CHAPTER XIX
THE BALL.
I have often dressed for a storming party with less of trepidation than I felt on the evening of Sir George Dashwood’s ball. Since the eventful day of the election I had never seen Miss Dashwood; therefore, as to what precise position I might occupy in her favor was a matter of great doubt in my mind, and great import to my happiness. That I myself loved her, was a matter of which all the badinage of my friends regarding her made me painfully conscious; but that, in our relative positions, such an attachment was all but hopeless, I could not disguise from myself. Young as I was, I well knew to what a heritage of debt, lawsuit, and difficulty I was born to succeed. In my own resources and means of advancement I had no confidence whatever, had even the profession to which I was destined been more of my choice. I daily felt that it demanded greater exertions, if not far greater abilities, than I could command, to make success at all likely; and then, even if such a result were in store, years, at least, must elapse before it could happen; and where would she then be, and where should I? Where the ardent affection I now felt and gloried in,—perhaps all the more for its desperate hopelessness,—when the sanguine and buoyant spirit to combat with difficulties which youth suggests, and which, later, manhood refuses, should have passed away? And even if all these survived the toil and labor of anxious days and painful nights, what of her? Alas, I now reflected that, although only of my own age, her manner to me had taken all that tone of superiority and patronage which an elder assumes towards one younger, and which, in the spirit of protection it proceeds upon, essentially bars up every inlet to a dearer or warmer feeling,—at least, when the lady plays the former part. “What, then, is to be done?” thought I. “Forget her?—but how? How shall I renounce all my plans, and unweave the web of life I have been spreading around me for many a day, without that one golden thread that lent it more than half its brilliancy and all its attraction? But then the alternative is even worse, if I encourage expectations and nurture hopes never to be realized. Well, we meet to-night, after a long and eventful absence; let my future fate be ruled by the results of this meeting. If Lucy Dashwood does care for me, if I can detect in her manner enough to show me that my affection may meet a return, the whole effort of my life shall be to make her mine; if not, if my own feelings be all that I have to depend upon to extort a reciprocal affection, then shall I take my last look of her, and with it the first and brightest dream of happiness my life has hitherto presented.”
It need not be wondered at if the brilliant coup d’oeil of the ball-room, as I entered, struck me with astonishment, accustomed as I had hitherto been to nothing more magnificent than an evening party of squires and their squiresses or the annual garrison ball at the barracks. The glare of wax-lights, the well-furnished saloons, the glitter of uniforms, and the blaze of plumed and jewelled dames, with the clang of military music, was a species of enchanted atmosphere which, breathing for the first time, rarely fails to intoxicate. Never before had I seen so much beauty. Lovely faces, dressed in all the seductive flattery of smiles, were on every side; and as I walked from room to room, I felt how much more fatal to a man’s peace and heart’s ease the whispered words and silent glances of those fair damsels, than all the loud gayety and boisterous freedom of our country belles, who sought to take the heart by storm and escalade.
As yet I had seen neither Sir George nor his daughter, and while I looked on every side for Lucy Dashwood, it was with a beating and anxious heart I longed to see how she would bear comparison with the blaze of beauty around.
Just at this moment a very gorgeously dressed hussar stepped from a doorway beside me, as if to make a passage for some one, and the next moment she appeared leaning upon the arm of another lady. One look was all that I had time for, when she recognized me.
“Ah, Mr. O’Malley, how happy—has Sir George—has my father seen you?”
“I have only arrived this moment; I trust he is quite well?”