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The ball opened, and now we were much besought by the ladies. I had to deny myself with a whole series of comical excuses. Eustace performed his duty after a stiff English fashion once with his pretty partner of the pranzo, and once again with a fat gondolier. The band played waltzes and polkas, chiefly upon patriotic airs the Marcia Reale, Garibaldi's Hymn, &c.
I really love these little angels who make their entrance into the great world between two polkas who go to a ball instead of going to bed who broke their doll into pieces two days ago, and now think of painting themselves under the eyes like mamma who know to a louis the price of a cashmere shawl are connoisseurs in diamonds, look men straight in the eye, are all worn out when Lent comes, and who during Holy Week, after devoutly nibbling a bit of salmon salad, run off to their religious exercises in boots with tassels and with their hair powdered.
"Thank you, I don't dance the Polka," she replied; and as she spoke quick flashes of thought crossed her thus "I have not been introduced to him I have met him before how horrid of Tressilian's face to talk of polkas ha! it is Edmund!" Edmund Arundel's eye it was that was glancing at her with a look of great amusement at her bewilderment.
Then a siesta, and after drove to dine with our kind friends who procured permits for our admission to the "Fabrica del Tobago." After dinner to spend the evening with a Spanish family related to our mercurial friend, Don Cæsar de Bazan. Had dancing, polkas and mazourkas being especial favorites; singing also, and music from La Norma and Sonnambula, exquisitely performed.
But she insisted upon it; telling us that the music was like that of the Bohemian miners, who played nothing but polkas. I was determined to ascertain the truth; and really found, that, in a public garden one and a half miles from her house, such a troop had played all the afternoon. No public music was permitted in the city, because the magistrate had forbidden it on her account.
What pigeon-wings were performed! what polkas perpetrated! what waltzes wrecked! How the long lines of the Virginia Reel, or "On the Road to Boston," extended through the hall from end to end, and how the couples twisted, whirled, and scooted between them! How the call-man, with his violin under his chin, stopped playing to vociferate his orders, or anathematize some bewildered pair!
Miss Phipps had drawn out a programme of games for the evening's amusement, and later on the older pupils took it in turns to play waltzes and polkas, while the others danced.
There was no one capable of forming it in the province, where no music was ever heard but that of the local band, which played nothing but marches, or on its good days selections from Adolphe Adam, and the church organist who played romanzas, and the exercises of the young ladies of the town who strummed a few valses and polkas, the overture to the Caliph of Bagdad, la Chasse du Jeune Henri, and two or three sonatas of Mozart, always the same, and always with the same mistakes, on instruments that were sadly out of tune.
Yes, that would all happen. We should denounce those people in round terms, and call them hard names. And suppose we found this paragraph in the newspapers: "Yesterday a visiting party of American pork-millionaires had a picnic in Westminster Abbey, and in that sacred place they ate their luncheon, sang popular songs, played games, and danced waltzes and polkas." Would the English be shocked?
There was very little reading either at the works or at the country-houses; they played only marches and polkas; and the young people always argued hotly about things they did not understand, and the effect was crude. The discussions were loud and heated, but, strange to say, Vera had nowhere else met people so indifferent and careless as these.
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