“Party! what party?” almost screamed Mrs. Prime. Mrs. Ray had forgotten that nothing had as yet been said to Dorothea about the invitation.
“Mrs. Tappitt is going to give a party at the brewery,” said Rachel, in her very softest voice, “and she has asked me.”
“And you are going? You mean to let her go?” Mrs. Prime had asked two questions, and she received two answers. “Yes,” said Rachel; “I suppose I shall go, as mamma says so.” “Mr. Comfort says there is no harm in it,” said Mrs. Ray; “and Mrs. Butler Cornbury is to come from the parsonage to take her up.” All question as to Dorcas discipline to be inflicted daily upon Rachel on account of that sin of which she had been guilty in standing under the elms with a young man was utterly lost in this terrible proposition! Instead of being sent to Miss Pucker in her oldest merino dress, Rachel was to be decked in muslin and finery, and sent out to a dancing party at which this young man was to be the hero! It was altogether too much for Dorothea Prime. She slowly wiped the crumbs from off her dingy crape, and with creaking noise pushed back her chair. “Mother,” she said, “I couldn’t have believed it! I could not have believed it!” Then she withdrew to her own chamber.
Mrs. Ray was much afflicted; but not the less did Rachel look out for the returning postman, on his road into Baslehurst, that she might send her little note to Mrs. Tappitt, signifying her acceptance of that lady’s kind invitation.
VI
Preparations for Mrs. Tappitt’s Party
I am disposed to think that Mrs. Butler Cornbury did Mrs. Tappitt an injury when she with so much ready good nature accepted the invitation for the party, and that Mrs. Tappitt was aware of this before the night of the party arrived. She was put on her mettle in a way that was disagreeable to her, and forced into an amount of submissive supplication to Mr. Tappitt for funds, which was vexatious to her spirit. Mrs. Tappitt was a good wife, who never ran her husband into debt, and kept nothing secret from him in the management of her household—nothing at least which it behoved him to know. But she understood the privileges of her position, and could it have been possible for her to have carried through this party without extra household moneys, or without any violent departure from her usual customs of life, she could have snubbed her husband’s objections comfortably, and have put him into the background for the occasion without any inconvenience to herself or power of remonstrance from him. But when Mrs. Butler Cornbury had been gracious, and when the fiddles and horn had become a fact to be accomplished, when Mrs. Rowan and Mary began to loom large on her imagination and a regular supper was projected, then Mrs. Tappitt felt the necessity of superior aid, and found herself called upon to reconcile her lord.
And this work was the more difficult and the more disagreeable to her feelings because she had already pooh-poohed her husband when he asked a question about the party. “Just a few friends got together by the girls,” she had said. “Leave it all to them, my dear. It’s not very often they see anybody at home.”
“I believe I see my friends as often as most people in Baslehurst,” Mr. Tappitt had replied indignantly, “and I suppose my friends are their friends.” So there had been a little soreness which made the lady’s submission the more disagreeable to her.
“Butler Cornbury! He’s a puppy. I don’t want to see him, and what’s more, I won’t vote for him.”
“You need not tell her so, my dear; and he’s not coming. I suppose you like your girls to hold their heads up in the place; and if they show that they’ve respectable people with them at home, respectable people will be glad to notice them.”
“Respectable! If our girls are to be made respectable by giving grand dances, I’d rather not have them respectable. How much is the whole thing to cost?”
“Well, very little, T.; not much more than one of your Christmas dinner-parties. There’ll be just the music, and the lights, and a bit of something to eat. What people drink at such times comes to nothing—just a little negus and lemonade. We might possibly have a bottle or two of champagne at the supper-table, for the look of the thing.”
“Champagne!” exclaimed the brewer. He had never yet incurred the cost of a bottle of champagne within his own house, though he thought nothing of it at public dinners. The idea was too much for him; and Mrs. Tappitt, feeling how the ground lay, gave that up—at any rate for the present. She gave up the champagne; but in abandoning that, she obtained the marital sanction, a quasi sanction which he was too honourable as a husband afterwards to repudiate, for the music and the eatables. Mrs. Tappitt knew that she had done well, and prepared for his dinner that day a beefsteak pie, made with her own hands. Tappitt was not altogether a dull man, and understood these little signs. “Ah,” said he, “I wonder how much that pie is to cost me?”
“Oh, T., how can you say such things! As if you didn’t have beefsteak pie as often as it’s good for you.” The pie, however, had its effect, as also did the exceeding “boilishness” of the water which was brought in for his gin-toddy that night; and it was known throughout the establishment that papa was in a good humour, and that mamma had been very clever.
“The girls must have had new dresses anyway before the month was out,” Mrs. Tappitt said to her husband the next morning
