CHAPTER IV.

BETSEY EX FÊTE.

In spite of her pretence to make little of an invitation to a juvenile party, the prospect of that gaiety took strong possession of Betsey Bunce. Mr. Selby's lameness had prevented his taking her anywhere or affording her opportunity to spread her plumage among strangers; which, indeed, was all the satisfaction which could have accrued from going out with him, she not being musical, and he very little else. Betsey's dissipations, therefore, had been of so meagre a kind that she might well set store by Mrs. Jordan's invitation; it would at least, she told herself, be an opportunity to show people that she was fit for better things. Her cousin Muriel had told her she might expect to meet a hundred guests or more, and surely they would not all be children, though poor Muriel was too young perhaps to know; but, at least, both her Montreal _beaux_, as she choose to denominate Randolph Jordan and Gerald Herkimer, would be there. So she made no doubt of having a "good time." The image of Joe Webb rose before her mind's eye as that idea occurred to her, and he seemed to her to look reproachful. "Poor Joe!" she sighed to herself, glancing archly in her glass; but Joe was fifteen miles away, and Betsey fancied herself a heart-breaker. "A girl can't help these things," her thoughts ran on; "and Joe has never said a word--though I can tell by the sinking of his voice when he speaks to me, he would say plenty if I just gave him encouragement. Poor Joe! he's too modest. The _beaux_ won't need encouragement! I guess I shall rather have to make them stand off a bit--at first, that is, they ain't going to think they are to have it all their own way with an Upper Canadian, even if she _has_ moved down to St. Euphrase. Nice fellows both; but such awful _dudes!_ When they walk down the street of St. Euphrase in their cricketing suits, the sidewalk don't seem broad enough to give them both room. And my! don't the _habitants_ stare at them? I kind of like a _dude_, or I almost think I could bring myself to like one," and as she glanced in the glass again, she coloured half shyly before the intelligence in her own eyes. "Their gloves and their boots do fit so splendid! Their necks look tight like in the stiff collars, but their tongues wag freely enough--too freely sometimes, at St. Euphrase. They're real 'sassy' sometimes. But at a large party, no doubt they'll know enough to behave. No! Dudes ain't half bad. But these two hai'nt got the fine manly shoulders and strong arms of Joe Webb."

"Ah, how big he is! And how safe a girl would be with him to take care of her! To see him gather up the reins behind that young team of his in one hand, when they grow fractious, and lash them with the other till they simmer down like lambs! Poor Joe!" and she took another look at her all conquering charms in the glass.

Her hair--how should she arrange it on the night of conquest? There was searching of fashion magazines for something distinguished yet chaste. Many startling novelties, with much expenditure of time and hairpins, were attempted, with signal unsuccess; and it was only after every florid device had been exhausted, that she had at last to confess that a severe simplicity accorded best with her other charms; or to speak plainly was the only hairdressing she could succeed in.

These labours led to a more critical scrutiny of her complexion than she had ever made before. Hitherto she had accepted it like her other perfections in contented faith; but now, on closer observation, was there not just a suspicion of yellowness under the eyes--tan marks on the neck--a freckle or two across the ridge of the nose? Violet powder! that was what she needed, and forthwith she repaired to an apothecary, who, I fear, supplied her with other embellishments at the same time. It is certain, at least, that on the looked-for evening, when, after keeping her aunt long waiting, she at length came downstairs arrayed in all her glory, with shawl and hood carried in her hand, that the assembled family might have the privilege of a private view, before she set out on her career of conquest, Mr. and Mrs. Selby being in the hall and a maidservant near to open the door and catch a glimpse of the show, she appeared in one of those startling complexions which are affected by equestrian ladies of the circus, in which not the lily and the rose combine, but the chalk-ball and rouge contrast their rawness.

Mrs. Selby's mild and weary eyes opened in amused amazement, and her spouse coughed industriously behind his hand to stifle his laughter. Mrs. Bunce lifted her "pinch-nose" to her eyes in dismay and indignation.

"What is it? Who is it?" she asked, while Betsey simpered and tossed her head. "That I should live to see a clergyman's niece make a----"

"Guy of herself with violet powder and druggist's red," volunteered Mr. Selby. "It's a mistake, my dear Betsey, I assure you, attempting to improve Nature's choicest effort, the cheek of a pretty girl. It's like painting the lily--gilding refined gold."

Betsey turned wrathfully round, flushing scarlet here and there where the powder lay less thickly. "But perhaps he meant well, too," she thought. His concluding words implied a gratifying appreciation of her everyday looks; so she let it pass, and the angry red subsided from her forehead.

"Fie, Betsey!" continued the aunt. "There is scripture against such sinful interference with the natural complexion. Think of the wicked Hebrew queen."

"Who painted her face and was thrown out of the window," added Selby, with some irreverence. Poor man, he was apt to grow jocose.

"But, auntie, the fashion magazine says brilliant complexions are all the go, especially with simple _coiffures_; and I am sure mine is simple enough--nothing but a bang, an Irish wisp, and--well, only three or four pads. In Europe, it is said, they use rouge and pearl-white quite freely. I have only put on a little powder."

"A _little_, my dear?" muttered Selby, half aside, "you look as if you had come out of a flour barrel--with the white flakes sticking all over you. It ought to be a fancy ball you were going to, and you to represent a snowstorm. The dust is flying from you every time you turn your head."

"Nonsense, George," said his wife. "You are vexing, and very ridiculous. Why tease the girl? We have all made mistakes of that kind in our day, Betsey, my dear. You should have seen Mr. Selby himself, when he was a young man, and wanted to look his best. He could hardly walk--he hobbled--from the tightness of his boots."

"You are mean, Mary, to go back to that. If I did, it was only when I hoped to walk or dance with you."

"And you would have danced far better if your shoes had been a larger size. But truly, Betsey, if you will try the effect of a wet sponge on your face, you will find your own nice natural colour infinitely more becoming."

"I am afraid it will make me awful pale. I'd hate to look pale alongside Muriel, her colour brightens so when she gets animated. And there's Tilly Martindale; perhaps she'll be there, and I guess _she's_ sure to have a colour, however she comes by it."

"_They_ are not in the Church," said Mrs. Bunce, grandly.

"Nor am I, auntie. It's a _party_ I'm going to." Public opinion, however, so freely expressed, had its effect, and Betsey returned to her room, to reappear more like her ordinary self, and accept with little satisfaction the congratulations and praises which good-hearted Mrs. Selby felt bound to shower upon her.

As the aunt and niece drew near their destination they felt their hack suddenly slow off into a walk. There was a sleigh in front of them, and when Betsey stood up, craning her short neck to reconnoitre, there was another in front of that, and another, and another. Then there were gates and an illuminated mansion beyond, up to which the line of sleighs was streaming, slowly and intermittently, as each in succession stopped to set down its load, and then vanished.

"I declare, auntie, we're in a procession! Ain't it cunning? and quite grand. The company will all arrive together, and there's no doubt they will make a grand entry, two and two with the music playing a march--just like there was in Tullover's Circus, last year, at St. Euphrase. Only we'll have to walk, on account of the stairs, and not having horses. I always knew it was the stage and the pulpit gave the law about speaking, but I didn't know before, it was the circus set the fashion for other things. Ain't it well, now, that I was there?--though you scarcely thought so at the time. You just keep as near me as you can, and I'll tell you what to do--all I know. But, to be sure, they'll be providin' us with _beaux_, and we'll have to go wherever the gentlemen take us. Ah! When I remember the lady in the yellow satin riding habit, with the knight in steel button armour and the peacock plume! It was something beyond. I don't see why steel button armour should not go quite as well with geranium poplin as yellow satin. But knights, if there are any, won't wear their uniform at a private party, I'm afraid. The Queen makes them keep it for wearing at the palace, most likely; but it's mean of her, all the same. However, black swallow-tails look real nice, with almost any colour a girl can put on, and it's just the very thing to tone down my geranium colour, and make it look moderate."

There was no place for Mrs. Bunce to slip in a word as her niece ran on in a continuous monologue--soliloquy--rather, for she was merely thinking aloud, and her thoughts had grown so engrossing that she probably would not have heard, had she been spoken to. Presently the sleigh came to a final halt, and it was their own turn to alight and follow the stream of cloaked figures up the stairs. A counter-stream of those who had disentangled themselves, like moths escaped from the dusky chrysalids, and were rustling their airy glories into form, passed them on the banister side, while the arrivals not yet perfected in the cloak-room slunk upwards by the wall.

Betsey's breath seemed to forsake her in one little gasp of ecstasy. She followed her aunt upwards mechanically. Her consciousness had gathered itself into her eyes, and sat there all athirst, drinking in impressions from the novel scene. The scent of flowers was everywhere, and the sound of sackbut, psaltery, fiddle, and all that she could dream of festive music. Through the open doors below, as she ascended, appeared dancing figures, whirling and vanishing in endless succession. Lamps and glitter seemed everywhere, and gowns of every hue--a moving rainbow. She could only liken it to the description from a New York pantomime in that morning's newspaper of the "Halls of Dazzling Light." The hall-way, which she looked down on as she went up, was filled with people in evening dress, circulating to and fro, and a stream of people in festive array was passing her on the stairs--velvets, satins, jewellery, lace and flowers, not to speak of niceties in hair-dressing and general arrangement, which it had not hitherto entered into her mind to conceive, but were still so beautiful. She caught them all in the passage of her eye across that serried stream as she went up a flight of stairs. She was a born milliner, as the upper Canadiennie not very seldom is.

Mrs. Bunce and her niece had been almost the last of the guests to arrive, and had been long detained in the cloak-room by those finishing touches to their adornment over which it is by no means the young or the beautiful who spend the longest time. In the present case it was the treacle-coloured _chevelure_ of the aunt which had come askew under the hoods and wrappings she had worn upon her head, and her cap secured in its place by many a hairpin required to be removed before the other invention could be adjusted. She lingered over minor embellishments till the other occupants had left the room, when she found some pretext to send away the attendant also. Then she sprang to the door and locked it, and turning to Betsey with startling vehemence, made her promise by all she held sacred never on any pretext to reveal or divulge what she was presently to behold. Betsey has kept her promise.

Whatever awful rite may have supervened has remained unknown. The maid at the keyhole saw moving figures, but what they were doing she could not tell, though the time allowed for observation was ample during which she was kept outside. Eventually the door was unbarred, and Mrs. Bunce came forth with the dignified self-possession of a well-dressed woman, Betsey followed, looking pale and anxious, as the inquisitive waiting-maid discerned, and with the far-off look in her eyes which the books tell us is worn by those who have come through a new experience.

They were so long of getting down stairs that Mrs. Jordan had left the doorway, in which she had been standing to receive her guests, and was now by a fireplace with some of her friends. It was necessary for Mrs. Bunce to cross the room, at some risk to herself from passing dancer's, in order to pay her respects. Betsey followed as well as she was able, but she did not reach the presence of her hostess.

From beyond the radius of a dowager in truffle-coloured satin drifting easily onwards in the same direction, in whose wake Betsey had found it safe and easy to steer her course among the throng--from out of the unknown region, which the bulk of truffle-coloured satin concealed, there came a whirlwind of palest blue, with silver chains and bangles tossing among curling hair, and smiles and dimples, revolving wildly with the music, and with a shock and a little cry there came into her arms--who but Muriel Stanley! The meeting was of the briefest. They had scarcely time to ejaculate each other's names ere Muriel's cavalier had his partner well in hand again, and they were gone, Betsey looking after them with all her eyes. It was Randolph Jordan who was dancing with Muriel, looking, as Betsey phrased it, "fit to kill," in his evening suit. One of Betsey's _beaux!_ How engagingly she looked at him, and after him, out of her boiled gooseberry eyes--throwing glances of fascination which I fear fell short, or were not understood--with a simper on her round fat cheeks, and lips parted in smiles, displaying slab-like teeth.

"Whoever was that we cannoned off just now?" said Randolph, when his partner stopped for breath, "Curious looking person to meet at a party. Who is it? You seemed to know her."

"That was my cousin, Miss Bunce. You know her too--quite ready to know her out at St. Euphrase you seem. In your own house I should have thought you would know every one."

"There, now, I've put my foot in it. She's your cousin, she's all right of course. Don't be vexed, Muriel. But what makes her wear that horrid gown? I never saw anything like it."

Something stole into Muriel's eyes as she thought of the "geranium poplin," and how very superior its wearer intended to be when she put it on--"made with a _tablier_ and cut square"--but she checked the impulse, and only said: "Poor Betsey must feel herself a stranger here; I do not think she knows a soul but those she has met at St. Euphrase. I think I shall sit down now. No! Not another turn, I feel quite tired. Go and ask Betsey; you will do me a favour if you will, and then introduce a few gentlemen to her. Help her to enjoy herself. It must be dreadful to be so alone in a room full of people."

"You are hard on me, Muriel, to deprive me half my dance and then hand me over to--to-- If she were quietly dressed, it would not be so bad. She used to look quite passable at St. Euphrase in her cotton gowns; but the sumptuous apparel is really too dreadful. Every one will observe us. And see! I do declare she is ogling somebody up in this part of the room. Just look. Did you ever see such facial contortions? and what a mouthful of teeth! Like an amiable hyena, or the show-window at a tombstone factory."

"I am fond of my cousin Betsey, Randolph. If you do not hurry away to her she will lose this dance, and I shall be disappointed."

It was with tardy and reluctant steps that Randolph obeyed, but he had not to go far to meet the engaging Betsey. That young lady, watching her _beau_ from afar, saw Muriel led to a seat, and himself, after a few words of conversation, turn in her direction; and with the inspiration of conquering beauty, she divined that it was to her his steps were tending. And yet the steps seemed lagging even after they were disencumbered of the partner. They positively seemed to falter. Ah! poor young man, the _beau_ was diffident--needed encouragement; and he should have it. It seemed to her tender heart to be no time for standing on punctilio. The young man suffered; and it was for her. That was enough.

She turned her steps to meet him as he came--meet him half-way, I might have said, had I been censorious--and as he came in view she smiled, smiled like a brimming tea-cup filled with sugar and water; and she spread her hands in welcome, spread them, that is, as to the fingers, she did not move the wrists, for, notwithstanding the certainty of beauty's intuitions, there is still the possibility that one may be mistaken, as Betsey had been ere now--and she stood with her eyes fixed on Randolph's countenance.

The look met him full in the face as he came before her, struck him as the jets from the fire-engines may have struck the Parisian mob which General La Moricière so cleverly dispersed without the help of steel or gunpowder; and he would have run away, but he could not. Not only was Betsey before him, but Muriel was somewhere behind, and both would have seen his demoralization. Betsey's eyes were beaming on him with a peculiar radiance. They swam, it seemed to him, in a shining wateriness, and with a light in which the green rays and the yellow blended as they do in an over-ripe gooseberry where the sun is shining, looking luscious, and not too cool--inviting, to those whose tastes that way incline.

The greetings between these two were not prolonged--the one had been ordered to give a dance, the other was eager to encourage a _beau_. There was a bow and a word or two. Miss Betsey's head lay back on her short neck as the gentleman's arm slid around her waist. Then, as she laid her little fat hand on his arm, her head rolled over to the other shoulder, and she found herself in the ecstasies of the mazy dance. She drew a long breath of delight, and leant just a trifle heavier on the strong encircling arm, when--crash! sharps and flats. Another chord--the music ceased, and--oh, bathos--she found herself standing on the train of a lady's gown, who was regarding her with a scowl, while she herself was pinned to the ground from behind in the same way, and she could not but dread how the hoof-marks would look on her geranium poplin.

It was Randolph's turn now to draw a breath of relief, and he looked over his shoulder to where he had left his little friend--little, not obviously in stature, but only because she still wore short frocks, though counting for more to him than all the grown-up ladies in the room. The feeling of holiday, however, was of short duration; he could read disappointment on Muriel's features, and when he gazed towards her as claiming thanks for what he had done at her behest, she looked another way, ignoring the demand. It was little satisfaction he could look for during the rest of the evening if Muriel were disobliged, and her present demand was one of those disinterested ones which must be fulfilled specifically and cannot be made up for, or "squared" by attentiveness in other ways; therefore, as one who can not make a better of it, he turned to Betsey, regretting that their dance had been cut short prematurely, and begging that the next might be his.

Betsey was nothing loth. The _beau_ must be very far gone indeed, she thought, and she could not but cast a backward and regretful glance of her mind to Joe Webb, Gerald Herkimer, and several others, taking them all pell-mell and quite "promiskis," as she pronounced the word. However, she could only have one, she knew that; and she intended to take whoever offered first, if he was eligible, and not run risks by "fooling" after the rest. So much for being practical-minded and not idiotically in love, except with one's own sweet self!

Randolph resigned himself to work out his dance conscientiously, but without enthusiasm. Her waist was so far down that he would have to stretch to get steering leverage upon this rather compact partner, and as has happened before to many a tall youth with a stumpy fair one, he had a presentiment that his arm would ache before the exercise was concluded. In walking round the room, however, before the solemnity commenced, he caught so pleasant a smile of thanks from Muriel over his lady's head that he was consoled, and set himself manfully to perform the task before him; the more so, perhaps, that Muriel was sitting, and though he would not have owned to grudging her a pleasure, it pleased him best when she danced with himself. He had kept more than half his card free from engagements, that she might have plenty of dances, and his mother was looking for an opportunity to take him to task for the horrid way in which he was neglecting her guests. He would have been less content could he have looked back and seen the alacrity with which she rose a moment later when Gerald Herkimer came forward to claim her. Of all the "fellows" in the room; Gerald was the only one as to whose standing in Muriel's good graces he had a misgiving.

The dance began, and Randolph found he had not under-estimated the work before him. Betsey was positively festive, exuberant and unconfined, on the very top rung of her gamut of feeling, as she bounced and caracoled along. She could dance, of course--every Canadian woman can dance--but she possessed a solid massiveness peculiar to herself, and really remarkable in one of her size. Randolph found there was little he could do but merely hold on. Strain and adjust himself as he might, the centre of their joint equilibrium would not be brought under his control. Betsey seemed totally inelastic, and her ballast was in her heels. "Hefty" was the word a Vermont cattle dealer had used to describe her action after a dance at St. Euphrase. Deviously she pranced, a filly whom no rein ever invented could be hoped to guide; and as the rapture of the music wore into her soul, she threw herself back on poor Randolph's arm with an _abandon_ and an entirety which made it feel strained and paralyzed for long after.

"Oh, Mr. Jordan," she cried, when at last the poor fellow was compelled to stop; "you seem fairly done up and out of breath. For me, now, I feel fresher, I do declare, than when we started off."

"Small wonder," thought Randolph, "after making me all but carry you completely round the room;" but he said nothing, merely looking at the half-paralyzed hand and finger's of his strained arm, and wondering how long it would be before he should be able to use them.

"You're a lovely dancer," the Syren resumed. "Reely, too--too--awfully nice for anything. Something quite beyond! But to think of _your_ being tired! And here's me, a fragile girl, feelin', I declare, just as good as new, or rather better! Now, if you would like to go on again, I'm quite ready," and she drew herself up ready to relapse on the manly support of Randolph's arm the moment it should come behind her.

But it did not come. Randolph observed that it was very warm; "had they not better walk to the other end of the room?--they might be able to find ice there, or something to drink;" and he led her round the outskirts of the dancers. The dancers were all intently engaged, disporting themselves some more and some less deftly, but all as best they could, and Betsey eyed them enviously, glancing reproachfully on her _beau_.

And then there passed them a pair which drew the eyes of both, it passed them so easily, so lightly, so swiftly, like a curl of blue smoke across a wooded hillside, and it was flown, like the crotchets and semi-quavers in a bygone bar of the tune--a waft upon the air, they passed so lightly, passed like the music, leaving but the memory of glancing smiles as the music leaves a sense of sweetness when it has ceased.

"Was that not Muriel went by just now, and Gerald Herkimer?" asked Betsey.

"I think so," said Randolph, with just a tone of sulky disgust in his voice.

"I wonder at Penelope and Matilda bringing a child like that to a ball like this. It's real bad for young children bringing them forward so soon--just tempts people to think them old before their time; and if Muriel takes after her aunts, she'll have plenty time for parties before she marries, even if she came out three years late in place of three years too soon. I doubt if she is fourteen yet."

"Oh, yes, she will be sixteen next July, she told me so herself."

"A great age. But still she shouldn't be here to-night at a grown-up dance."

"This is a juvenile party. Miss Bunce."

"Muriel is the only juvenile I see, and she seems to be carrying on just like one of the grown-ups--all but the frock. She has on a short frock, I'll admit that, and I don't see another in the room but her own."

"The juveniles are in the ball-room. Perhaps you have not been there yet. Would you like to go? This is only the drawing-room with the carpet up, for a few grown-up friends of my mother's--a mere side show. Let us go and see the children. You will find Miss Matilda Stanley there, and have an opportunity to give her your views about Miss Muriel's nurture."

"Oh, pshaw!" cried Betsey, in deep disgust. It was really too tantalizing to have secured a splendid partner for a round dance, to have been checked in full career before the dance was a third part over, to have been led away under the promise of ice cream and something to drink; and if there was anything Betsey liked next best to dancing, it was ice cream, with red wine after--not claret by any means, but something sweet, warming and--if not exactly strong, it would be so horrid to like anything strong--at least able to communicate a sensation of strength or general betterment. To have all these delights dangled before one's eyes, and then to be led away to look at a parcel of children, who should have been in their beds hours before, dancing the polka! Oh, no! Betsey felt she was being wronged. If she were not to have her dance out, at least she should get the bribe she had been promised. She would be so far true to herself as to strike a blow for the ice cream. It was easily done. She observed to Randolph that she felt a little faint, and really the rooms _were_ warm. He acquiesced at once. So long as it was not to dance, he would do anything for her. And so they sat down snugly enough near a refreshment table and tried to be comfortable.