THE BALL.
The evening of the day following was that of the ball. Chris was in the
lowest of low spirits, and would have shut herself up in her room but
for Mr. Bradfield, who had insisted on her reserving a square dance for
him. The strange communications made by Stelfox, and her own conviction
that Mr. Richard was being unfairly treated, made her shy and depressed
in the society of the master of the house, whose sharp eyes detected
a change in her manner towards him. The girl was troubled also on her
mother’s account. Mrs. Abercarne had been worried and exasperated, not
only by the airs which Mrs. Graham-Shute gave herself, which she could
have put up with, but by the orders she gave the servants on matters
concerning the ball. Knowing her relationship to their master, and
being somewhat impressed also by her pretensions, the servants did not
dare to disobey her; so that in the attempt to serve two mistresses
they wasted their time and fell to grumbling. A consciousness of
the battle between the wills of the two ladies pervaded the entire
household by the time the dancing began, and the ball opened in general
depression.
“So good of you to give this dance for my girls!” cried Mrs.
Graham-Shute’s loud voice in Mr. Bradfield’s ear, as he stood surveying
the dancers, and looking about for Chris. “I’ve just been telling Mrs.
Ethandene so,” she added, glancing at a middle-aged lady by her side,
who was one of the great people of the place, and with whom, therefore,
Mrs. Graham-Shute thought it advisable to strike up a friendship.
“H’m! Not much in my line--balls!” said Mr. Bradfield, grumpily, as he
watched enviously the young fellow who was at that moment leading Chris
out for a waltz.
“Who is that very distinguished-looking girl?” asked Mrs. Ethandene,
who, having no daughters to marry, could afford a little admiration for
those of other women.
“That one in the white nun’s veiling, with the marguerites in her
bodice?” said Mrs. Graham-Shute, looking in the wrong direction either
on purpose or by accident; “that is my daughter Lilith. She is hardly
out yet, dear girl; but for my cousin John’s ball I _couldn’t_ refuse
her permission, you know.”
“No, no! I don’t mean her,” went on Mrs. Ethandene, a homely person,
incapable of taking a hint of any kind. “I mean that tall girl with the
good figure--the one in grey silk, with the flat gold necklace?”
“That,” answered Mr. Bradfield, in stentorian tones, frowning a little,
and stepping forward so that the lady should not misunderstand, “is
Miss Christina Abercarne.”
Mrs. Graham-Shute, whose face had in a moment become flaccid and
expressionless, drew her head well back, and murmured a postscript in
Mrs. Ethandene’s ear:
“The housekeeper’s little girl. I didn’t know you meant her. So good of
my cousin to let her come, wasn’t it?”
Now Mrs. Graham-Shute did not wish her cousin to hear these words; but
being one of those uncomfortable persons who are always more interested
in what is not intended for their ears than in what is, he did hear
them. And he utterly confounded and exasperated his dear cousin by
saying, in the same loud voice as before:
“There wasn’t any goodness about it; there’s no goodness in being kind
to a pretty girl. I gave the ball just because she likes dancing.
Nothing else would have induced me to turn my house upside down like
this.”
Mrs. Graham-Shute could only affect to laugh at this speech as if it
had been some charming pleasantry. But she did it with such an ill
grace, being, indeed, extremely mortified, that it was plain she was on
the verge of tears.
Meanwhile Chris was not enjoying herself so much as Mr. Bradfield had
wished her to do. Her partner was a local production, being, indeed,
no other than one of the famous Brownes, without an assortment of whom
no Wyngham gaiety could be considered complete. He was the younger
partner in the principal firm of solicitors of the town, and was, as
she afterwards learnt, looked upon as “a great catch.” No Wyngham
lady, however, had as yet caught him, and young Mr. Browne, modestly
conscious of the interest he excited in the feminine breasts of the
neighbourhood, conceived it as more his duty than his pleasure to
distribute his attentions as equally as he could among the maidens of
the place. In the course of his philanthropic wanderings, therefore, he
had fallen temporarily to the lot of Chris, who was, perhaps, not yet
sufficiently acclimatised to appreciate the honour as it deserved.
For young Mr. Browne’s attractions did not include the gift of
conversational brilliancy, and Chris found the _tête-à-tête_ hard work.
“You go in a great deal for theatricals, don’t you?” she said,
thinking, from what she had heard, that this was a safe shot.
But he shook his head with a smile, which had in it not more than the
minimum of the contempt the average Englishman always shows for any
form of recreation in which he is not proficient.
“No, _I_ don’t, but my brothers and sisters do. Amy, the second one,
acts awfully well. They did the _Vicar of Wakefield_ last year for
the Blind School, and her Olivia was ever so much better than Ellen
Terry’s. Everybody said so. She’d make her fortune on the stage, that
girl would. Of course, my father would never let her go on; but lots of
people would say it’s a pity.”
After this, as his interest in the stage evidently languished, Chris
tried Art. Did he sketch? No, young Mr. Browne didn’t sketch himself,
but his brother Algernon did; awfully well, too, so that everybody said
it was simply disgraceful laziness, and nothing else, which kept him
from exhibiting at the Academy. And this was the limit of young Mr.
Browne’s interest in Art.
“No doubt, living down here so close to the sea, you take more interest
in yachting and boating than anything else?”
“Well, I can’t say I’m much of a sailor myself,” answered Mr. Browne,
modestly. “But Guy--that’s my eldest brother--can sail a yacht better
than any of those men who get their living by it. My father keeps a
little yacht, and I assure you that when they’re out in dirty weather
the captain gives the boat over to Guy.”
“Indeed!” said Chris, with as little incredulity as possible. And at
last, tired of fishing about in these unpromising waters, she came
straight to the point with, “And what is your favourite recreation? Or
are you too studious to have one?”
“Oh, no! Walter’s the studious one of the family. He’ll make a name for
himself some day, for he’s got the real stuff in him, that chap.”
“So that you’re the idle one, who looks on and does nothing?”
“I’m afraid I am; but they’re all so clever that there’s nothing left
for me. And I think even they are cut out by my cousins at Colchester.
It’s an odd thing, but there are three distinct branches of the Browne
family, one at Colchester, one here, and one as far north as Caithness,
though we haven’t the remotest idea how they got up there.”
“In the Wars of the Roses, perhaps,” suggested Chris, wildly, feeling
that she must say something, and that it didn’t much matter what it was.
Young Mr. Browne quite caught at the notion.
“Very likely,” said he, waking up into vivid interest. “Any national
convulsion like that causes the great families to shift from their old
places, and distribute themselves over the country. I daresay such
disturbances do some hidden good in that way; don’t you think so?”
“Oh, no doubt,” answered Chris, feebly, wishing that she were on the
arm of the brother who could waltz better than anybody else.
The next partner she had was a little man, nearly a head shorter than
herself, as dark as young Mr. Browne was fair. He was of a different
type, too--the type that goes up to town now and then, and thinks it
the proper thing to speak of the place it lives in as “this hole.” In
essentials, however, there was a stronger resemblance between young Mr.
Cullingworth’s way of looking at life and young Mr. Browne’s than the
former would have been ready to admit.
“Do you like this place?” was his first, almost contemptuous question.
“Yes, I like it better than any place I have ever lived in,” answered
Chris, exuberantly. “I don’t seem ever to have known before what fresh
air was.”
“Oh, fresh air--yes,” replied young Mr. Cullingworth, his tone
betraying several degrees more of disdain than before. “One gets a
little too much of that; but of most of the other things which help
to make life endurable one gets next to nothing down here. It really
is the slowest hole you ever were in, and I shall be obliged to think
much worse of you than I should like to do if you don’t heartily wish
yourself out of it before very long.”
“I’m horribly afraid I shall have, then, to reconcile myself to that
fall in your estimation,” said Chris, smiling. “I like this place
much, much better than London. London is only pleasant when you’re
rich enough to get out of it whenever you like. Now we were not rich
enough--my mother and I--so we were very glad to come down here.”
“Awfully lucky for us down here,” said Mr. Cullingworth, without
enthusiasm. For he was not so deeply buried in the provinces as to fall
in love with every pretty face he met. “Wonder what on earth made this
Bradfield take it into his head to settle down here, don’t you?”
“I suppose he had heard of it as a nice place, and a healthy place,”
suggested Chris.
“He’s been awfully lucky in being taken up by all the best people in
the place, hasn’t he?”
Now Chris had nothing to say to this, for she thought the “best people”
were very lucky in being taken up by Mr. Bradfield. They were mostly
poor and proud, which is not a nice combination, and they showed their
poverty in their eagerness to avail themselves of Mr. Bradfield’s
invitations, and their pride in their unanimity in not inviting him
back.
Mr. Cullingworth, luckily, did not wait for an answer, but resumed,
with admiration:
“Why, there’s all the very best society of Wyngham here to-night, there
is, indeed. I suppose you know them all, don’t you?”
Chris, who thought the assembly decidedly unprepossessing, regretted
her ignorance, and said she supposed they would rather look down upon
her than seek her society. But Mr. Cullingworth, as representing the
“best society” of Wyngham, was magnanimous.
He didn’t think there was any feeling of that sort, “’pon his word he
didn’t.” There might have been, of course, if some little bird had
not happily whispered about that Mrs. Abercarne was the widow of an
officer in the army, and a cousin of Lord Llanfyllin’s. As it was, Mr.
Cullingworth felt sure that the “best people” were ready to receive her
and her mother as equals.
“If you want to know who anybody is, you know, why, I’ll tell you,”
said he, obligingly.
Chris, obliging too, asked the name of a tall, bald-headed man, who,
although not particularly interesting in appearance, looked like a
gentleman. Mr. Cullingworth’s face fell a little, but he answered at
once:
“Oh, that Sir George Brandram. Don’t know much about him, he’s a Wosham
man.”
His tone was so cold, and his manner intimated such strong disapproval,
that Chris did not like to ask more about Sir George, fearing that he
might be the hero of some terrible scandal. It was only later that she
learnt that the sting of Mr. Cullingworth’s account of him lay in the
words, “He’s a Wosham man.” For Wosham, four miles off along the coast,
was the deadly rival of Wyngham; and it was a point of honour among
their respective inhabitants to acknowledge no good in the dwellers of
the rival town.
Meanwhile, the giver of the ball was enjoying himself very little
better than the young lady in whose honour it was given. Mr. Bradfield
loved to see his house full of guests, having to the full the pleasure
of the self-made man in ostentatious hospitality. He took a cynical
delight in the knowledge that these people who were civil to him
for what he had, and not for what he was, considered themselves his
superiors, and would have disdained to shake hands with him while he
was still a poor man.
But to-night his enjoyment of his new position was spoilt for him by a
chance word, uttered in all good faith by Lilith Shute, who was ashamed
of her mother’s behaviour towards Chris, with whom she had struck up a
friendship, which would have been a warm one if she could have had her
will.
Lilith was dancing the Lancers with her host, whose constant glances
in the direction of Chris Abercarne she could not fail to notice.
“How nice she looks to-night,” said Lilith, who looked pretty enough
herself to afford a word of praise to a rival beauty, and who did not
believe in her friend’s supposed designs upon the rich cousin’s heart.
“She always does look nice,” said Mr. Bradfield, gruffly. “And she
knows it, too--a little too well, I expect, like all you girls who
think yourself beauties.”
He was jealous, entirely without reason, of the men younger than
himself, with one or other of whom she was dancing or talking whenever
he glanced in her direction.
“I don’t see how a girl is to help knowing it, when it makes such a
difference in the amount of attention she gets,” giggled Lilith. “Not,”
she went on laughingly, “that the attention of anyone here would be
likely to turn her head.” Then a malicious thought crossed her mind,
taking the place of her magnanimity. “Chris Abercarne’s thoughts
are too much occupied with somebody else for her to derive much
entertainment from her partners,” she said, demurely.
Mr. Bradfield looked at her scrutinisingly; he dared to hope that
Lilith was going to say something encouraging to himself.
“Somebody else?” he asked abruptly. “Who is it?”
Lilith shrugged her shoulders, and laughed mischievously.
“Ah, that’s more than I can tell you. All the information I can give
you is that he is very, _very_ good-looking, that he met her to-day in
the park, and walked a little way with her as she came back from the
town, and that she looked very much confused when she met me in the
garden, and would have liked, I’m sure, to think I hadn’t seen her.”
Now there was a little mischief in this speech, for Lilith did not
think Chris had behaved quite well in pretending not to know whom she
meant when she described the stranger present at the _tableaux_. But,
to do her justice, she had not the least intention of rousing the real
anger she instantly saw in Mr. Bradfield’s face. Not only in his face
either, for Lilith felt, when his hand next touched hers in the dance,
that he was trembling with rage.
“Oh, ho!” said he, with an exclamation which was meant to sound like a
laugh, but which was, in truth, anything but mirthful; “so she meets a
sweetheart on the quiet, does she?”
Lilith, rather frightened, and seeing that she had made more serious
mischief than she had intended hastened to answer:
“Oh, no, no; I didn’t mean that. I daresay it was only an accidental
meeting. I--I----”
Mr. Bradfield interrupted her sternly.
“Have you ever seen him before, this fellow whom she met?”
“Only once,” answered Lilith, quickly.
“Where was that? Was she with him?”
“N--no, she wasn’t with him. It was the day of the _tableaux_. He was
sitting on one of the back seats, and nobody seemed to know who he was.
Not even Chris, for I asked her.”
Mr. Bradfield was evidently much puzzled. All the golden youth of
Wyngham and the neighbourhood were dancing in his drawing-rooms
that night, and who the fortunate young man could be who was
considered good-looking by such a connoisseur as Lilith, and whom
Chris condescended to meet on the sly, he had not the remotest
notion. Certainly a man’s ideas of another man’s good looks differed
considerably from those of a girl; but he could not, running over in
his mind the eligible young men of the neighbourhood, conceive that any
one of them should find favour in the very particular eyes of both the
beauties.
With his usual directness, he set about solving the mystery at once.
Taking Lilith back to her mother as soon as the dance was over, he went
in search of Chris, whom he found sitting in the dining-room, eating an
ice, and looking bored by young Cullingworth’s conversation.
“Miss Christina, I want to speak to you,” said he, shortly.
Chris, upon whom a hazy dread began to fall, as to the subject upon
which he wished to interrogate her, followed him with reluctance into
the embrasure of the window, which had been kept free from refreshment
tables on purpose for _tête-à-têtes_ of a more or less interesting sort.