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Plain Living

<h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER IX</h2> Although the ball bore the name of the Bachelors’, it was generally known to be an entertainment got up by the unmarried members of the leading clubs. As was their wont, no expense would be spared. Invitations had been comparatively restricted; many had been disappointed who had made certain of the privilege. All this, of course, made the happy possessors of the tickets still more gratified by their good fortune. The finest hall in the city had been secured for the occasion. The ornamentation was said to be unparalleled, the supper without precedent for style and expensiveness. A celebrated European band, then on a tour through Australia, had been engaged. Sailors from a man-of-war anchored in the harbour were kindly lent to hold a rope which served to divide the ball-room. It was questionable whether so truly magnificent a ball had ever been given in Sydney, or perhaps would be given again. The weather was evidently “set fair”—there would be no deduction from comfort on that 138account. It was weeks since a great society entertainment had been given. The haute volée of Sydney was manifestly fluttered. Some of the younger feminine members openly stated that, after tasting to the full of its delights, they would be ready to lie down and die. At length the long-expected day arrived, on the night of which the fondly-anticipated Bachelors’ Ball was to take place. All feminine adult Sydney—that is to say, the fortunate section which was entitled to the entrée—was moved to its centre. No statistics are to hand of the number of dressmakers who temporarily became of unsound mind because of the terrific call upon their fingers and brains, tempers and tongues. Nevertheless, according to the doctrine of averages, there must have been a certain number of the managers and of the young persons whose passage to an early grave was thereby accelerated. Mrs. Stamford, wisely forecasting, had carried out arrangements for her own and the girls’ dresses at a comparatively early period, had got them home with all necessary alterations and trimmings decided upon long before the real crush of the thoughtless began, or the panic of the dangerously late set in. Simple as were the materials, few the ornaments, and unobtrusive the accordance with the prevailing fashion, the full measure of satisfactory fitting was not completed without several interviews and divers alterations. The 139sum total of her milliner’s bill astonished, even alarmed, Mrs. Stamford. But her husband, when giving her carte blanche, had intimated that he did not wish trifling economies to be studied, that his wife and daughters must look their best; all the world was to be there, and as it was to be a rare occasion, they had better take full advantage of it. When the hour sounded, Laura had been dressed and finished to the last lace; had indeed been sitting quietly reading, awaiting the arrival of their carriage. But Linda could not contain her impatience. She walked up and down the sitting-room spreading out her dress occasionally, and requesting her mother to say if it was “straight,” whether her flowers were exactly in their places, whether it would not have been better for her to have worn another colour. This conversation was varied by wondering whether she would get any partners, or have to sit on a seat the whole evening; whether Mr. Hope would find them out, or be so occupied with his duties as steward that he would not observe them or have time to dance with them. To which inquiries her parents either were unable to reply satisfactorily or said she would see when she got there. “Do you know, Laura,” she suddenly added, “impartially speaking, you are really a pretty girl! I am sure if I were a stranger I should think so; I should indeed. Your features are 140not perfection, except your eyes, I mean—I don’t think any one could say they were not first class. But you have a very taking look when you are interested about anything; and then you are tallish and slight—not too tall either. You could look dignified too, if you liked, which is a great advantage to a woman, while I am afraid I never could. If I were to set my mouth and knit my brows and say ‘Sir! I fail to understand you,’ people would only laugh and pat me on the back. It would never freeze the blood in their veins, or anything of that sort. Now ‘father, dearest father!’ as the Wanderer in the play says, don’t you think Laura looks perfectly splendid to-night?” “Bless her heart!” said Mr. Stamford, answering the question while he gazed at his eldest daughter with fond admiration, “she looks like a—like a queen in a book, like a princess in the <cite>Arabian Nights</cite>; like her father’s own dear girl. I trust she will enjoy herself as much as she deserves; and you too, Linda, darling.” Laura Stamford without doubt did look a most perfect incarnation of innocent, girlish beauty. And, indeed, when is a maiden more likely to present that appearance than on the night of the first ball of note and importance to which she has been bidden? Her cheek slightly flushed with the excitement of untasted pleasure, her eyes sparkling with innocent excitement; her red-rose lips; her rounded arms; 141her ivory neck; her slender, supple form; her free, elastic step—if these attributes do not, in combination, make up the wondrous, God-given, crowning gift of beauty, then have the grateful eyes of mankind never been gladdened with the vision. “Father is perfectly just in his opinion of dear Laura’s appearance to-night,” said Mrs. Stamford, with a mother’s guarded approval; “and my little girl here, too, looks extremely nice. I might say more, were I not afraid of making her vain. I can only tell her not to be anxious about herself; to trust to the course of events, and all will go well. We must have a grand talk over it all to-morrow morning.” “Here comes the carriage at last, I am thankful to say,” said Laura, as the grand London-made barouche rolled up to the door, while the footman rang the bell sufficiently long to make a nervous inmate conclude it to be a fire. “Muffle up and run down, my dears! We must not keep three hundred guineas’ worth of horseflesh waiting at night,” said her father. Mrs. Grandison and Josie were in the carriage. The former made room beside her for Mrs. Stamford, saying, “You girls must sit together on the back seat. It’s large enough to hold four of you now there’s no crinoline—at least, none to speak of. Perhaps Mr. Stamford won’t mind sitting on the box—once upon a time two people would have filled this carriage. How did you get on with your dresses, girls? 142Mine and Josie’s only came late in the afternoon, after that infamous Madame Rocheretti promising to have them fitted on and everything done in the way of trimmings yesterday. However, she threw herself on my mercy, as she said the Government House people had come down upon her at the last moment.” “I don’t believe a word of it,” said Josie. “However, I have made up my mind to have my dresses made at Justine’s in future. She is dearer, but she has twice as much originality. What have you got on, Laura?” “Nothing very wonderful. We went to mother’s old dressmaker, Madame Schlesinger, that she used to have when she was first married. She is behind the times, I dare say, but a ball is a ball with Linda and me. We shall enjoy ourselves, I dare say. If we are much disfigured this time, we shall gradually advance to a knowledge of high millinery.” “You’ll see when you go into the room how the other women are dressed,” said Josie authoritatively. “If you’re dowdy, it will make you so miserable that you’ll be more careful next time. I would have come down and given you a hint or two, but I make it a rule never to stir out on the day of a ball, and all yesterday I was too busy.” “It is very kind of you,” said Laura, warmly, “and we were uncertain about several things, but it doesn’t matter particularly.” “Laura must make up by freshness and 143youth what she wants in style,” said Mrs. Grandison good-humouredly. “I dare say she and Linda will do very well, though I really believe Josie’s will be the best dress in the room. And indeed it ought to be. Mr. Grandison’s cheque, and it was a large one, didn’t nearly pay for it.” “Laura is only a year younger than I am, mamma,” said Josie, rather sharply. “One would think I was getting quite an old hag. I wonder if all the best men are going? Is that good looking Mr. Hope sure to be there?” “Yes,” said Linda; “he told us he was one of the committee.” Further conversation was rendered difficult by the dashing of the carriage into the “line.” The string of ball-ward carriages, of which they now formed a part, compelled them to proceed at a walk until the foremost vehicles drove up and deposited their occupants. The novelty of making a part of such an astonishing procession almost roused Linda’s spirits to the point of expressing the admiration of everything which she felt. But, recalling her mother’s advice and the responsibility of decorous demeanour now cast upon her, she refrained, at great personal cost and self-denial. She was rewarded in turn by the arrival of the carriage at the magic portal, from the interior of which a blaze of lamps and fairy splendour was visible. A few moments saw them safely ushered into the dressing-room, provided with all accessories 144needful for repairing temporary damage or partial disarray. Small stay, however, was made here, and after Josie had gazed at herself in the mirrors from every conceivable point, and had herself adjusted by her obedient mother in several different modes, they bent their steps towards the main entrance to the ball-room, where they found Mr. Stamford awaiting them. By a curious coincidence, Mr. Barrington Hope chanced to come that way, when, giving his arm to Mrs. Stamford and Laura, he walked up to the top of the enormous room, leaving Mr. Stamford to bring up the rear with Mrs. Grandison and the two girls. The latter lady lost no time in locating herself next to the wife of a well-known member of Parliament, and at no great distance from the wife and daughter of the Governor. She signed to Mrs. Stamford to sit next to her, and being thus within the Vice-regal circle, as it were, considered the seating and rendezvous part of the business to be settled for the night. Mr. Barrington Hope immediately possessed himself of Laura’s card, upon which he inscribed his name for two waltzes and said something about an extra as well. Josie was surrounded by several of the jeunesse dorée, who appropriated a large share of the dances not marked engaged. Of these there were several unnamed, and yet not open. When questioned, she declined to give the names of her partners, 145merely remarking that she reserved them for friends. As for Linda, she sat down in a state of wonder and admiration at the whole splendid array, to her astonished gaze supernal in glory and dazzling in brilliancy. The magnificent and lofty hall, the crowd of well-dressed men and women, the glass-like floor, the melodious crash of the band, which filled the room with the music of the spheres, as it seemed to her, the hall divided by a rope held by picturesque tars modelled upon the lines of the nautical melodrama; the swing and sway of the immortal dance-music of Johann Strauss—which had for some time commenced—the uniforms of the naval and military officers, all these wonders and splendours for a time obscured in her mind the fact that nobody had as yet asked her to dance. She had suddenly become aware of this fact, and was subsiding into a plaintive and resigned condition, a prey to dismal anticipations, when Mr. Hope suddenly appeared in company of a naval lieutenant, whom he begged leave to introduce. Linda bowed with acquiescence, and the next moment was whirling around with the joyous throng, conscious that she danced well, feeling herself to be one of the leading performers, and quite on a par with all other individuals of her age and sex. The young officer danced well, as do naval men generally. He talked easily and agreeably, 146with that happy mixture of brusquerie and refinement which renders the service so irresistible. Linda apparently came up to his standard of a nice girl and a desirable partner, since he begged leave to put down his name for two more dances; he also brought up some brother officers, including a stout doctor and a small but preternaturally cool and amusing midshipman, so that when Mr. Hope came for his dance, he was nearly crowded out by the naval brigade, who quite encompassed Linda, to the exclusion of the most irreproachable civilians. If Linda was a success, it seemed that Laura was destined to achieve a genuine triumph. Shortly after her first dance with Barrington Hope there appeared to be an unusual amount of interest displayed in the vicinity of Mrs. Grandison, who, of course, was extensively known in the grande monde. A variety of entertaining conversation was indulged in with that lady, generally ending with a respectful request for an introduction to the young lady in white. The good-natured matron did not grudge the girl her meed of praise; still she occasionally remarked without satisfaction that the great guns of the fashionable world, the inheritors of wealth and estates of proverbial grandeur, the travelled and fastidious “elegants,” contented themselves with a passing notice or a laughing exchange of badinage with Josie while they 147struggled for Laura’s card, and searched closely the lower figures of the programme, uncertain as she declared it to be that her party would remain to conclude it. Mr. Grandison, who had stayed rather late at the club over a seductive hand of whist, now came up in time to glance at things generally. He was extremely complimentary as to the appearance of his young friends, and declared that Laura had been voted the belle of the ball by several of the leading authorities of the club, against whose decision there was manifestly no appeal. “There’s a sort of freshness, and, well, I hardly know what to call it,” he said, “about girls that come from the country that fetches the men of taste. The town girls are better millinered and so on; but they can’t get the colour and the innocent look, the—ah—dew-drop, early morning sort of brightness,” continued Mr. Grandison, who had refreshed liberally with the Heidsiek dry monopole which the club imported, and was becoming poetical. “That’s what there’s no standing against. Dash it, Stamford, old fellow! Laura’s cut ’em all down to-night. White dress, rose in her hair, and so on. It’s the real thing when the complexion will stand it. There’s not a girl here to-night who’s a patch on her. I heard Donald M’Intosh say so himself.” This stupendous announcement produced no 148reply for the moment. That the bachelor eligible, par excellence, the man of estates and establishments, who had travelled, had taken an English University degree, distinguished equally for tennis play as for parliamentary influence, who was generally an invited member of the Vice-regal party at public demonstrations and amusements, that he should have awarded the golden pippin to the unknown provincial damsel, struck Mrs. Grandison dumb with astonishment, and caused Josie to turn paler with envy than even her ordinary complexion warranted. When Mrs. Grandison recovered herself, she said, “Upon my word, Mr. Grandison, you’re determined to make the girl vain—though she is dancing now, and can’t hear. One would think you hadn’t a daughter of your own. Not but what Laura does look very nice, Mrs. Stamford, only it seems to me the champagne’s very good to-night.” “What do people come to a ball for?” returned her husband, gallantly. “Come over to the supper-table and have a glass yourself, my dear. Stamford, you bring my wife and Josie. I’ll take Mrs. Stamford, and we’ll drink Laura’s health. After that it’s time to go home. Struck two, and the best of the fun’s over.” “I’ve had enough,” said Josie, who had sat out the last two dances. “For my part, I 149begin to hate balls; they get stupider every time, I think. And, oh, how tired I am!” So in ten minutes afterwards, Mr. Stamford and his wife marched down the room and carried off their daughters, to the great and sincere grief of their prospective partners. 150 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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