A Colonial Reformer, Vol. 2 (of 3)

Mr. Neuchamp was disposed to be wroth with himself when he discovered that he was looking forward with considerable interest to a much-talked-of ball, by which the Count von Schätterheims had resolved to mark his appreciation of the kindness which he had received at the hands of the Sydney ‘upper ten.’ Why should he feel gratified, Ernest asked himself, at the prospect of joining in an entertainment at best but a réchauffé of numberless affairs of the class which he had assisted at and despised in England? A ball―a mere ball―a stale repetition of the meaningless crust―the saltatory, amatory, and gustatory simulacra of pleasure, which he had long since renounced and abandoned. An entertainment chiefly composed of people he didn’t know, and given by a man whom he did not like.

He finally disposed of the affair in his own mind by the summary, if illogical, decision, that he must regard himself, in respect of his late banishment from the world, in the light of a sailor after a protracted cruise, gifted with abnormal powers of assimilation and digestion, mental and physical.

Even in moments of sternest self-analysis men are not infrequently insincere and evasive. Perchance not consciously. Were the moral processes incapable of such inflections, Ernest Neuchamp could never have concealed the fact from himself that he chiefly wished to attend this much-abused festivity, to which he had received a formal and ornate card, inclusive of the arms and crest of the noble family of Von Schätterheims, because it would be graced by the presence of Antonia Frankston.

Ernest did not find the very excellent dinner of which he partook at the club on the evening of the ball in any degree less palatable because of this mental conflict. He arrayed himself in the wampum and warpaint proper for such engagements as manufactured by Mr. Poole, of Saville Row, which decorations indeed had narrowly escaped being left behind as a superfluous part of his outfit at Neuchampstead. After a careful toilet he awaited in a slightly unphilosophical state of mind the arrival of the Frankston carriage, which was to call for him.

Punctually at ten the highly effective bays contributed their particular quota of gravel-scratching to the enormous aggregate of road friction which pervaded Sydney on that night, and Mr. Neuchamp, placed opposite to a wrapped and draped cloud of diaphanous material, which he conjectured to be a young lady, and most probably Antonia, from the similarity of voice, was whirled off towards the gate of happiness. Before they could approach that enchanted portal they became sensible of a line of lamp lit vehicles apparently several miles long, at the remote end of which they were compelled to await the gradual debouching of the leading files. The opportunity was favourable for conversation, and Miss Frankston having disengaged apparently so much of her envelope as permitted free egress to her words, they commenced―

‘What a lovely night! I was so afraid it would rain. I am sure it will be the most delightful ball we have ever had. I feel certain I shall enjoy myself immensely. It is ages since I have been to a dance.’

‘I hope your anticipations may be realised,’ quoth Ernest. ‘Captain Cook was here, I think, when I last went to one. I had ceased to think them rational amusements long before I left home.’

‘Oh! but then you are really dissipated in England, if what we hear of a London season be correct,’ said Antonia. ‘Two or three balls a night, and some engagement at least once every night. What girl could stand that? Now we poor colonists have perhaps two or three a month in our gayest time, and now and then, as now, one in half a year.’

‘Well, doubtless the degree of dissipation makes some difference,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, ‘and I do not mind owning that I feel as I used to feel; as Hood’s seamstress says, before I knew the words of “drums and matinées, crushes and staircase charges, with all the melancholy melée of supper, when nobody could eat if they had any appetite, or could have appetite if they would eat.”’

‘You are not in a very promising state of mind,’ said Antonia, ‘so I think I can provide you with plenty of real dancing, if you wish, plenty of nice partners, not anything dangerous in the way of crush; and if you take me in to supper, I will guarantee you something to eat.’

‘Well done,’ said Paul; ‘I’ll back you up in all you have said. Ernest will see no end of nice girls, who will dance him off his legs, unless he’s very fit indeed; I think the music isn’t bad, and Dettmann generally gives you something worth eating, and, more particularly, drinking. I’m the man to be pitied.’

‘Why, you naughty papa?’ said the veiled figure.

‘Because just about this time I ought to be smoking my third cigar, and going peacefully to bed, whereby I should wake up with a clear head, a good appetite, and a strong idea that I was going to make some money before noon; instead of which, to-morrow morning, most probably, I shall be slightly feverish, eat no breakfast, and have a general conviction that stocks are going down, discounts rising, and the country going to the bad generally.’

‘Not if you play whist steadily with old Mr. Howler, the Colonel, and Dr. Whyte; get the Colonel for a partner, and you’ll be sure to win.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said the sacrificial parent, ‘but five or six hours are not so easy to dispose of at sixty odd. I foresee that I shall eat and drink imprudently, catch cold, have a highly unpleasant next morning, with a hint of indigestion, bile, and lumbago.’

‘How differently pleasure affects us, at sixteen and sixty,’ observed Ernest with an air of solemn conviction.

‘I call that very cruel,’ said Antonia. ‘I always want papa to let me go with Mrs. Evergreen, but he prefers to martyrise himself, like a dear old papa as he is.’

‘Well, perhaps he likes to look at his little girl enjoying herself,’ said old Paul. ‘I can weather it out yet, perhaps better than I say. I was fond enough of fun myself, and have had some strange dances in strange places, with strange company. I remember once――’

‘Come, papa!’ said the veiled prophetess warningly.

‘Well, only this one; we shall soon be out. I was once down in New Zealand, in the old times, long enough ago, before the gold and the Government, and just as we went ashore at Motiki we heard that the principal Pakeha-Maori, an old sea-captain of course, was going to give a dance and a grand spread. We were wild for fun of course; been out thirteen months. Well, the old boy, a grizzled, hard-weather-looking old sea-dog, asked us all, captain, supercargo, and officers.’

‘I daresay it was very characteristic,’ said Ernest; ‘what were the ladies like?’

‘Well, a majority of the wives and daughters of the British settlers were Maoris. It was very rich land, and old Blackbeard had secured a considerable slice. He had a Maori wife, and ever so many daughters. The youngest was a great beauty, splendid eyes, such a figure, and so on; I was quite a youngster, and bashful, so I said to the old skipper, “Please introduce me to your youngest daughter, Captain Blackbeard.” The old pirate looked at me for a minute from under his grizzled eyebrows, and then growled out―“How do you suppose I introduced myself to her mother? go and hail the craft yourself”―which I did, and I never wish――’

‘Papa!’ said Antonia, with great distinctness of intonation. ‘Here we are at the step. Please go first, and you will give me room to extricate myself.’

Mr. Frankston delivered himself upon the carpet spread from hall to staircase with an adroitness which seemed a reminiscence of old seamanship, and following Miss Frankston and her father, Mr. Neuchamp entered the first ballroom in Australia which had been honoured by his presence.

Close to the door of a nobly proportioned, brilliantly lighted, profusely decorated, and extremely well-filled apartment, stood their noble friend and host, gorgeously attired in the uniform of a colonel of Landwehr, and shining like a constellation of the first magnitude among the more unpretending naval and regimental officers then quartered and stationed at Sydney.

As he took the hand of Miss Frankston, and bowed low over it, with an assumption of chivalrous deference, only permitted to a foreigner, Ernest felt a mad desire to then and there kick him down the stairs of his own ballroom. Controlling this perhaps not strictly defensible impulse, he drew back, as the Count shook Paul’s hand with a delicate yet cordial deference appropriate to an honoured father in prospect, and evidently, to that nobleman’s astonishment, bowed very stiffly and followed his friends. A large family party, including half a dozen smiling and whispering girls, evidently delighted by the cordial welcome they experienced from their distinguished entertainer, covered his retreat. The night was superbly beautiful. At no great distance lay the slumbering sea-lake; while over the silver plain clusters of glancing lights gleamed, beneath the broad illuminated balcony of the ballroom. Unless Ernest’s heart had been much more ill at ease than circumstances rendered possible, it would have been hard at his time of life for aught but pleasure, for a little space, to bear sway.

The floor was perfection; the music, that of a military band, which had but the year before played in the great square at Pera, which had been at the front during the terrible northern campaign, yet fresh in men’s minds, well coached by a music-loving, fastidious colonel, was pealing out the ‘Schöner blauer Donau’ with wondrous time and spirit.

Mr. Neuchamp had been sufficiently awake to his opportunities to engage Antonia for the first deux-temps valse after they entered the room, and the after-supper galop, taking his chance of anything intermediate. ‘That is good music,’ said he; ‘I heard it in Vienna last. Suppose we join these very sincere performers.’

Antonia replied by a frank smile of assent, and as he took one comprehensive glance over face and figure ere he clasped the slight yielding waist, he thought he had consistently underrated her beauty.

The light was of course eminently favourable to her clear though colourless complexion; her eyes, sparkling with frank unstudied enjoyment of the entertainment, shone with unwonted lustre, while the perfection of her slight but rounded figure was clearly apparent; and as they swept adown the crowded hall Mr. Neuchamp, though he had not been numbered among the lavender-kid-wearing tribe of modern youth of late years, danced very well, and we may add looked very well, in that much-abused, but as yet unsuperseded garb, than which no other befits so well a gentleman on evening pleasure bent. Perhaps we have not devoted sufficient space heretofore to the limning of the hero’s personal charms and graces. These were perhaps sufficient though not remarkable.

Ernest Neuchamp, somewhat above the middle height, had, without any particular athletic ostentation, the square form and well-knit figure of an ordinary English aristocrat. Though possessing more endurance than strength, he by no means fell short of that necessary endowment. One saw fairly regular features, comprising a pair of searching grayish blue eyes, very multiform as to expression, a clear-cut firm mouth, and light-brown hair inclining to curl, which I need not say was very closely cut on the present occasion. Brown-bearded, and rather sunburned, as to his original delicate complexion, he was by no means a bad representation, had he donned armour, of one of his crusading ancestors just returned from Ascalon or Engadi with all the prestige of a good knight and a whole heart for the ladye-fayre, who awaited his coming amid her bower-maidens.