“Nonsense, nonsense,” said the master of the house. “Where’s Archie? Get up, ye lout! can ye see a pretty girl wanting a dance and not be on your feet in a moment? Come, Evelyn, let us have the old-world waltz, and see the young ones enjoy themselves.”
“Come on,” said Eddy to his partner. “It will be as slow as a funeral, but its fine all the same. Come on, and never mind.”
Rosamond stood up by the piano with a perfectly serious face. She turned half round towards Archie’s corner, who in an agony of incapacity and reluctance hesitated to make a step towards her. Rosamond did not care any more for the young man than if he had been a cabbage. He had no mystery or attraction for her, as she had for him, nor was her amour propre affected by his hesitation. She said, scarcely looking at him from the pitch to which her head thrown high seemed to reach, above every one, “Are we to dance?” in those clear tones of unaffected indifference and disdain. She knew that she would be bumped against all the furniture, and expected to be thrown upon the rock of Mr. Rowland standing in the middle of the room where Eddy and Marion encircled, brushed with their wings, wound into the gyrations of their indefatigable whirl; but she was resigned, and ready for the sacrifice. To poor Archie it was a far more serious affair. He came slowly forward, slouching his shoulders and bending his head. “You were right in thinking I was not fit for it,” he said; “if it’s disagreeable to you, you will remember it’s not my fault.” She put out her hand without a word and placed it on his shoulder. I have read many rhapsodies about the manly character of a waltz, in which two people on the verge of love find themselves suddenly swept together into paradise; but the unhappy young man who cannot dance, who finds a fair partner suddenly, in spite of himself, thrust into his awkward arms, who does not know what to do with her, nor with his own unlucky fate, and the things which seem suddenly to spring up and put themselves into his way—no one, so far as I know, has ever found any interest in the sufferings of such an unlucky hero. He held himself as far apart from her as possible as he turned her slowly round, wondering if she hated him, if she would ever again look at him, afraid to glance at her lest he should read disgust in her face. A time of giddy anguish followed, how long or how short Archie could not tell. He supposed that Rosamond exerted herself to keep him up, to guide him blindly about the room; for when those horrible gyrations were over, and the whirl ceased, and the walls began once more to settle straight into their places, he heard himself addressed with noisy congratulations. “Well done, Archie, you’re not such a duffer after all,” cried his father. “Bravo, Rowland!” said Eddy. Mrs. Rowland laughed and clapped her hands. “You are far better at it than I thought,” said Marion. Rosamond alone stood as serious as before, her breathing a little quickened, looking at it as if she thought she might have soiled the hand which had been upon his shoulder. He felt as if he could have struck her as he turned away his head.
“After this,” said Mrs. Rowland, “I must tell you what the children want, James. I was opposing it as in duty bound, but their little performance, I am sure, has thrown you on their side: they want us to give a ball.”
“A ball!” said Mr. Rowland with many notes of interrogation, and then he added with the broad smile, which in its warmth and ruddiness breathed a little intimation of being after dinner, “Why not?”
“Ah, I knew you would be on their side. I have been resisting as in duty bound——”
“And why in duty bound? In your heart,” said Rowland, “it is you who are always on their side. I may have my little moments of fatherly wrath. A father is nothing, you know, Ledgen, if he does not find fault.”
“That’s quite so,” said the great ironmaster, who had been dining with the great railway man. “We must keep up our authority, and discipline must always be preserved.”
“But she stands up for them through thick and thin,” said the happy man. “I cannot wallop my own niggers, so to speak, meaning to give my boy a wigging, but she pushes in, standing up for two. To hear her speak, you would think my two were angels, and I an old curmudgeon always finding fault: that’s the beauty of a wife.”
“Well,” said Evelyn, “never mind; I am to give in, I suppose. You know, James, it will turn the whole house upside down.”