Dilemmas of Pride Volume I Part 2

But it was too late, quite too late for such thoughts, so she went out to pay some morning visits, to send in a veal cutlet for her dinner, and find out, more particularly, who were to be at the Salter's party.

CHAPTER IV.

Mr. Salter and his two daughters, the former equipped in a new wig, the latter in two new dresses, expressly for the occasion, were parading up and down the yet vacant public ballroom.

The lights were burning, the waiters in attendance, and the orchestra playing; while, peeping over the shoulder of the double ba.s.s, appeared a particularly smart bonnet, decorated with numerous bows of quite new ribbon, and further graced by a very handsome black lace veil.

"What can all the people be thinking of?" said Mr. Salter at last; "I have a mind to order the lights to be put out, and go away home to my bed. It would be just a proper punishment for them all. And pray," he added, looking at his daughters' dresses, "what are these gig-meries to cost?" At this crisis resounded the welcome sounds, "Sir Matthias and Lady Whaleworthy:" with quickened steps and delighted countenances, our trio hastened towards the bottom of the room, to receive their guests, now, as by magic, flowing in altogether.

Introductions were endless; every leading bird was followed by a flock, which neither host nor hostess had ever seen before; while, from time to time, the promised t.i.tles, those stars which were to give brilliancy to the night, made their appearance, sprinkling the common herd with consequence. Lady Flamborough! Sir William Orm! Sir Henry and Lady Shawbridge! Next appeared poor old General Powel and half blind Sir Francis Brierton, poking his little sharp nose into everybody's face, and smirking his recognition, when by so doing he had discovered who they were; and though last not least, Sir James Lindsey; least in consequence we mean, for he was a very little, very ugly man, the express image of the knave of spades. He was, however, a vastly important personage, a bachelor baronet, with fifteen thousand a-year, and a man of good family too, so that there was no objection whatever to him, except that he was a fool, and that when he danced he so capered and kicked up behind, and rounded his elbows, and, in short, made himself so completely the b.u.t.t and laughing-stock of the whole room, it was with difficulty that even his fifteen thousand per annum could procure him a partner.

We rather suspect, however, that there were ladies who, though they shrank from sharing with Sir James the unprofitable ridicule of the hour, would have had no objection to share with him for life his fifteen thousand a-year, for, in that case, they could afford to be laughed at.

Sir James had a brother, a very fine young man, remarkably handsome and equally clever; perhaps a little too hot-headed, but warm-hearted withal; an enthusiast in beauty, painting, music, scenery, every thing in short at which a glowing imagination takes fire; the very material for a frantic lover, yet condemned by his circ.u.mstances, either to lead a single life, or possibly at least contract a marriage with the purse of some old rich widow, fitter to be his mother than his wife. For Henry Lindsey was one of the many living sacrifices hourly immolated on the altars of _pride_, and how many a holocaust has been offered up upon those altars!

How often have we heard persons, who could argue rationally enough on other subjects, gravely a.s.sert, in reply to every argument which good feeling or justice could urge, "A family must have a head."

In this particular instance the head, or _pride_ of the family, had proved its disgrace, yet standing laws and previously made settlements could not be altered. Fifteen thousand per annum, therefore, must be melted down, to make a golden image of poor little silly Sir James, while Henry, with the pittance which as a younger child was his portion, was obliged to purchase the privilege of being shot at; for the younger brother of an old baronet _could not disgrace his family_ by doing any thing likely to provide _comfortably for himself_.

Thus do the _prejudices_ of society seem to have been invented for the express purpose of hunting down and crushing those whom its laws have robbed and oppressed.

Children of the same parents must be defrauded of the birthright, by natural justice theirs, to heap all on one brother! And for what purpose? That he may keep alive, by being its living representative, that _pride_, that _curse_, which forbids to those so defrauded, the use of honest means for earning honest bread!

If, instead of this, all property which had been a father's, were, at his death, equally divided among his offspring, without revolution or confiscation, extravagant disparity of station would gradually disappear, and with it _pride_, that destroys the happiness, with its whole array of _prejudices_, waging eternal warfare against rational contentment.

How many are there who might still, even as the world now is, dwell within a very garden of Eden, of peaceful and natural delights, and yet who virtually turn themselves out of the same; and, at the mere mandate of some _prejudice_ of society--some _by-law_ of _pride_, become wanderers through the thistle-grown wildernesses of discontent, or weary pilgrims amid the th.o.r.n.y paths of petty mortification.

But to return to our ball: by this time so fair a proportion of the company had arrived, that it was thought advisable to commence dancing.

For this purpose Mr. Salter, with a feeling of exultation which made him forget, for the time, what the whole entertainment was likely to cost, led Lady Flamborough to the head of the room. Her ladyship had evidently been pretty in her youth; but though the remains of a fine woman may sometimes be viewed with a blending of admiration with our veneration, mere prettiness seldom grows old gracefully. In Lady Flamborough's case it certainly did not. Her once nicely rounded little figure had now outgrown all bounds, not excepting those of the drapery which ought to have concealed its exuberance. Her once infantine features were now nearly lost in the midst of a countenance disproportionally increased in its general dimensions; while in manner she still played off numberless once becoming, but now disgusting, airs of artless innocence; languishing, lisping, and rolling her eyes; and childishly twisting her fingers through the ringlets of her hair, while looking up in her partner's face, and saying silly things.

Had it been possible to have checked coquetry in Lady Flamborough, the sight of the senseless bloated countenance on which she was thus casting away those interesting appeals of her visual orbs, one would have thought might have done so.

Mr. Salter's head was in shape something like a sugar loaf: the region denominated fore-head, and appropriated by phrenologists to the intellectual faculties, being so confined, that it nearly came to a point, while the descent widened as it approached the organs of gustativeness, and all that called itself face, concluded without any distinct line of demarcation, in a jole, much resembling that of a cod-fish.

The eyes were colourless, and owed all the brilliancy they possessed to an inflammation of the lids, which never forsook them. The efforts of their owner, on the present occasion, to give them a languishing roll, that should correspond with that of her ladyship's, was truly ludicrous.

As to his mouth, it bisected his countenance from ear to ear, which rendered his endeavours to spread it wider by that bland movement designated a smile, nearly abortive.

A few additional lines of circular or spherical trigonometry were conspicuously marked upon cheeks that yielded in carnation hue to nought save the nose; while this rallying point of the vital powers, like certain well-known altars of the ancients, never allowed the flame to go out.

Mr. Salter was exceedingly proud of his legs, (not that he had seen them himself for the last ten years), and though short for his body, which by-the-by had precisely the appearance of a Brobdingnag melon on castors, the legs themselves, when you were distant enough to have a view of them beneath the inflated balloon that otherwise concealed them, were certainly formed according to the rules of beauty; that is to say, they had very large calves, and very small ankles.

We suppose it must have been the combined effect of the personal charms and the elevated rank of his partner, which raised Mr. Salter's spirits to so inconvenient a degree, as to produce in his mind a most frisky longing to behold, once more, this long remembered attraction of his own--his said handsome legs. Accordingly, while setting to the lady, he made several kicks out in front, with accompanying jerks forward of the head, in the vain hope of catching a glimpse; but, alas, in one unfortunate effort more strenuous than the rest, he lost his balance; out flew his feet, and down he came on his back, so much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the whole room that no one for a time had the presence of mind to pick him up: while there he lay, sprawling and puffing, his own endeavours to rise being quite as fruitless as those of a beetle usually are, when placed in the same reversed position by a mischievous school-boy. Neither was the evening by any means one of unmixed delight to the Misses Salter. It was but too evident that even on the present occasion, when, if ever compliment was due to them, that the gentlemen evinced any thing but impatience to secure the felicity of being their partners. On the contrary, it was generally when a quadrille was nearly made up, and the last added couple were in great distress for a _vis-a-vis_, that some one who had previously made up his mind not to dance, was pressed into the service, and given a hint that one of the Miss Salters was sitting down.

Even Sir James, though he did dance a set with each sister, did not do so till he had been shaken off by nearly every other woman in the room.

The Scotch proverb says, "It's a lucky la.s.s that's like her father."

But we must confess, we never could discover that it was any advantage to Miss Salter to be so strikingly like her father as she certainly was. Miss Grace Salter was altogether of a different style; she was under-sized, pitiably thin, and extremely dark, with an expression of countenance as if she had just swallowed something unseasonably bitter, and was making a face at its disagreeable flavour. The set with Sir James could not much sooth the vanity of either sister, for no sooner did he commence operations, than a ring was immediately formed for the avowed purpose of laughing at him; while he, mistaking the general attention he drew for admiration, seemed gratefully determined to spare no pains to give the greatest possible satisfaction to his numerous spectators.

The Misses Salter had also another source of uneasiness this evening. At all times their greatest earthly apprehension, next to that of not getting husbands themselves, was, lest their father should marry, and cut them out of a small sum, which not having been swallowed up in the purchase of the estate for John, he had promised to divide between them unless indeed he married again. His doing so seemed this evening more probable than ever it had done before. The roll of his eye, while looking at Lady Flamborough, had become quite ominous, while her ladyship's air of condescension was truly alarming.

"Now it would be too bad, would it not?" said Miss Salter to Miss Grace Salter, as they were undressing, "if after all, this ball that we have been so long teazing at my father to give, and that he thinks so much about the expense of, should turn out to be our own ruin in the end."

"Why, I am afraid, to be sure," replied her sister, "if he marries he won't leave us the money, or else it would be a grand connection!

wouldn't it? We'd be sure to be visited by every body then."

"That we should, no doubt," said Miss Salter, "but what of that, we shouldn't have a shilling in the world, comparatively speaking, when my father dies--and as for John--"

"He wouldn't give us a shilling if we were starving!" observed Miss Grace.

By John, they meant their brother. And, by-the-by, one of the reasons, in addition to their want of beauty, why these ladies were paid so little attention to by the gentlemen, was, that it was well known, Mr.

Salter had a cub of a son, on whom he meant, in imitation of his betters, to heap the earnings and savings of his life, for the purpose, as he himself expressed it, of making a family: and, for that matter he didn't see why a man mightn't be prouder of being the first of his name to do so, than if he was come of a family ready made to his hand a thousand years ago! for sure, they must all have had a beginning one time or other.

But as to being the first of his name to have a rise in the world, he was not so clear of that neither: he had often heard talk of a Lord Salter or Salisbury, or something beginning with an S; and he might become a lord, one time or other, for any thing he knew to the contrary.

But be that as it may, "he wasn't going to have his money, that he had been a lifetime sc.r.a.ping together, squandered by idle fellows that were nothing at all akin to him, but would just come and marry his daughters to get hold of the cash."

"But supposing, Sir, we shouldn't get married at all," said Miss Salter one day.

"Nothing more likely," replied her father. "As for Grace, she is certainly as plain a girl as I'd desire to see any day. And I don't know how it is, you're not very handsome neither, tho' you're thought so like me."

These observations of Mr. Salter's about being the first of his family were, by the particular desire of his daughters, strictly confined to his own fireside. There was no occasion, they argued, to make any such confession in a place like Cheltenham, where n.o.body knew anything about people, but what they choose to say of themselves. Accordingly, they made family their constant theme; and inquired with the most consequential airs about the connections of every one they heard named; always winding up their harangue by observing, that of course it was very natural for a man like their father, of such an ancient and highly respectable family, to be very particular about who they visited, particularly in those sorts of places where people of every description congregated.

"It's no harm, you know," said Miss Salter to her sister, "to have the name of being particular, it makes people of consequence; at the same time I'd have us get acquainted with every creature we can, and go everywhere; there's no knowing where one might find one's luck."

"Talking of luck," answered Grace, "I read in one of the new novels the other day, that 'luck knocks once at every one's door;' I wish it would knock once at mine, I know, and it shouldn't have to knock again."

"And, by-the-by, was it quite prudent of us, on your plan, to cut Mrs.

Dorothea Arden as we have done?"

"Oh, yes; what's the use of an old maid, she can have no sons, you know; besides, we didn't cut her till Lady Whaleworthy, and Lady Flamborough, and Lady Shawbridge, and all of them, had called; and then I thought we could spare such old lumber as Mrs. Dorothea."

"Why, to be sure, as you say, she can have no sons; indeed I never even heard her speak of a brother or a nephew; and as to her expecting this Lady Arden that she is always talking about, I am sure its nothing but a boast."

"Nothing more you may be certain! And then I was afraid my father would have taken a fancy to her at last, for he was always saying, she was a fine woman for her years."

"She was very useful however at first," said Grace.

"Oh yes she was, certainly," replied Miss Salter, "but now you know we don't want her."

CHAPTER V.