swayed dangerously as she stood on one foot and flipped her silk stockings. Her other foot was on the bed, each toe swaddled, like a mummy, in a different wrapping.
‘You see, every pair of shoes hurts me in a different place,’ she explained. ‘Now, you are so much luckier than I, Julia, for your feet shape your shoes, but my shoes shape my feet.’
The bedroom was in exciting disarray with petticoats, dresses, shawls and stockings thrown over beds and chairs. A ball was an event that had come only once in our lives, and as I wanted to see them dressing I watched them from under the bedclothes to be out of the way.
Julia, being the eldest, had the use of the mirror first. She sat at the dressing-table putting the last touches to her hair, one side of her face lit by the candle’s flame, the other in profound shadow. She was dressed in a maroon silk gown of mamma’s that had been turned and which looked better now on Julia, mamma declared, than it had ever looked on her when it was new. Julia was clever with her fingers, but perhaps my inexperienced eyes endowed her gown with a richness and an elegance it did not in reality possess. I do believe, however, that she would have been noticed amongst any company whatever she wore. She was so tall, too tall perhaps for a woman, that she had to bend her head to avoid the sloping ceiling in the bedroom. Her carriage was superb and the wide space between her eyebrows and eyes gave her an expression of nobility, yet her face on any other woman might have been plain. It was her temperament that kindled hers into a spirited liveliness. It darkened and lit with her thoughts, she spoke with it as much as she spoke with her voice, until it was a joy to watch and killed every pretty face beside it.
A branch from the dripping fir tree outside suddenly whipped against the blackened pane, beading it with raindrops. Julia looked up.
‘We must have that branch cut down,’ she remarked, ‘or one day it will break the window. Besides, it makes me think of ghosts.’
‘Don’t let’s talk of ghosts,’ said Emily, ‘or I’ll dream of them to-night. I wouldn’t be afraid of a ghost of long ago, but I tell you what I would be frightened of and that is a ghost of the future.’
‘Strange to think of us ever being thought of as living long ago,’ mused Julia.
‘Yes, that indeed will be strange; I’m glad I won’t be living then,’ Emmy said finally. She was running about the room in her stocking-soles, postponing as long as possible the moment when she would have to put her shrinking toes into her slippers. ‘You know, if papa were wealthy, and I became engaged, I don’t think I would like him to give me a ball. It’s so like shouting your triumph to the world. Of course, I’m very glad Christine is giving hers. Do you think any one has been so excited as we? I felt almost ill when I thought something might happen to prevent my going. Do you know whom I think saw to it we were asked?’
‘Nicholas or Martin?’
‘No, that nice father.’
‘Yes—perhaps it was. What do you think Christine will be wearing?’
‘Something that will take all the shine out of me. And I know it was the father who thought of sending the carriage for us. It would never pass through Christine’s head we hadn’t a carriage. She would think you are born to have one as you are born to have arms and hair. I hope my hair won’t blow about before I reach the road. Do you think I’m ever going to be ready in time? Where’s my comb? I’ve lost my comb. Has any one seen my comb?’
‘There it is, goosey,’ said Julia, working her white gloves on to her fingers.
‘Where?’
‘Lying in front of you.’
Emmy put out both hands to find it.
‘Emmy!’ Julia said sharply, ‘whatever is the matter with you? It’s your eyes. Let me see your eyes. Why, you could swim in them. What have you been doing?’
‘S-sh,’ pleaded Emmy, ‘don’t tell any one, Julia, promise not to tell. I put in very little of the belladonna for papa’s poultices—only a very little. I know it was wicked and I’ve been punished for it, for now I won’t be able to tell one of my beaux from another.’
She could only see an indistinguishable image of herself in the mirror—as though she were looking at her reflection in rippled water, she confided to Julia, who scolded her all the time she helped her to finish dressing.
At last she was ready, with all her tapes and ribbons tied, her soft brown hair bunched into bright little curls on either side of her gay face.
‘The man has come to say the carriage is here, Blessings,’ mamma called up the stairs. She called each of us indiscriminately ‘Blessing,’ although, I am sure, none of us was praiseworthy enough to warrant it.
Nannie brought up my hot milk after they were gone and, while I drank it, she remained to tidy the room. Emmy’s old brown dress looked shabby and lonely with its arms hanging limply over a chair, almost as though it had felt flouted by that glowing figure who had forgotten all about it as she ran from the room. Nannie gave it a shake and hung it up in the wardrobe. The excitement had upset her and she was uncommunicative, only answering my questions in monosyllables. So I looked at the milky castle peaks and milky brides at the bottom of the drained tumbler and at the skin, lined like a bat’s wing, which clung to the side of the glass, until she was ready to go. She blew out the candle; the shadows quivered, then shrank and were obliterated by dark.
I lay listening to the scraping winds and piping creatures of the night. The fir tree touched the window again, only brushing it this time, making a sound like small tapping fingers. I fell asleep hoping Julia would forget to have the branch cut down.
I was awakened by their steps creaking on the loose board on the stairs. They had been away only several hours yet I seemed to have been sleeping for an eternity. I was too tired to sit up in bed to ask how they had fared and lay drifting on the tide between wakefulness and timeless sleep. One minute their whispering voices sounded jarringly loud, the next remote as in dream.
‘Julia, you must have noticed. He paid more attention to you than to any one. He is so charming and distinguished—much better looking than either of his sons. Do you think he will be so very old?’
‘He’ll be forty and a bittock, as Nannie would say—yes, he must be nearing fifty. He said you were so pretty, Emmy, he wanted to pick you and wear you in his buttonhole!’
‘He must be growing serious or he would never trouble to pay your sister compliments. Julia!’
‘Yes?’
‘What is the man like who is engaged to Christine? Every one’s face was a blurred lamp to me.’
‘He is good-looking in a young, fresh-coloured way— very fair and carries his head thrown back as though he were always breasting a hill.’
‘He could not possibly know, could he, that I had done something to my eyes?’
‘It’s most unlikely. Why?’
‘I felt he was staring so, even when I was not looking, but perhaps it was only my imagination. Anyway it doesn’t matter.’
There was silence for a space and I was about to slip into oblivion when Julia’s shocked voice recalled me.
‘Emmy! you can’t leave your
