It happened that just two days before the day fixed for the marriage of Miss Priest and Captain Hambleton, there was a fancy-dress ball in the Assembly Rooms at Mussoorie. I think that as a rule fancy-dress balls are greater successes in India than at home. People in India give their minds more to the selection and to the elaboration of costumes; and there is less of that mauvaise honte when masquerading in fancy costume, which makes a ball of this description at home so wooden and wanting in go. At a fancy ball in India "the devil" acts accordingly, and manages his tail with adroitness and grace. It is a fact that at a recent fancy-dress ball in Lahore a game was played on the lap of a lady who appeared as "chess," with the chess-men which had formed her head-dress. This Mussoorie ball, being the last of the season, was to excel all its predecessors in inventive variety. A padre's wife conceived the bright idea of appearing as Eve; and only abandoned the notion on finding that, no matter what species of thread she used, it tore the fig-leaves—a result which, besides causing her a disappointment, imperilled her immortal soul by engendering doubts as to the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the creation. Miss Priest determined to go to this ball, although doing so under the circumstances was scarcely in accordance with the convenances; but she was a girl very much addicted to having her own way. Captain Hambleton did not wish her to go, and there was a temporary coolness between the two on the subject; but he yielded and they made it up. The principle as to her going once established, Miss Priest's next task was to set about the invention of a costume. It was to be her last effort as a "spin"; and she determined it should be worthy of her reputation for brilliant inventiveness. She had shone as a Vivandière, as the Daughter of the Regiment, as a Greek Slave, Grace Darling, and so forth, times out of number; but those characters were stale. Miss Priest had a form of supple rounded grace, nor had Diana shapelier limbs. A great inspiration came to her as she sauntered pondering on the Mall. Let her go as Ariel, all gauze, flesh-tints, and natural curves. She hailed the happy thought and invested in countless yards of gauze. She had the tights already by her.
Now Miss Priest, knowing the idiosyncrasy of Captain Hambleton, had little doubt that he would put his foot down upon Ariel. But she knew he loved her, and with characteristic recklessness determined to trust to that and to luck. She too loved him, even better, perhaps, than Ariel; but she hoped to keep both the captain and the character. She did not, however, tell him of her design, waiting perhaps for a favourable opportunity. But even in Arcadian Mussoorie there are the "d——d good-natured friends" of whom Byron wrote; and one of those—of course it was a woman—told Captain Hambleton of the character in which Miss Priest intended to appear at the fancy ball. The captain was a headstrong sort of man—what in India is called zubburdustee. Instead of calling on the girl and talking to her as a wise man would have done, he sat down and wrote her a terse letter forbidding her to appear as Ariel, and adding that if she should persist in doing so their engagement must be considered at an end. Miss Priest naturally fired up. Strangely enough, being a woman, she did not reply to the captain's letter; but when the evening of the ball came, she duly appeared as Ariel with rather less gauze about her shapely limbs than had been her original intention. She created an immense sensation. Some of the ladies frowned, others turned up their noses, yet others tucked in their skirts when she approached; and all vowed that they would decline to touch Miss Priest's hand in the quadrille. Miss Priest did not care a jot for these demonstrations, and she never danced square dances. Among the gentlemen she created a perfect furore.
Captain Hambleton was present at the ball. For the greater part of the evening he stood near the door with his eye fixed on Miss Priest, apparently rather in sorrow than in anger. His gaze seemed but to stimulate her to more vivacious flirtation; and she "carried on above a bit," as a cynical subaltern remarked, with the gallant major to whom she had been penultimately engaged. Toward the close of the evening Captain Hambleton relinquished his post of observation, seemed to accept the situation, and was observed at supper-time paying marked attention to a married lady with whom his name had been to some extent coupled not long before his engagement to Miss Priest.
Next morning Miss Priest took time by the forelock. She waited for no further communication from Captain Hambleton; he had already sent his ultimatum and she had dared her fate. The morrow was the day fixed for the marriage. Many people had been bidden. Mussoorie, including Landour, is a large station, and the postal delivery of letters is not particularly punctual. So she adopted a plan for warning off the wedding-guests identical with that employed in Indian stations for circulating notifications as to lawn-tennis gatherings and unimportant intimations generally. At the head of the paper is written the notification, underneath are the names of the persons concerned. The document is intrusted to a messenger known as a chuprassee, who goes away on his circuit; and each person writes "Seen" opposite his or her name in testimony of being posted in the intelligence conveyed in the notification. Miss Priest divided the invited guests into four rounds and despatched four chuprassees, each bearing a document curtly announcing that "Miss Priest's marriage will not come off as arranged, and the invitations therefore are to be regarded as cancelled."
Miss Priest had no fortune, and her mother was by no means wealthy. It may seem strange to English readers—not nearly so much so, however, as to Anglo-Indian ones—that Captain Hambleton had thought it a graceful and kindly attention to provide the wedding-cake. It had reached him across the hills from Peliti's the night of the ball, and now here it was on his hands—a great white elephant. Whether in the hope that it might be regarded as an olive-branch, whether that he burned to be rid of it somehow, or whether, knowing that Miss Priest was bound to get married some day and thinking that it would be a convenience if she had a bridecake by her handy for the occasion, there is no evidence. Anyhow, he sent it to Mrs. Priest with his compliments. That very sensible woman did not send it back with a cutting message, as some people would have done. Having considerable Indian experience, she had learned practical wisdom and the short-sighted folly of cutting messages. She kept the bridecake, and enclosed to the gallant captain Gosslett's bill for the dozen of simkin that excellent firm had sent in to wash it down wherewithal.
Bridecakes are bores to carry about from place to place, and Miss Priest and her mother were rather birds of passage. Peliti declined to take this particular bridecake back, for all Simla had seen it in his window and he saw no possibility of "working it in." So the Priests, mother and daughter, determined to realise on it in a somewhat original and indeed cynical fashion. The cake was put up to be raffled for.
All the station took tickets for the fun of the thing. Captain Hambleton was anxious to show that there was no ill-feeling, and did not find himself so unhappy as he had expected—perhaps from the redintegratio amoris in another quarter; so he took his ticket in the raffle like other people. It is needless to say that he won; and the cake duly came back to him.
Had Captain Hambleton been a superstitious man, he might have regarded this strange occurrence as indicating that the Fates willed it that he should compass somehow a union with Miss Priest. But the captain had no superstition in his nature; and, indeed, had begun to think that he was well out of it; besides which it was currently reported that Miss Priest had already re-engaged herself to another man. But the bridecake was upon him as the Philistines upon Samson; and the question was, what the devil to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody would take tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the khud (Anglice, precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he reflected that this would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate soreness on his part. It cost him a good many pegs before he thought the matter out in all its bearings, for, as has been said, he was a gunner, but as he sauntered away from the club in the small hours a happy thought came to him.
He would give a picnic at which the bogey bridecake should figure conspicuously, and then be laid finally by the process of demolition. His leave was nearly up; he had experienced much hospitality and a picnic would be a graceful and genial acknowledgment thereof. And he would ask the Priests just like other people, and no doubt they would enter into the spirit of the thing and not send a "decline." Bella, he knew, liked picnics nearly as well as balls, and it must be a powerful reason indeed that would keep her away from either.
Captain Hambleton's picnic was the last of the season, and everybody called it the brightest. "The Glen" resounded to the laughter at tiffin, and the shades of night were falling ere stray couples turned up from its more sequestered recesses. Amid loud cheers Miss Priest, although still Miss Priest, cut up her own bridecake with a serene equanimity that proved the charming sweetness of her disposition. There was no marriage-bell yet all went merry as a marriage-bell, which is occasionally rather a sombre tintinnabulation; and the débris of the bridecake finally fell to the sweeper.