The morning had gone very comfortably with them during Dorothea’s absence. Mrs. Prime had hardly taken her departure before a note came from Mrs. Butler Cornbury, confirming Mr. Comfort’s offer as to the carriage. “Oh, papa, what have you done?”—she had said when her father first told her. “Now I must stay there all the night, for of course she’ll want to go on to the last dance!” But, like her father, she was good-natured, and therefore, though she would hardly have chosen the task, she resolved, when her first groans were over, to do it well. She wrote a kind note, saying how happy she should be, naming her hour—and saying that Rachel should name the hour for her return.
“It will be very nice,” said Rachel, rejoicing more than she should have done in thinking of the comfortable grandeur of Mrs. Butler Cornbury’s carriage.
“And are you determined?” Mrs. Prime asked her mother that evening.
“It is too late to go back now, Dorothea,” said Mrs. Ray, almost crying.
“Then I cannot remain in the house,” said Dorothea. “I shall go to Miss Pucker’s—but not till that morning; so that if you think better of it, all may be prevented yet.”
But Mrs. Ray would not think better of it, and it was thus that the preparations were made for Mrs. Tappitt’s—ball. The word “party” had now been dropped by common consent throughout Baslehurst.
VII
An Account of Mrs. Tappitt’s Ball—Commenced
Mrs. Butler Cornbury was a very pretty woman. She possessed that peculiar prettiness which is so often seen in England, and which is rarely seen anywhere else. She was bright, well-featured, with speaking lustrous eyes, with perfect complexion, and full bust, with head of glorious shape and figure like a Juno;—and yet with all her beauty she had ever about her an air of homeliness which made the sweetness of her womanhood almost more attractive than the loveliness of her personal charms. I have seen in Italy and in America women perhaps as beautiful as any that I have seen in England, but in neither country does it seem that such beauty is intended for domestic use. In Italy the beauty is soft, and of the flesh. In America it is hard, and of the mind. Here it is of the heart, I think, and as such is the happiest of the three. I do not say that Mrs. Butler Cornbury was a woman of very strong feeling; but her strongest feelings were home feelings. She was going to Mrs. Tappitt’s party because it might serve her husband’s purposes; she was going to burden herself with Rachel Ray because her father had asked her; and her greatest ambition was to improve the worldly position of the squires of Cornbury Grange. She was already calculating whether it might not some day be brought about that her little Butler should sit in Parliament for his county.
At nine o’clock exactly on that much to be remembered Tuesday the Cornbury carriage stopped at the gate of the cottage at Bragg’s End, and Rachel, ready dressed, blushing, nervous, but yet happy, came out, and mounting on to the step was almost fearful to take her share of the seat. “Make yourself comfortable, my dear,” said Mrs. Cornbury, “you can’t crush me. Or rather I always make myself crushable on such occasions as this. I suppose we are going to have a great crowd?” Rachel merely said that she didn’t know. She supposed there would be a good many persons. Then she tried to thank Mrs. Cornbury for being so good to her, and of course broke down. “I’m delighted—quite delighted,” said Mrs. Cornbury. “It’s so good of you to come with me. Now that I don’t dance myself, there’s nothing I like so much as taking out girls that do.”
“And don’t you dance at all?”
“I stand up for a quadrille sometimes. When a woman has five children I don’t think she ought to do more than that.”
“Oh, I shall not do more than that, Mrs. Cornbury.”
“You mean to say you won’t waltz?”
“Mamma never said anything about it, but I’m sure she would not like it. Besides—”
“Well—”
“I don’t think I know how. I did learn once, when I was very little; but I’ve forgotten.”
“It will soon come again to you if you like to try. I was very fond of waltzing before I was married.” And this was the daughter of Mr. Comfort, the clergyman who preached with such strenuous eloquence against worldly vanities! Even Rachel was a little puzzled, and was almost afraid that her head was sinking beneath the waters.
There was a great fuss made when Mrs. Butler Cornbury’s carriage drove up to the brewery door, and Rachel almost felt that she could have made her way up to the drawing-room more comfortably under Mrs. Rule’s mild protection. All the servants seemed to rush at her, and when she found herself in the hall and was conducted into some inner room, she was not allowed to shake herself into shape without the aid of a maidservant. Mrs. Cornbury—who took everything as a matter of course and was ready in a minute—had turned the maid over to the young lady with a kind idea that the young lady’s toilet was more important than that of the married woman. Rachel was losing her head and knew that she was doing so. When she was again taken into the hall she hardly remembered where she was, and when Mrs. Cornbury took her by the arm and began
