Nancy Part 39

"Not unless he has done it since luncheon! he had not _then_; I asked her."

"I am beginning to think that _your_ old man's plan was the best, after all," continues Bobby, affably. "I thought him rather out of date, at the time, for applying to your parents, but, after all, it saved a great deal of trouble, and spared us a world of suspense."

I am silent; swelling with a dumb indignation at the epithet bestowed on my Roger; but unable to express it outwardly, as I well know that, if I do, I shall be triumphantly quoted against myself.

"Who will break it to Toothless Jack?" says Bobby, presently, with a laugh; "after all the expense he has been at, too, with those teeth! it is not as if it were a beggarly two or three, but a whole complete new set--thirty-two individual grinders!"

"Such beauties, too!" puts in Tou Tou, cackling.

"It is a thousand pities that they should be allowed to go out of the family," says Bobby, warmly. "Tou Tou, my child--" (putting his arm round her shoulders)--"a bright vista opens before you!--your charms are approaching maturity!--with a little encouragement he might be induced to lay his teeth--two and thirty, mind--at your feet!"

Tou Tou giggles, and a.s.serts that she will "kick them away, if he does."

Bobby mildly but firmly remonstrates, and points out to her the impropriety and ingrat.i.tude of such a line of conduct. But his arguments, though acute and well put, are not convincing, and the subject is continued, with ever-increasing warmth, all the way home.

CHAPTER XXIX.

It is Christmas-day--a clean white Christmas, pure and crisp. Wherever one looks, one's eyes water cruelly. For my part, I am very thankful that it did not occur to G.o.d to make the world always white. I hate snow's blinding livery. Each tiniest twig on the dry harsh trees is overladen with snow. It is a wonder that they do not break under it; nor is there any wind to shake down and disperse it. Tempest is white; the church is white: the whole world colorless and blinding. I have been in the habit of looking upon Vick as a white dog; to-day she appears disastrously dark--dirty brunette. Soap-and-water having entirely failed to restore her complexion. Bobby kindly proposes to _pipeclay_ her.

We have all been to church, and admired our own decorations. And through all the prayer and the praise, and the glad Christmas singing, my soul has greatly hungered for Roger. Yes, even though all the boys are round me--Bobby on this side, the Brat on that--Algy directly in front; all behaving nicely, too; for are not they right under father's eyes? Yes, and, for the matter of that, under the rector's too, as he towers straight above us, under his ivy-bush--the ivy-bush into which Bobby was so anxious yesterday to insert some misletoe.

Church is over now, and the short afternoon has also slipped by. We are at dinner; we are dining early to-night--at half-past six o'clock, and we are to have a dance for the servants afterward. Any hospitality to my equals I have steadily and stoutly declined, but it seems a shame to visit my own loneliness on the heads of the servants, to whom it is nothing. They have always had a Christmas-dance in Roger's reign, and so a dance they are to have now. We have religiously eaten our beef and plum-pudding, and have each made a separate little blue fire of burnt brandy in our spoon.

It is dessert now, and father has proposed Roger's health. I did not expect it, and I never was so nearly betrayed into feeling fond of father in my life. They all drink it, each wis.h.i.+ng him something good.

As for me, I have been a fool always, and I am a fool now. I can wish him nothing, my voice is choked and my eyes drowned in inappropriate tears; only, from the depths of my heart, I ask G.o.d to give him every thing that He has of choicest and best. For a moment or two, the wax-lights, the purple grapes, the gleaming gla.s.s and s.h.i.+ning silver, the kindly, genial faces swim blurred before my vision. Then I hastily wipe away my tears, and smile back at them all. As I raise my glistening eyes, I meet those of Mr. Musgrave fixed upon me--(he is the only stranger present). His look is not one that wishes to be returned; on the contrary, it is embarra.s.sed at being met. It is a glance that puzzles me, full of inquiring curiosity, mixed with a sort of mirth. In a second--I could not tell you why--I look hastily away.

"I wonder what he is doing _now, this very minute_!" says Tou Tou, who is dining in public for the first time, and whose conversation is checked and her deportment regulated by Bobby, who has been at some pains to sit beside her, and who guides her behavior by the help of many subtle and unseen pinches under the table; from revolting against which a fear of father hinders her, a fact of which Bobby is most basely aware.

"Had not you better telegraph?" asks Algy, with languid irony (Algy certainly is not quite so nice as he used to be). "Flapping away the blue-tailed fly, with a big red-and-yellow bandana, probably."

"Playing the banjo for a lot of little n.i.g.g.e.rs to dance to!" suggests the Brat.

"They are all wrong, are not they, Nancy?" says Bobby, in a lowered voice, to me, on whose left hand he has placed himself; "he is sitting in his veranda, is not he? in a palm hat and nankeen breeches, with his arm around the old Wampoo."

"I dare say," reply I, laughing. "I hope so," for, indeed, I am growing quite fond of my dusky rival.

The ball is to be in the servants' hall; it is a large, long room, and thither, when all the guests are a.s.sembled, we repair. We think that we shall make a greater show, and inspire more admiration, if we appear in pairs. I therefore make my entry on father's arm. Never with greater trepidation have I entered any room, for I am to open the ball with the butler, and the prospect fills me with dismay. If he were a venerable family servant, a h.o.a.ry-headed old seneschal, who had known Roger in petticoats, it would have been nothing. I could have chattered filially to him; but he is a youngish man, who came only six months ago. On what subjects can we converse? I feel small doubt that his own sufferings will be hardly inferior in poignancy to mine.

The room is well lit, and the candles s.h.i.+ne genially down from the laurel garlands and ivy festoons which clothe the walls. They light the faces and various dresses of a numerous a.s.sembly--every groom, footman, housemaid, and scullion, from far and near. The ladies seem largely to preponderate both in number and _aplomb_; the men appearing, for the more part, greatly disposed to run for shelter behind the bolder petticoats; particularly the stablemen. The footmen, being more accustomed to ladies' society, are less embarra.s.sed by their own hands, and by the exigencies of chivalry. This inversion of the usual att.i.tude of the s.e.xes, will, no doubt, be set more than right when we have retired. The moment has arrived. I quit father's arm--for the first time in my life I am honestly sorry to drop it--and go up to my destined partner.

"Ashton," say I, with an attempt at an easy and unembarra.s.sed smile, "will you dance this quadrille with me?"

"Thank you, my lady."

How calm he is! how self-possessed. Oh, that he would impart to me the secret of his composure! I catch sight of the Brat, who is pa.s.sing at the moment.

"Brat!" cry I, eagerly, s.n.a.t.c.hing at his coat-sleeve, like a drowning man at a straw. "Will _you_ be our _vis-a-vis_?"

"All right," replies the Brat, gayly, "but I have not got a partner yet."

Off he goes in search of one, and Ashton and I remain _tete-a-tete_. I suppose I ought to take his arm, and lead him to the top of the room.

After a moment of hot hesitation, I do this. Here we are, arrived. Oh, why did I ask him so soon? Two or three minutes elapse before the Brat's return.

"How nicely you have all done the decorations!"

"I am glad you think so, my lady."

"They are better than ours at the church."

"Do you think so, my lady?"

A pause. Everybody is choosing partners. Tou Tou, grinning from ear to ear, is bidding a bashful b.u.t.ton-boy to the merry dance. Father--do my eyes deceive me?--father himself is leading out the housekeeper.

Evidently he is saying something dignifiedly humorous to her, for she is laughing. I wish that he would sometimes be dignifiedly humorous to us, or even humorous without the dignity. Barbara, true to her life-long instincts, is inviting the clergyman's shabby, gawky man-of-all-work, at whom the ladies'-maids are raising the nose of contempt. Mr. Musgrave is soliciting a kitchen-wench.

"Are there as many here as you expected?"

"Quite, my lady."

Another pause.

"I hope," with bald affability, in desperation of a topic, "that you will all enjoy yourselves!"

"Thank you, my lady!"

Praise G.o.d! here is the Brat at last! Owing, I suppose, to the slenderness and fragile tenuity of his own charms, the Brat is a great admirer of fine women, the bigger the better; quant.i.ty, not quality; and, true to his colors, he now arrives with a neighboring cook, a lady of sixteen stone, on his arm.

We take our places. While cha.s.sezing and poussetting, thank Heaven, a very little talk goes a very long way. My mind begins to grow more easy.

I am even sensible of a little feeling of funny elation at the sound of the fiddles gayly squeaking. I can look about me and laugh inwardly at the distant sight of Tou Tou and the b.u.t.ton-boy turning each other nimbly round; of father, in the fourth figure, blandly backing between Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l and a cook-maid.

We have now reached the fifth. At the few b.a.l.l.s I have hitherto frequented it has been a harmless figure enough; hands all round, and a repet.i.tion of _l'ete_. But _now_--oh, horror! what do I see? Everybody far and near is standing in att.i.tude to gallopade. The Brat has his little arm round the cook's waist--at least not all the way round--it would take a lengthier limb than his to effect _that_; but a bit of the way, as far as it will go. An awful idea strikes me. Must Ashton and I gallopade too? I glance nervously toward him. He is looking quite as apprehensive at the thought that I shall expect him to gallopade with me, as I am at the thought that he will expect me to gallopade with him.

I do not know how it is that we make our mutual alarm known to each other, only I know that, while all the world is gallopading round us, we gallopade not. Instead, we take hands, and jig distantly round each other.

The improvised valse soon ends, and I look across at the Brat. Gallant boy! the beads of perspiration stand on his young brow, but there is no look of blenching! When the time comes he will be ready to do it again.

As I stand in silent amus.e.m.e.nt watching him, having, for the moment, no dancing duties of my own, I hear a voice at my elbow, Bobby's, who, having come in later than the rest of us, has not been taking part in the dance.

"Nancy! Nancy!" in a tone of hurried excitement, "for the love of Heaven look at _father_! If you stand on tiptoe you will be able to see him; he has been _gallopading_! When I saw his venerable coat-tails flying, a feather would have knocked me down! You really ought to see it"

(lowering his voice confidentially), "it might give you an idea about your own old man, and the old Wam--"

"_Hang_ the old Wampoo!" cry I, with inelegant force, laughing.

The duty part of the evening is over now. We have all signalized ourselves by feats of valor. I have scampered through an unsociable country-dance with the head coachman, and have had my smart gown of faint pink and pearl color nearly torn off my back by the ponderous-footed pair that trip directly after me. We have, in fact, done our duty, and may retire as soon as we like. But the music has got into our feet, and we promise ourselves one valse among ourselves before we depart.

The Brat is the only exception. He still cleaves to his cook; dancing with her is a _tour de force_, on which he piques himself. Mrs. Huntley and Algy are already flying down the room in an active, tender embrace.

I have been asked as long ago as before dinner by Mr. Musgrave. I was rather surprised and annoyed at his inviting _me_ instead of Barbara; but as, with this exception, his conduct has been unequivocally demonstrative, I console myself with the notion that he looks upon me as the necessary pill to which Barbara will be the subsequent jam.