simulated the necessary surprise and delight on beholding my mother, and
after a few more words upon the heavenly spheres, the three entered the
house, now cast, as Agnes fondly believed, into complete darkness.
My mother carelessly explaining why she had decided at the last minute
not to sleep in town, turned the handle of the drawing-room door. The
tapers, forgotten in the fray, blazed away in all their fatal admission,
though the gas of the chandelier had been duly extinguished. The result
was that soon the heavenly spheres were round about us instead of on
high. Agnes and Pauline rapidly were made to see stars elsewhere than in
the sky. When they lay prone and prostrate, not sure that their members
were whole, up offended majesty came to us, shivering in our
night-dresses. What did it all mean? she wanted to know. Empty bottles
heaped up in the pantry corner, a ham vanished, tin boxes empty of
their layers of biscuits, knives, plates, glasses, in tell-tale
disarray, a broken pane in the pantry window.
We had had our fun, and now came the bad quarter of the hour, when we
were expected to pay the bill in beaten flesh. How our ears tingled, our
cheeks pained, our heads ached, and our arms smarted! You see it was a
very long account, and it took a good deal of blows to make it up. But
even the most infuriated creditor is appeased in the long-run, when the
gathering in of his dues implies the excessive expenditure of nerve and
muscle as such a scene as that of our castigation. The strongest woman
cannot beat a half-dozen of children throughout an entire night, and my
mother retired, pleased to regard her life in danger by a consequent fit
of nervous exhaustion and blood to the head.