"There, Bob--there was my bill of fare for the night"--throwing a
glossy pink card across the table--"two lords, three baronets--at
least, eldest sons of baronets--a colonel, a couple of majors, no end
of smaller fry, captains, lieutenants, militia and regulars, for whom
of course I hadn't dances, though they kept buzzing about me half the
night, all the same."
"Bravo, Polly--you have been going it, and no mistake! I thought you'd
have been a wall-flower, knowing so few, being fresh 'on the flure,'
and all that."
Pauline tosses her pretty head.
"Me a wall-flower? Small fear of that, sir, I can tell you! Why,
several of my partners told me I was the belle of the room!"
They are all at dinner on the day after the ball, Robert having been
driven over with his brother-in-law to get a full account of his
sister's first appearance in society.
"Well, I'm glad you weren't fated to blush unseen, Polly. Have you any
other festivity in prospect?"
"No," she answers lugubriously, "not a thing. The Chomley Arkwrights
have cards out for a dance on the thirty-first, but you know Mrs.
Arkwright never called on Addie--I can't imagine why--and so I suppose
we shall not be asked. It's really too bad--though they may relent at
the eleventh hour. If they don't you will have to give a ball for me,
Tom, instead. I feel I can't exist without another soon."
"Let us hope they will relent, my dear."
"I can't imagine why they didn't ask us, for the whole county is to be
there; several of my partners said that it was a shame to leave us out,
and that they wouldn't go there if I didn't get an invite."
"Your partners seem to have been very pronounced in their remarks for
so short an acquaintance, Pauline," says Armstrong, a little gravely.
"They were, Tom, rather," she answers, giggling and blushing somewhat.
"I had hard work to suppress some of them after supper, I can tell you."
"O Mary Ann, O Mary Ann,
I'll tell your mar!
I never thought, when you went out,
You'd go so far,"
hums Robert, with music-hall jocularity.
A faint expression of disgust crosses Armstrong's dark face, which his
wife notes with a wondering start. What does it mean? Is it possible
that he, Armstrong of Kelvick, the plebeian bred, who never, according
to his own admission, had familiar intercourse with gentlewomen until
he married her, thinks her blue-blooded sister, Pauline Lefroy, the
offspring of Bourbon chivalry, a little vulgar now and then? Is it
possible that her manner, so boastfully elated, her unabashed account
of her conquests, jars on him, as it does on her--Addie? If so, how
much they have in common, this husband and wife, severed by nearly a
score of years, by position, education, and mode of life, estranged by
fate from communion of thought, from interchange of sympathy--how much
in common still!
"I wish Pauline would not talk like that," she thinks, with shamefaced
irritation. "I wonder she does not feel that it is unladylike,
indelicate. I wonder Robert, who has such keen perception, does not try
to check her, instead of backing her up."
"Yes, it is most aggravating, I must say," continues Pauline, harping
on her grievance. "I can't imagine what those Arkwrights mean by it,
and they such near neighbors too! I wish you, Tom, or Addie, would do
something in the matter."
"I can't see what we could do, Pauline," he answers, smiling,
"unless you would have us follow Thackeray's advice--go straight to
head-quarters and 'ask to be asked.' It would be rather an extreme
measure, but I believe it has been successful in many cases."
"Polly," says Goggles, nodding her head mysteriously, "I think I know
why you weren't asked, only--only--perhaps you wouldn't like me to
tell."
Pauline laughs contemptuously.
"You know, Goggles? A very likely story indeed!"
"I just do know!" answers Goggles, stung into retort. "They don't ask
you, Pauline, because papa owes Major Arkwright a lot of money, which
he never paid--a debt of honor, I think they call it, and--"
"What nonsense you are talking!" breaks in Robert sharply. "I never met
such a senseless chatterbox as you are, Lottie--always chattering of
things you know nothing about, taking the wrong end of every story."
"I am doing nothing of the kind, Bob, and I know perfectly well what
I am talking about. I heard Aunt Jo tell her Cousin Jenny Bruce the
whole story. Major Arkwright and papa were in the same regiment, and
they had an awful row together over cards, and the major called papa a
black something or other--black-foot was it? No, not black-foot, but
black-leg--I remember now I thought it such a funny word--black-leg!"
Before the end of this unfortunate speech, Armstrong, with innate
delicacy, rises to his feet and begins addressing his wife in a loud
voice; but it is of no use--he can not drown his sister-in-law's shrill
triumphant tone, and so he hurries from the room, and leaves the family
to fight it out among themselves.
Robert's handsome face is scarlet; he turns to his eldest sister
fiercely.
"Addie, what in the world do you mean by letting that child loose
as you do? If you have not sufficient authority to keep her in the
school-room, where she ought to be, you ought at least to be able to
muzzle her in society; she is getting perfectly intolerable!"
"What can I do?" answers Mrs. Armstrong, with quivering voice. "Nobody
minds what I say, nobody pays the least attention to my wishes. I am a
cipher in my own house."
"That's because you don't assert yourself properly," strikes in Pauline
trenchantly. "You are all fire and fury for the moment, Addie, and
then you subside and let things go. There is nothing solid in your
character, and there is a want of dignity and repose in your manner
that you really ought to supply now that you are a married woman. Don't
you agree with me, Robert?"
"Perfectly, my child. What you want is backbone, Addie--backbone."
"It seems to me that I want a good many things to content you all,"
she says bitterly. "I sometimes wonder, if I had gone to Birmingham as
a nursery-governess, instead of doing as I did, whether I shouldn't
have given you all, myself included, more satisfaction in the long run,
and--"
"Now, Addie, now why will you fly off at a tangent like that, and drag
in matter that has nothing to do with the question? You know you did
everything for the best; and I'm sure your marriage so far has turned
out most satisfactory, and--"
"Suppose you leave my marriage and its result out of the question,
Robert!" she interrupts quickly. "It is a subject I would rather not
discuss with you, if you do not mind."
"Whew--what a little spitfire she has become!" exclaims Bob, somewhat
discomfited, when Addie has left the room. "She must be hard to get on
with, Polly, if she often pulls like that."
"Oh, I don't mind her in the least!" answers Polly lightly. "As you
say, Bob, she has no backbone; so I let her calm down, stick quietly
to my point all the time, and get what I want in the end. The
brother-in-law is harder to manage; but I think I have discovered the
way to work him too."
"Have you?" he asks eagerly. "D'ye know, it strikes me you're a pretty
sharp customer to deal with, sister mine; there's more in you than
appears on the surface."
"I don't want to boast; but I think I shall get on," she answers, with
becoming modesty.
"But the discovery, Polly, the discovery? You'll share it with your
beloved brother, won't you?"
"I will, if you promise not to overwork it."
"I promise!"
"Well, then, when you want to coax anything out of him, want to
go anywhere, or get him to do anything for you, just hint to him
judiciously that you think Addie would like it, or is anxious on the
subject, and you'll find somehow that the thing will work as you want."
"Oh!" says Robert, with a sigh of enlightenment; and then he falls
into a "brown-study," in which he seeks the most diplomatic way of
introducing his sister's name into a certain personal project that
lies very near his heart, and which he is half afraid to broach to his
indulgent brother-in-law.
"I managed the ball on that principle," says Pauline, with a low laugh.
"I hinted to him that it had been the dream of Addie's life that we two
should go to our first ball together, and he took the bait at once.
It was only a partial falsehood, Bob, you know, because long ago she
and I used occasionally to build castles in the air; we always entered
fairyland in a double pair of glass slippers, Addie and I--we always
met our prince at the same magic ball. Hers, I remember, poor dear, was
a tall slim youth, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and scarlet-coated; mine was
dark and fierce, mysteriously wicked."
"You didn't see his shadow last night, Polly?"
"No," she answers, with a gay heart-whole laugh--"no, he wasn't there.
I doubt if I shall ever meet him in the flesh. Besides, I don't think
my ideal would make what you call a comfortable every-day husband--an
article I mean to go in for one day or another."
"Yes," says Bob, oracularly, "I suppose that is your game,
Polly--matrimony. You must act like the sensible prudent girl I take
you to be, and give the family a good lift in that way."
"I mean to do so."
"You must have position--good unassailable county position--as well as
money, remember, to make up for poor Addie's _mesalliance_."
"I certainly ought to do better than Addie, for I'm much handsomer than
she, and my manners are more taking--and--and dignified. Oh, yes, I
hope I shall do better than she!"