Mr. Sawyer had none of this to confront single-handed. Loitering about the cloak-room door, he came upon Struggles, Brush, Savage, and Co.; all equally averse with himself to plunge prematurely into the festive scene, and was greeted by the conclave, from whom he had parted about an hour previously, with a boisterous cordiality born of their potations.
“He’s meant!” said one, talking of our friend as if he were a racehorse in strong training, whom each had backed heavily to win. “Got-up to the nines!” exclaimed another, scanning him from top to toe, as an adjutant scans a recruit. “Hang it! Sawyer, you’ve done it to-night!” laughed a third; “they won’t let you out of this alive!” And Mr. S., who rather flattered himself the general effect was favourable, did not quite know whether to be pleased with their approbation or to take huff at their familiarity. Meanwhile carriages were setting down with increasing frequency. The clatter was quite alarming in the paved streets of the little country town; the steam of horses almost obscured the carriage-lamps, and sweet little satin-slippered feet stepped daintily from inside, over an interregnum of wet straw, on to a soppy foot-cloth. When ankles are neatly turned, but not otherwise, it is surprising what a deal of holding-up is required by the compressible and expansive crinoline. Warm greetings and affectionate pressures of the hand were exchanged between such swains as were lucky enough to intercept them and their own peculiar damsels in the passage to the cloak-room, whither the ladies betook themselves forthwith, there to leave their becoming and coquettish little burnouses ere they shook out their canvas and got under sail in all the splendour of fall dress.
Mammas looked approvingly at their bridling daughters, as the latter tripped into the ball-room before them; mammas, the very counterpart of those blooming beauties, had you rolled up two or three into one, but fair-shouldered, brown-haired, and comely yet, as English matrons are, up to a very uncertain period. Papas, with white gloves and red faces, slapped each others’ backs, and talked about yesterday’s gallop. The musicians struck up the prettiest waltz of the last season but one; Major Brush, with unexampled temerity, dashed into the enchanted ring with Lady Barbara Blazer in his arms; Bob Blazer followed suit with flirting Miss Tiptoes. A whirling maze of tulle, and wreaths, and sparkling gems, and perfumed floating tresses pervaded the magic circle; louder pealed the cornet-à-piston, brighter glanced the eyes, faster flew the dancers, the top of the room began to fill, and the ball might now be said to have fairly begun.
It is only your habitual ball-goer, however, who can thus, like some consummate swimmer, dash in with a header and strike out at once into the flood. Less experienced performers may be excused for shivering awhile on the brink. Shy gentlemen congregating round the doorway fitted their gloves on with tedious accuracy, looking over their collars meanwhile at their future partners, with an air of melancholy defiance; the weaker-minded ones informing each other confidentially that it was “going to be a capital ball!” The ranks of these waverers thinned perceptibly though, as the dance wore on, and Mr. Sawyer, who did not waltz, found himself ere long stranded high and dry at the top of the room amongst the grandees; a little bewildered, truly, and lost in such a crowd of strangers, but greatly sustained, nevertheless, by Hope and Bordeaux.
These stimulants, as might be expected, waned simultaneously. Fresh arrivals blocked the doorway; and still she didn’t come! Not she, indeed! Catch Miss Cissy doing anything half so green as arriving early or staying late. No, no; if you want to be sought after, ladies, you must be sparing of your presence and economical of your smiles. There is no dog so obedient as the one you keep sitting up on his hind legs, to beg for a crumb of biscuit at a time.
Mr. Sawyer was in despair. As a stranger, however, he was presented to the grandees, and found himself, he scarcely knew how, engaged to dance “The Lancers” with Lady Barbara Blazer, a formidable beauty, of dashing, not to say, overwhelming manners, and who attributed to extraordinary forwardness, for which she rather liked him, our friend’s confused and half-unconscious request that she would favour him with her hand.
Now dancing was not Mr. Sawyer’s forte, and he had never before attempted “The Lancers.” It is no wonder, then, that the intricacies of that measure should have utterly bamboozled him, or that he should have set to the wrong people, got in everybody’s way, and made himself supremely ridiculous. Add to this, that in the midst of the most difficult manœuvre, when, hunting over the set for his own partner in vain, he caught Cissy Dove’s eyes fixed upon him with an expression of malicious amusement; and it is needless to specify that his discomfiture was complete: Cissy Dove looking radiant as a Peri. Oh, after that, it was all magic and moonshine. Lady Barbara never alluded to him subsequently as anything but “the poor queer man I met at Harborough;” and that magnificent dame’s opinion of his intellectual attainments I had rather not be compelled to declare.
Mr. Sawyer was no sooner released from his self-imposed penance than he flew to the side of his charmer, whom he found, as might be expected, hemmed in by Mamma and Papa, surrounded by a bevy of female acquaintances, and receiving the homage of one or two elaborate dandies of considerable calibre and pretension.
She shook hands with him, however, across young Vainhopes; after which he was forced to fall back upon Parson Dove, whom he accosted with great cordiality and affection.
A man never shows to such advantage as in the presence of his ladye-love. How many a Hercules have we not seen holding her silks for Omphale; his lion-front looking sheepish—not to say asinine; his strength degenerated to clumsiness; his whole exterior denoting helpless subjection and dismay! Mr. Sawyer was no exception to the general rule. He pulled at his neckcloth; twitched his gloves on and off; looked at his boots! listened to the Parson’s platitudes, without hearing a word; finally, made a desperate plunge, and entreated Miss Dove to dance the next quadrille with him.