Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XLVI
"... Peace, pray you, now,
No dancing more. Sing sweet, and make us mirth.
We have done with dancing measures; sing that song
You call the song of love at ebb."
Yesterday it had seemed impossible that we could ever be dry again, and yet to-day we are. Even our hair is no longer in dull, discolored ropes. A night has intervened between us and our sufferings. We have at last got the sound of the hissing rain and the thunder of the boisterous wind out of our ears. We have all got colds more or less. I am among the less; for rough weather has never been an enemy to me, and at home I have always been used to splashing about in the wet, with the native relish of a young duck. Mrs. Huntley is (despite the fly) among the more. She does not appear until late�not until near luncheon-time. Her cold is in the head, the safest but unbecomingest place, producing, as I with malignant joy perceive, a slight thickening and swelling of her little thin nose, and a boiled-gooseberry air in her appealing eyes.
The old gentleman is�with the exception, perhaps, of Algy�the most dilapidated among us. He has not yet begun one anecdote, whose point was not smothered and effaced by that choking, goat-like cough. This is perhaps a gain to us, as one is not expected to laugh at a cough; nor does its d�no�ment ever put one to the blush.
Mr. Parker has no cold at all, and has even had the shameless audacity to propose another expedition to-day. But we all rise in such loud and open revolt that he has perforce to withdraw his suggestion.
He must save his superfluous energy for the evening, when the neighbors are to come together, and we are to dance. This fact is news to most of us, and I think we hardly receive it with the elation he expects. There seems to be more of rheumatism than of dance in many of our limbs, and our united sneezes will be enough to drown the band. However, revolt in this case is useless. We must console ourselves with the notion that at least in a ballroom there can be neither rain nor wind�that we cannot lose our way or be upset, at least not in the sense which had such terror for us yesterday. Roger has gone over to Tempest on business, and is away all day. Mrs. Huntley sits by the fire, with a little fichu over her head, sipping a tisane; while Algy, in undisturbed possession, and with restored but feverish amiability, stretches his length on the rug at her feet, and looks injured if Barbara or I, or even the footman with coals, enters the room.
As the day goes on, there is not much to do; a new idea takes possession of Mr. Parker's active mind.
Why should not we all be in fancy-dress to-night? Well, not all of us, then�not his uncle, of course, nor Sir Roger, but any of us that liked. Trouble! Not a bit of it. Why, the ladies need only rouge a bit, and put some flour on their heads, and there they are; and, as for the men, there is a heap of old things up in the lumber-room that belonged to his great-grandfather, and among them there is sure to be something to fit everybody. If they do not believe him, they may come and see for themselves.
Such is the force of a strong will, that he actually carries off the deeply unwilling Musgrave to inspect his ancestor's wardrobe. At first we have treated his proposal only with laughter, but he is so profoundly in earnest about it, and dwells with such eagerness on the advantage of the fact that not a soul among the company will recognize us�he can answer for himself at least�it is always by his hair (with a laugh) that people know him�that we at length begin to catch his ardor.
To tell truth, from the beginning the idea has approved itself to Barbara and me, only that we were ashamed to say so�carrying us back in memory as it does to the days when we dressed the Brat up in my clothes as me, and took in all the maid-servants. I think, too, that I have a little of the feeling of faint hope that inspired Balak when he showed Balaam the Israelites from a fresh point of view. Perhaps, in carmine cheeks and a snow-white head, I may find a little of my old favor in Roger's eyes.
Human wills are mostly so feeble and vacillating, that if one thorough-going determined one sticks to any proposition, however absurd, he is pretty sure to get the majority round to him in time; and so it is in the present case. Mr. Parker succeeds in making us all, willing and unwilling, promise to travesty ourselves. We are not to dress till after dinner; that is over now, and we are all adorning ourselves.
For once I am taking great pains, and�for a wonder�pleasant pains with my toilet. It is slightly delayed by a variety of unwonted interruptions�knocks at the door, voices of valets in interrogation, and dialogue with my maid.
"If you please, Mr. Musgrave wants to know has Lady Tempest done with the rouge?"
(There is only one edition of rouge, which is traveling from room to room.)
Five minutes more, another knock.
"If you please, Mr. Parker's compliments, and will Lady Tempest lend him a hair-pin to black his eyelashes?"
I am finished now, quite finished�metamorphosed. I have suffered a great deal in the process of powdering, as I fancy every one must have done since the world began; the powder has gone into my eyes, up my nose, down into my lungs. I have breathed it, and sneezed it, and swallowed it, but "il faut souffrir pour �tre belle," and I do not grumble; for I am belle! For once in my life I know what it feels like to be a pretty woman. My uninteresting flax-hair is hidden. Above the lowness of my brow there towers a great white erection, giving me height and dignity, while high aloft a little cap of ancient lace and soft pink roses daintily perches. On my cheeks there is a vivid yet delicate color; and my really respectable eyes are emphasized and accentuated by the dark line beneath them. To tell you the truth, I cannot take my eyes off myself. It is delightful to be pretty! I am simpering at myself over my left shoulder, and heartily joining in my maid's encomiums on myself, when the door opens, and Roger enters. For the first instant I really think that he does not recognize me. Then�
"Nancy!" he exclaims, in a tone of the most utter and thorough astonishment�"is it Nancy?"
"Nancy, at your service!" reply I, with undisguised elation, looking eagerly at him, with my blackened eyes, to see what he will say next.
"But�what�has�happened�to you?" he says, slowly, looking at me exhaustively from top to toe�from the highest summit of my floured head to the point of my buckled shoes. "What have you got yourself up like this for?"
"To please Mr. Parker," reply I, breaking into a laugh of excitement. "But I have killed two birds with one stone; I have pleased myself, too! Did you ever see any thing so nice as I look?" (unable any longer to wait for the admiration which is so justly my due).
"Not often!" he answers, with emphasis.
We had parted rather formally�rather en d�licatesse�this morning, but we both seem to have forgotten this.
"I must not dance much!" say I, anxiously turning again to the glass, and closely examining my complexion�"must I?�or my rouge will run!"
After a moment�
"You must be sure to tell me if I grow to look at all smeary, and I will run up-stairs at once, and put some more on."
He is looking at me, with an infinite amusement, and also commendation, in his eyes.
"Why, Nancy," he says, smiling�"I had no idea that you were so vain!"
"No," reply I, bubbling over again into a shamefaced yet delighted laughter�"no more had I! But then I had no idea that I was so pretty, either."
My elation remains undiminished when I go down-stairs. Yes, even when I compare myself with Mrs. Huntley, for, for once, I have beaten her! I really think that there can be no two opinions about it! indeed, I have the greatest difficulty in refraining from asking everybody whether there can.
She is not in powder. Her hair, in its present color, is hardly dark enough to suit the high comb, and black lace mantilla which she has draped about her head, and the red rose in her hair is hardly redder than the catarrh has made her eyelids. A cold always comes on more heavily at night; and no one can deny that her whole appearance is stuffy and choky, and that she speaks through her nose.
As for me, I am not sure that I do not beat even Barbara. At least, the idea has struck me; and, when she herself suggests, and with hearty satisfaction, and elation not inferior to my own, insists upon it, I do not think it necessary to contradict her.
None of the three young men have as yet made their appearance; and the guests are beginning quickly to arrive. All the neighbors�all the friends who are staying with the neighbors to shoot their partridges�some soldiers, some odds and ends, bushels of girls�there always are bushels of girls somehow; here they come, smiling, settling their ties, giving their skirts furtive kicks behind, as their different sex and costume bid them.
All the duties of reception fall upon the poor old gentleman, and drive him to futile wrath, and to sending off many loud and desperate messages to his truant heir. However, to do him justice, the poor old soul is hospitality itself, and treats his guests, not only to the best food, drink, and fiddling in his power, but also to all his primest anecdotes. No less than three times in the course of the evening do I hear him go through that remarkable tale of the doctor at Norwich, of the age of seventy-eight, and the four fine children.
To my immense delight, hardly anybody recognizes me. Many people look hard�really very hard�at me, and I try to appear modestly unconscious.
We are all in the dancing-room. The sharp fiddles are already beginning to squeak out a gay galop, and I am tapping impatient time with my foot to that brisk, emphasized music which has always seemed to Barbara and me exhilarating past the power of words to express.
I think that Roger perceives my eagerness, for he brings up a, to me, strange soldier, who makes his bow, and invites me.
I comply, with contained rapture, and off we fly. For I have pressingly consulted Roger as to whether I may, with safety to my complexion, take a turn or two, and he has replied strongly in the affirmative. He has, indeed, maintained that I may dance all night without seeing my rosy cheeks dissolve, but I know better.
The room is almost lined with mirrors. I can even perceive myself over my partner's shoulder as I dance. I can ascertain that my loveliness still continues.
How pleasant it is, after all, to be young! and how delightful to be pretty!
Does Barbara always feel like this? It seems to me as if I had never danced so lightly�on so admirably slippery and springy a floor, or with any one whose step suited mine better. His style of dancing is, indeed, very like Bobby's. I tell him so. This leads to an explanation as to who Bobby is, which makes us extremely friendly.
We are standing still for a moment or two to take breath�we are long-winded, and do not often do it; but still, once in a way, it is unavoidable�and everybody else is whirling and galloping, and prancing round us, like Bacchantes, or tops, or what you will, when, looking toward the door, I catch a glimpse of the three missing young men. They are dodging behind one another, and each nudging and pushing the other forward. Clearly, they are horribly ashamed of themselves; and, from the little I see of them, no wonder!
"Here they are!" I cry, in a tone of excitement. "Look! do look!" for, having at length succeeded in urging Mr. Parker to the front, they are making their entry, hanging as close together as possible, and with an extremely hang-dog air.
My partner has opened his eyes and his mouth.
"What are they?" he says, in a tone of extreme disapprobation. "Who are they? Are they Christy Minstrels?"
"Oh, do not!" cry I, in a choked voice, "I do not want to laugh, it will make them so angry�at least not Mr. Parker, but the others."
As I speak, they reach me, that is, Algy and Mr. Parker do. Musgrave has slunk into a corner, and sits there, glaring at whoever he thinks shows a disposition to smile in his direction.
I have done Mr. Parker an injustice in accrediting him with any mauvaise honte. On the contrary, he clearly glories in his shame.
"Not half so bad, after all, are they?" he says in a voice of loud and cheerful appeal to me, as he comes up. "I mean considering, of course, that they were not meant for one, they really do very decently, do not they?"
I have put up my fan to hide the irresistible contortions which lips and mouth are undergoing.
"Very!" I say, indistinctly.
Almost everybody has stopped dancing, and is staring with unaffected wonder at them. Their heads are heavily floured, and their cheeks rouged. They have also greatly overdone the burnt hair-pin, as a huge smouch of black under each of their eyes attests.
They have all three got painfully tight knee-breeches, white stockings, and enormously long, broad-skirted coats, embroidered in tarnished gold. Algy's is plum-color. The arms of all three are very, very tight. Had our ancestors indeed such skinny limbs, and such prodigious backs?
Algy is a tall young man, but the waist of his coat is somewhere about the calves of his legs. It has told upon his spirits; he looks supernaturally grave.
Mr. Parker is differently visited. He has an apparently unaccountable reluctance to turning his back to me. I put it down at first to an exaggerated politeness; but, when, at last, in walking away, he unavoidably does it, I no longer wonder at his unwillingness, as his coat-tails decline to meet within half a mile. His forefathers must have been oddly framed.
"Poor fellows!" says my partner, in a tone of the profoundest compassion, as he puts his arm round me, and prepares to whirl me again into the throng, "how I pity them! What on earth did they do it for?"
"Oh, I do not know," I reply; "for fun I suppose!"
But I think that except in the case of Mr. Parker, who really enjoys himself, and goes about making jovial jests at his own expense, and asking everybody whether he is not immensely improved by the loss of his red hair, that there is not much fun in it.
Algy is as sulky and shamefaced as a dog with a tin kettle tied to his tail, and Mr. Musgrave has altogether disappeared.
The evening wears on. I forget my cheeks, and dance every thing. How I am enjoying myself! Man after man is brought up to me, and they all seem pleased with me. At many of the things I say, they laugh heartily, and I do not wonder�even to myself my speeches sound pleasant. What a comfort it is that, for once in his life, Roger may be honestly proud of me! And he is.
It is surely pride, and also something better and pleasanter than pride, that is shining in the smile with which he is watching me from the door-way. At least, during the first part of the evening he was watching me.
Is not he still? I look round the room. No, he is not here! he has disappeared! By a sudden connection of ideas I turn my eyes in search of the high comb and mantilla. Neither are they here. Last time I saw them, they were sitting on the stairs, pathetically observing to their companion how hard it was that one might not feel cool without looking as if one were flirting.
Perhaps they are on the stairs still; perhaps she has gone to bed as she threatened. Somehow my heart misgives me. I become rather absent: my partners grow seldomer merry at my speeches. Even my feet feel to fly less lightly, and I forget to look at myself in the glass. Then it strikes me suddenly that I will not dance any more. The sparkle seems to have gone out of the evening since I missed Roger's face from the door-way.
I decline an overture on the part of my first friend to trip a measure with me�we have already tripped several�and, by the surprise and slight mortification which I read on his face as he turns away, I think I must have done it with some abruptness.
I decline everybody. I stand in the door-way, whence I can command both the ballroom and the passages. They are not on the stairs.
A moment ago Mr. Parker came up to me, and told me in his gay, loud voice how much he would like to have a valse with me, but that his clothes are so tight, he really dare not. Then he disappears among the throng, with an uncomfortable sidelong movement, which endeavors to shield the incompleteness of his back view.
I am still smiling at his dilemma, when another voice sounds in my ears.
"You are not dancing?"
It is Musgrave. He has had the vanity to take off his absurd costume, and to wash the powder from his hair, and the rouge from his cheeks. He stands before me now, cool, pale, and civilized, in the faultless quietness of his evening dress.
"No," reply I, shortly, "I am not!"
"Will you dance with me?"
I am not looking at him; indeed, I never look at him now, if I can help; but I hear a sort of hesitating defiance in his tone.
"No, thank you"�(still more shortly)�"I might have danced, if I had liked: it is not for want of asking"�(with a little childish vanity)�"but I do not wish."
"Do not you mean to dance any more this evening, then?"
"I do not know; that is as may be!"
I have almost turned my back upon him, and my eyes are following�not perhaps quite without a movement of envy�my various acquaintances, scampering, coupled in mad embraces. I think that he is gone, but I am mistaken.
"Will you at least let me take you in to supper?" in a tone whose formality is strongly dashed with resentment.
I wish that I did not know his voice so hatefully well: all its intonations and inflections are as familiar to me as Roger's.
"I do not want any supper," I answer, petulantly, turning the back of my head and all my powdered curls toward him; "I never eat supper at a ball; I like to stand here; I like to watch the people�to watch Barbara!"
This at least is true. To see Barbara dance has always given, and does even now give, me the liveliest satisfaction. No one holds her head so prettily as Barbara; no one moves so smoothly, and with so absolutely innocent a gayety. The harshest, prudishest adversary of valsing, were he to see Barbara valse, would be converted to thinking it the most modest of dances. Mr. Musgrave is turning away. Just as he is doing so, an idea strikes me. Perhaps they are in the supper-room.
"After all," say I, unceremoniously, and forgetting for the moment who it is that I am addressing, "I do not mind if I do have something; I�I�am rather hungry."
I put my hand on his arm, and we walk off.
The supper-room is rather full�(when, indeed, was a supper-room known to be empty?)�some people are sitting�some standing�it is therefore a little difficult to make out who is here, and who is not. In total absolute forgetfulness of the supposed cause that has brought me here, I stand eagerly staring about, under people's arms�over their shoulders. So far, I do not see them. I am recalled by Mr. Musgrave's voice, coldly polite.
"Will not you sit down?"
"No, thank you," reply I, bending my neck back to get a view behind an intervening group; "I had rather stand."
"Are you looking for any one?"
Again, I wish that I did not know his voice so well�that I did not so clearly recognize that slightly guardedly malicious intonation.
"Looking for any one?" I cry, sharply, and reddening even through my rouge�"of course not!�whom should I be looking for?�but, after all, I do not think I care about having any thing!�there's�there's nothing that I fancy."
This is a libel at once upon myself and on General Parker's hospitality. He answers nothing, and perhaps the smile, almost imperceptible�which I fancy in his eyes, and in the clean curve of his lips�exists only in my imagination. He again offers me his arm, and I again take it. I have clean forgotten his existence. His arm is no more to me than if it were a piece of wood.
"Where are they? where can they be?" is the thought that engrosses all my attention.
I hardly notice that he is leading me away from the ballroom�down the long corridor, on which almost all the sitting-rooms open. They are, one and all, lit up to-night; and in each of them there are guests. I glance in at the drawing-room: they are not there! We take a turn in the conservatory. We find Mr. Parker sitting very carefully upright, for his costume does not allow of any lolling, or of any tricks being played with it under a magnolia, with a pretty girl�(I wonder, have my cheeks grown as streaky as his?)�but they are not there. We go back to the corridor. We peep into the library: two or three bored old gentlemen�martyrs to their daughters' prospects�yawning over the papers and looking at their watches. They are not here. Where can they be? Only one room yet remains�one room at the very end of the passage�the billiard-room, shut off by double doors to deaden the sound of the balls. One of the double doors is wide open, the other closed�not absolutely shut, but not ajar. Musgrave pushes it, and we look in. I do not know why I do. I do not expect to see any one. I hardly think it will be lit, probably blank darkness will meet us. But it is not so. The lamps above the table are shining subduedly under their green shades; and on a couch against the wall two people are sitting. They are here. I found them at last.
Evidently they are in deep and absorbing talk. Roger's elbow rests on the top of the couch. His head is on his hand. On his face there is an expression of grave and serious concern; and she�she�is it possible?�she is evidently�plainly weeping. Her face is hidden in her handkerchief, and she is sobbing quietly, but quite audibly. In an instant, with ostentatious hurry, Musgrave has reclosed the door, and we stand together in the passage.
I am not mistaken now: I could not be: that can be no other expression than triumph that so darkly shines in his great and eager eyes.
"You knew they were there!" I cry in a whisper of passionate resentment, snatching my hand from his arm; "you brought me here on purpose!"
Then, regardless of appearances, I turn quickly away, and walk back down the passage alone! |
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