CHAPTER XCII

THE GENERAL DIFFICULTIES

HAVING glanced at the Duke’s difficulties, let us take a look at those of the guests. By the time the cards became due, the winter had just got to that critical period when we may look for all sorts of weather within the short space of four-and-twenty hours,—rain, snow, frost, sunshine; hunting on one side of a hill, skating on the other. The weather, however, does not in general make much matter to the ladies—so long as they can get into their carriages and out again, they do not care much what it is. It is the gentlemen who are always looking at their aneroids and land marks speculating on the atmosphere, and calculating the damage to their invaluable harness and horses—horses that they wouldn’t take any money for.

And in truth, those who went to the Duke’s on a ball night had needs look about them, for the stable accommodation was scanty at best, and three in a stall nothing uncommon. Providing proper stable accommodation for the visitors’ horses is another of the difficulties peculiar to country gaiety. Mr. Willis would look rather blank if all the coachmen setting down at his rooms in King’s Street were to want billets for their horses and something for themselves. The Duke looked upon the matter in a metropolitan point of view—he didn’t ask the horses—they formed no part of the entertainment— could not be a horse quadrille if it was ever so; therefore, after such accommodation as the master of the horse and Mr. Haggish could spare was filled, the comers were left a good deal to chance and the care of the neighbouring publicans. First come, first served was generally the order of the day.

A ball being to the ladies a good deal what a fox hunt is to the gentlemen, there was a great demand for quarters and filling of country houses for miles around the Castle, which on the afternoon of the day somewhat resembled a fortress in a state of siege, the martello tower-like dresses of the ladies contributing to the idea. Then the fever of anxiety was increased in some houses on finding that the martello towers could not by any means be got into the carriages—at least not in the proportions they had theretofore been, when dresses were smaller and more controllable.

A set dinner-party on a ball night is always an undesirable, uncomfortable affair in the country, and had better never be attempted. The ladies are always in a fidget about something, and mysterious messages are getting constantly delivered, causing abrupt risings and departures, and perhaps frowning brows on the return. Then there is that constant looking at watches, and asking the gentlemen what o’clock it is, no lady ever relying upon her own watch; and evident desire to be among the laces and flounces of the toilette instead of the flowers and fricandeaux of the dinner-table.

Young gentlemen are not much easier, and long to be at the looking-glass instead of the wine-glass— not an undesirable change from the days when it was thought necessary to be well primed before going to a ball.

Pater Familias generally does the bulk of his dressing before dinner—all most likely save putting on the immaculate tie and the No. 1 coat and vest—for he finds that stooping encourages blood to the head rather than digestion; and just as he has imbibed his usual allowance of wine, and about read himself asleep, the door opens and in glides a lady so large and gorgeous, so differently dressed to the one who went out, that he has to rub his knuckles well into his eyes in order to recognise her person. “What! Mrs. Sunnyfield, is that you?” exclaims he.

“Yes, Sun, my dear, it’s me. Shouldn’t you be getting ready? The carriage will be round directly.”

“Well, that is a dress!” exclaims Sun, jumping up and hurrying out of the room, wondering what sort of a figure it will cut in the bill. He then dives into his clothes, and, putting himself into his paletôt, resigns himself complacently to the hands of his fair executioner.

It is a pity the coachmakers had not foreseen the rage of crinoline, so as to have shaped their vehicles accordingly. The hooded and headed contrivances of the country—the turbot-tubs upon wheels—are but ill calculated to convey the expanded gig umbrellas they are now called upon to hold. Moreover, the buckled and buttoned things are seldom wholly proof against weather. They may be all very well in the day-time, when a traveller can see the coming storm and meet it accordingly; but it is not nice to drive eight or ten miles in the dark, with the keen wind whistling through its pet aperture into one’s ear, or for a lady to feel the drop, drop, drop of the neatsfoot-oiled water from the head upon her rich pink silk or beautiful moire antique. All this, too, perhaps amid the comfortable laudations of the owner at the convenience of a carriage that can be made either a close or an open one at pleasure.

Then the job carriages; what work there is with the job carriages! What resuscitation of old post-chaises, impromptu-ising of post-boys, and impressing of horses —animals that scarcely know what harness is are somehow accepted as safe and sufficient security. If the history of all the quadrupeds that run in public conveyances were known, people would not be so fond of getting into them. Yet somehow the good-natured public seem to take it all for granted, and the crazier a concern is, the more they seem to like it. Look at the ram-shackling things that go out of a country town on a market day, piled up on the roof like a Covent Garden cabbage cart. But let us off to the ball and get there as best we can. And to so absorbing an event let us devote a separate chapter.