Chapter XII: My First Ball

After dinner there was a grand consultation about my dress, and Lady Horatia Somerton’s little daughter, Letitia, came in to assist at it. She was not at all pretty, but she had such a pleasant _abord_ and graceful movements, that I felt quite attracted towards her; and then she evidently admired me, and entered most warmly into the details of my intended toilette. She was about twelve years old, and though she was, I heard, the plainest of Lady Horatia’s daughters, was decidedly her favourite.

“I shall never bring myself to part with little ‘Ugly;’ and if any man should ever fall in love with such a plain girl, he must submit to live with me,” said she, as little “Ugly” (as she often called her) went upstairs to fetch a wreath of red camellias, which they wanted to try on my head.

She soon tripped back with it on her own head, and dancing a _pas de zephyr_ along the room, took it gracefully off, and placed it on mine. Then she danced round me, mimicking, as her mother said, the famous opera-dancers of those days. I had never seen such beautiful dancing before. I asked with some alarm whether I should be expected to do such beautiful steps at the ball.

“No, quite the reverse, for good dancing is going out of fashion. People appear to walk through quadrilles, and there is no animation except in the waltz. Now get away, little Brownie, and let me arrange the wreath in her hair. Isn’t she so like one of those little fairies Croften Croker calls Brownies in his Irish fairy legends, with her little brown face and malicious eyes? What a complexion the child has! yet it makes a foil for your dazzling white skin. How came you to preserve such a fair complexion all through the fifteen Summer suns of Italy that shone upon you? Yet you have Italian eyes, and the old Grecian type of nose. There, the camellias suit admirably; and look, Brownie, she is instinctively following the directions given in the last number of _Le Follet_--‘With this style of head-dress the mouth should be worn partly open!’ Now, don’t shut your mouth up on purpose; give the natural play to your lips; there is no occasion for you to say ‘plum,’ as the beautiful Duchess of R---- did when she came into a room.”

They decided that my dress should be plain white tarlatane over muslin, looped up here and there with red camellias.

“Nothing expensive; _you_ need never dress expensively, my dear Miss Vivian.”

“I am glad of that, for I have no idea how far the hundred a year they say I am to have will go, and I must contrive soon to go and live with my mother at Sorrento. She will want me, now that she will not be able to have so many comforts and luxuries.”

“On the contrary, my dear,” said Lady Horatia, “she will be much better pleased that you should see a little of the world, and take the place you ought to have as your father’s daughter in London society. You know that your dear father was a very old friend of mine, and that was why I came to see you at the convent in Paris. I esteemed--in fact, I really loved your father very much; and you are like him, so that it gives me real pleasure to do what I know he would approve of, and I shall not let you run away before I have launched you forth in the great world.”

“Then you do not think that anyone supposes my father was to blame for not discovering this heir--that his brother had left a son?”

“Perhaps they do, and therefore I am more anxious that you should become the fashion. Ah! I have stirred up your spirit now; I see by your eyes I’ve found out the handle by which I may move you.”

Mrs. Mordaunt would not go out at all in the world, and Mr. Mordaunt was happier at his club than anywhere else; but they both inspected me after I was dressed the next evening, and expressed much pleasure, and approval of my appearance.

Lady Horatia was very becomingly attired, but she said she was not reckoned a good dresser, and was often abused for wearing shabby old things.

“But the fact is I never bestowed sufficient time or money on it; but don’t think I despise good dressers--on the contrary, I agree with my friend Lady S----, that it is often well to cultivate a taste for frivolity, and also the wish to please, which ought to be the actuating motive to dress well. Now, there is the carriage, and we had better start, that we may avoid a long string, and have a little chat with the Duke before the crowd arrives. So we drove off, and soon entered the great gates of D---- House. But a number of people had already arrived, and were going up the staircase between what appeared like banks of beautiful plants. The smell of orange flowers, and other exotics, recalled the scenery of Sorrento and Carlo’s face so vividly to my mind that I became quite faint, and so deadly pale that Lady Horatia asked if I was ill.

“Oh! no,” I said, as my pride became excited at the conviction that Carlo no longer cared for me. “Oh! no, it was only the smell of those flowers--they are so powerful.”

“Ah! yes. I knew an Italian lady who always fainted even at the smell of a rose. Come on, we will pass by those people, and hurry on to the drawing-room. That’s right, you have got your colour again; and more beautiful than ever.”

Everybody seemed to know Lady Horatia, and tried to speak to her; but she only gave a smile or nod as she passed quickly by them; and we soon found ourselves in the ball-room, where she pointed out the Duke at the farther end. As we walked quickly across the open space, I could not help seeing a number of eyes and glasses levelled towards us; and as we approached the Duke, the surrounding group was gazing at me with wondering curiosity.

“Here is the daughter of your old friend,” said Lady Horatia, as she shook hands with him. “I knew you would be glad to see her.”

“I am indeed; and most grateful to you for bringing her. I hope this is your first ball,” he added, as he took my hand, and looked with a kindly and respectful curiosity in my face. “She is like him; but more like her mother, who, I well remember, was a great beauty. Now the dancing is going to begin, and I will introduce you to--” and he looked round for a minute, as if to seek for some one, then said, “Where’s Dalton?--ha! he’s engaged. Here, Woodford, I want to introduce you to Miss Vivian.”

Lord Woodford was rather handsome, but I did not like the expression of his eyes, nor what I thought was the conceited and dictatorial tone of his voice in which he asked,

“Where’s Dalton? He must be our _vis-à-vis_ in the quadrille. Your first ball, is it?” he inquired, as he looked round and scanned me from head to foot, with an expression which implied a great compliment, but did not please me so much as the respectful admiration of the Duke’s kindly gaze. “And how came you to be under the wing of that great lady?”

“What great lady?” I stupidly asked.

“Why, Lady Horatia Somerton, to be sure. Are you so very new that you did not know that she is almost the greatest lady in London?”

“I only knew that she was an old friend of my father’s, and that she is very kind to me.”

“Yes, she is the fashion now, and that is a thing,” he added, rather dogmatically, “that no rank, nor beauty, nor riches will ensure.”

Now Lady Horatia was only an earl’s daughter, of not a very old family; and her husband was only a country squire of average fortune.

“I suppose, then, merit and goodness caused her popularity?”

“Far from it, Miss Vivian--rather the reverse, in some cases, though not in Lady Horatia’s, for she is beyond reproach.”

He continued to give a long disquisition on the ingredients requisite to become “the fashion,” but my attention was arrested by one of the dancers in our quadrille, a tall, handsome man, whose face reminded me of something I had seen in the sunny south. I strove in vain to remember where or what it was. I fancied that he was also looking at me with a puzzled expression, as if I produced exactly the same mysterious recollection in him.

“You are not listening to what I say, I perceive, Miss Vivian. Are you, too, falling in love with the Apollo of Beaudesert, for I see he has been looking at you ever since we began dancing.”

“The Apollo of Beaudesert!--why is he so called, and what is his real name?”

“Ah! I see I am right, then; but have you met him before?”

“I cannot yet make out; he reminds me so of something long, long ago. But who is he?”

“One of the greatest _partis_ of the day--Sir Alfred Rivers.”

“Ah! then I have heard something about him from my cousin, Mr. Mordaunt--his uncle, I think. But that is not what his face reminds me of.”

“I’ll do the good-natured thing, and introduce you to each other when the dance is over. Mind, it is very disinterested of me, for I might have monopolized the new beauty a little longer,” he added, with a kind of mocking bow, which I did not like. But his good-natured plan was not destined to be carried out, for Sir Alfred and his partner disappeared so quickly at the end of the quadrille that he seemed quite lost in the crowd. “Well, never mind; he will be sure to be heard of in the course of the evening.”

I could not help feeling disappointed, for there was something wonderfully attractive in his whole appearance, and he is--yes, he is even handsomer than Carlo, who had hitherto been my beau-ideal of perfection. I was introduced to several other partners, and danced incessantly; but I looked about in vain for the only person I wished to see, and there was nothing particularly attractive in any of my partners.

During one of the short intervals between the dances, when I was near Lady Horatia, she whispered to me--

“Well, my dear, it has been a great success, even beyond my anticipation, for real beauty is not always appreciated at first. But how is this?--you don’t look as if you fully enjoyed your triumph.”

“Oh! yes, I really do enjoy the ball immensely,” said I; and at that moment I saw Sir Alfred coming towards us.

“Ah! you have not yet been introduced, I see, to Miss Vivian,” said Lady Horatia, as Sir Alfred shook hands with her; “and yet she must be a kind of relation of yours.”

“I was just going to ask you to introduce me,” said Sir Alfred, with a voice which seemed to remind me of some great happiness. “And I think,” he added, “we must have met before, though I have tried in vain to remember where.”

The waltz was just beginning, and he led me into the circle without formally asking me to dance.

His waltzing was quite different from that of all the others I had danced with that evening, and it seemed to transport me suddenly into a blissful and unknown world. When, at last, we stopped, he said,

“Yes, we must have met before, but it must have been in some happier world than this has hitherto been to me. I was certain of it the moment I saw you dancing in the first quadrille with Lord Woodford. I hope you wondered why I disappeared so suddenly at the end, instead of asking for an introduction to you. Ah! I am glad to see you did. The fact was, my cousin, with whom I was dancing, was very ill, and wanted to return home as soon as possible, so I ran to get her carriage; and when at last I succeeded in getting it, my unreasonable aunt begged me to see my poor cousin home in it, as the other sister could not bear to lose the ball. So I sacrificed myself, and did the good-natured thing, and am only just returned, for they live miles off. But I am rewarded for it all by this,” he added, as we again whirled, or rather hovered--for we did not seem to touch the ground--round the room, and under the wreaths of fresh roses which shielded the lights from the dancers’ eyes, without diminishing the brilliancy of the illumination.

When the dance was over he took me through the picture-gallery, which I had not yet seen. I had not seen many very good pictures. In the old palaces in the neighbourhood of Sorrento but few of the ancient collections still remained, and my delight at seeing those he particularly pointed out to me was extreme. And the account he gave me of some of them, in the rich tones of his wonderful voice, seemed to open a new world of enchantment to my fascinated gaze. Then he took me into the conservatory, which was filled with the finest and most fragrant flowers I had ever seen.

“Were you ever at Pompeii?” he suddenly asked, and at the same moment I remembered that it was there I had seen him. The year before my father died I went there with my aunt. “And did you not sing a Neapolitan barcarolle on the ruins of the theatre? Ah! yes it is the same, and it seems now but yesterday that I heard that thrilling voice, and----”

He suddenly stopped, and turned pale, as if some fearful impression had suddenly awakened, that checked, or half-obliterated, the apparently happy remembrance of our sunny day at Pompeii. The real reason for that change I never ascertained till long, long afterwards, and how often I have bitterly regretted that I did not at the moment ask him what it was. What endless sorrow might then have been spared to us and many others. But at that moment I was too full of a new kind of joy to take in and comprehend any source of misery. In fact, I looked away from it, and sought to restore his hitherto happy expression by speaking of that day at Pompeii; and I reminded him that he had picked up my hat, which fell off as I had climbed up the ruined wall.

“Yes, indeed, and how delightfully you showed your gratitude by consenting to sing another song; and then how provoked I was at its being interrupted by that old nurse, who began to scold, and to say ‘_e poi_,’ with such fierce looks; and how you ran away, and I saw you join an old lady, who also looked so angry that I did not venture to follow you, lest I should increase your trouble. And then you drove off,” he added, “and I lost all traces of you. But the voice, and your---- Well, how strange that we should meet again after so many years. And of course you sing now? You must have the finest voice I ever heard! You will sing for me to-morrow, will you not? For I am engaged to dine with Lady Horatia Somerton, and I find you are staying with her; and you will sing with me?”

We then talked of the various songs which were in vogue; and he sang a few notes of some duets he wanted me to sing with him, which I had never heard before. We were interrupted at last by Lord Woodford, who exclaimed in his harsh, conceited-sounding voice,

“Ha! I have found you at last! Have you been hiding here all this time? Lady Horatia Somerton is quite uneasy about Miss Vivian. And she forgot that she was engaged to me for the fourth galop, a good hour ago.”

“I am very sorry,” said I; while I felt particularly glad to have escaped the dance with him.

“Well, you must make amends by dancing this waltz.” And he put out his arm with a kind of familiar confidence which annoyed me, and I said--

“Oh! no, I could not waltz with you now--it is impossible.”

He seemed much surprised, and then said,

“Well, then, the next quadrille. And in the meantime I have Lady Horatia’s orders to bring you to her.” And he again held out his arm.

But I shrank away, and said with a somewhat haughty air,

“I will return to Lady Horatia, of course, if she wishes to see me.” And taking Sir Alfred’s arm, we proceeded slowly towards the ball-room, followed by Lord Woodford, who talked to us about the ball, and the company, in his rough bass voice, all the time.