“It’s a miracle,” said Gwennan. She pointed at the reflection. “It’s not like you at all. You’ve turned into someone else.” She laughed. “Well, I’ll tell you something, Harriet Delvaney. You’ve got yourself a dress for the ball.”
She came and stood beside me, wrapping the blue velvet about her, and I was glad she was with me. If she had not been, I should have felt something very strange was happening to me. But then, of course, I was the fanciful one.
She took my hand. “Come, be my partner in the dance, dear Madam.”
She skipped round the room, her hand in mine. I went with her, and we had been round the room before I realized that I was dancing … I … who had told myself I would never dance.
She too had noticed it. “You’re a fraud, Harriet Delvaney,” she shouted, and her voice echoed oddly in this strange place. “I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with that foot of yours, after all.”
I stopped and looked down at it; then I caught the reflection of the girl in the mirror. It was an extraordinary moment, like that in the garden when I was a child and had suddenly got up and walked.
I was exhilarated, I couldn’t understand why; I felt it had something to do with the dress I was wearing.
“Well, that settles it,” said Gwennan. “We’re going to the ball. And now get that off and we’ll take these things and we’ll see what we can do with them.”
We went back to Gwennan’s room together; I felt then as though I had begun to live in a dream.
My father came down to Chough Towers the day before the ball, and gloom descended on the house. Meals were always an ordeal when he was there. Fortunately for me—but not for him—William Lister joined us, and we would sit at the long table in the dining room—which overlooked one of the lawns—for what seemed like interminable periods of time. My father led the conversation, which was usually about politics, and William made discreet replies; if I spoke, my father would listen with obvious patience and usually ignore what I had said; if William tried to reply to me, my father often changed the subject. So I decided that it was better to say nothing and hope that the meal would soon be over. A’Lee would be at the sideboard directing the parlormaids—there were two of them; and it always seemed incongruous that we three should need so many people to wait on us—particularly as I knew how much bustle would be going on in the kitchen. I would rise when they reached the port stage and leave them to talk. How glad I was when it was time for that!
Once my father said to me: “Have you no conversation?” and I merely flushed and said nothing, when I wanted to shout: When I do speak you ignore me.
At least my mind was so occupied with thoughts of the dress which now hung in my wardrobe side by side with the one Gwennan would wear, and wondering if Bevil would see me in it and be charmed with what he saw, that I ceased to think very much about my father. Gwennan had said we must tell no one about our discovery because there might be attempts to stop us using the dresses. However, I could not keep Fanny out of the secret, and she had helped to make up the blue for Gwennan and altered the topaz velvet for me. She saw no harm in it, she said; and afterwards we could put them back where we found them. She hung them out on the balcony to air them, she said, and get rid of the musty smell. So, after we had smuggled them over to Chough Towers, there had been long sessions in my bedroom, which Fanny had seemed to enjoy as much as we did.
On the night of the ball, Fanny brushed my untidy hair until it lay flat about my shoulders; then she helped me into the dress and sat me down before the mirror so that I could watch while she finished my hair and put on the jeweled snood. My face looked back at me—my green eyes greener because they were so brilliant, a faint color beneath my skin; I could almost believe I was attractive in that dress.
“Well, there you are, my lady,” said Fanny, “all ready to go to the ball.”
The house seemed to have come alive. Everywhere were the sounds of voices; the musicians had arrived, and those guests who were staying in the house were already with my father in the ballroom. Aunt Clarissa was not here on this occasion—it was too far from London—and my father was going to receive the guests alone.
I sat on the window seat in my bedroom with Fanny while we watched the carriages arrive.
It was a fascinating sight to see the guests, in their costumes and masks, alight and step across the path to the porch. The Leverets’ arrival caused some excitement because they had come in their horseless carriage. They were the only family in the neighborhood who possessed one, and when they drove out in it people would run out of their cottages to see it go by; and when it broke down and horses had to pull it along, there was a lot of talk about the folly of modern inventions. But during the last year in London the contraption had been treated with more respect since the law enforcing a man to walk before it with a red flag had been abolished and the speed limit raised to fourteen miles an hour. Here in remote Cornwall, however, the horseless carriage was still regarded with contemptuous suspicion, and I had to agree that to see the Leverets in fancy dress riding in the thing was incongruous.
I laughed, and Fanny said: “Well, if this ain’t a regular circus!”
“I was thinking it was like being in the past … until that came.”
“You’re getting too excited, Miss.”
“Am I?”
“Why, yes. I've never seen you like this before. Don’t forget you’re only going to look on from the gallery.”
“I wish Gwennan were here.”
“Miss Mischief will be here soon, don’t you fret.”
She was right. The carriage from Menfreya arrived soon after she had spoken. The first to alight was the eighteenth-century gentleman, who was Bevil; he helped his mother and Gwennan out, and then came Sir Endelion. I did not notice what Sir Endelion and Lady Menfrey were wearing, for I had eyes only for Bevil.
Gwennan, in her everyday cloak over a simple party dress, looked quite insignificant among those brilliant costumes, and I could imagine how impatient she was to get into her blue-velvet gown.
One of the servants brought Gwennan to my room. I hid myself so that I should not be seen in my topaz, and Fanny spoke to the servant while Gwennan came into the room. When the servants had gone, Fanny said, “You can come out now, Miss.” Then she helped Gwennan into her gown and left us together.
“Yours is not brown,” said Gwennan. “It’s a sort of gold.” She smoothed down the folds of her blue velvet complacently. Then she frowned. “Yours is more unusual,” she went on. “Really, Harriet, I’ve never seen you look like that I know what it is. You’re not thinking people are hating you, that’s what. But why are we waiting? I want to go to the ball, if you don’t.”
I had been told where I was to take her. It was to the gallery—the imitation minstrels' gallery—which looked down on the ballroom. We had decided that we would wait there until the ballroom was crowded before we slipped on our masks and went down, “Then,” Gwennan had said, “we shall not be noticed.”
We reached the gallery. Heavy purple-velvet curtains were fixed across it and drawn back by gold bands to give us a peephole, and two chairs had been set some way back from the rails, so that although we need not be completely invisible, we should certainly not be obtrusive.
Gwennan immediately went to the balustrade and looked down. I stood a little way back; but what a magnificent sight h was! We were almost level with the gas-candled chandeliers, and the scene below was made fantastic by the color of the costumes and the different centuries represented.
We had been watching for five or six minutes when we heard voices at the gallery door, one of which was Fanny’s.