Chapter Two The Next Week...most important tasks: Dancing Practice. This embarrassment must not happen again. And, Accountancy
Dear diary,
Accept my most heartfelt apologies for my earlier exceedingly brief entry. I know that I must confide in you, for it seems to be the done thing in a certain kind of human society the certain kind that I wish to belong to, alas. And yet I know I should not, for even you, an unfeeling (please, take this not in the wrong fashion) book, will probably be scandalised with what I am about to say: this afternoon, I sat down for several hours, although the suffering felt rather like eternity, and-
I say. I believe I fainted with shame. I... did some accountancy. It was, perhaps, for I remember when I was a small girlpigeon, I once stared at a wall for three days, mother used to tell me, it was perhaps the most tedious thing I have ever had the misfortune to experience.
Luckily, I was barely competent and found it entirely impossible to differentiate outcomings from ingoings, for should I have been an expert in this hideous task I wager I would be dead from the embarrassment.
Talking of which, dear diary, I had enough embarrassment for one week already, with the horrible Mr Arcy scorning my delightful but perhaps too... original dancing style at the ball. His horridness is more than enough to wipe away any regret that one might feel at his being dead, the little swab. Anyway, talking of which, I spent an entire morning this week dancing, or, to be more precise, practising my dancing.
Unfortunately I doubt I improved at all, and at one point I damaged an eyelash, and silently muttered the word 'bother', which rather flustered me.(Take 2 activities)
My most cherished confidant, today, I Went Outside. I know, I know 'twas a risky business and a near run thing: I feared at one point that the wind would carry me off, or that a passing swallow might drop a nut of some kind upon my fragile head, possibly bruising one of the tendons in my delicate skull, but it was a refreshing experience, which brought gladness to my soul, a rather biting cold, for June, to my cheek, and forsooth, I hope I am correct in my interpretation of these strange creatures' even stranger facial expressions a smile to the face of Reverend Halfton, whom I perchanced across on a windswept hillside, chasing a sheep, or a goat, I know not, being unfamiliar with farm animals other than turkeys.
He saw me and, I fancy, he saw in me some of his own romantic delight in the natural world, and some of the bravery to confront the considerable dangers of this magnificent country, and it was this sensing of some slight commonality of deep emotion which drew the smile across his face. At least, if I have learnt anything in the last long week about humans, and their males, this is what I imagine may have happened. 'Tis a shame I came not upon Mr Arbury... I should think he is rather appreciative of the splendours of nature... At times I rather think he is one himself, but then I reprimand myself for such flights of fancy.
Anyway.
I got home and was so moved by these exertions and, indeed, exerted that I went straight to bed, and could only eat pale cabbage soup for the next three days. But! The next day I arose, and, an image of the beauty of nature still warm (or rather cold, like my cheeks had been) (or perhaps warm, like my heart became) in my tiny pigeonbrain, I sprang with a lively step to the studio, whereupon I painted with feverish determination.
Aha! Diary, I jest. Am I not a famous wit? I painted with, however, some application, at least, and enough skill for the passing observer to make out that I was, indeed, painting a series of limbs, human limbs, stacked in what I hoped would, for a human, be an attractive pattern on the hillside upon which I met Reverend Halfton earlier in the week. Afterwards, when I was done, I stepped back to admire my work, and one of the servant girls walked in and spied it. She screamed, and dropped a pot of tea upon the floor, which I suspect is a rather overemotional way a human way, though not terribly English of expressing approval.Reverend Halfton likes you slightly more!Sensitivity increased!When not practicing her dancingor thinking of bonnets, Charlotte, buoyed by the closeness she came to performing at the last ball, spends part of her week practising the pianoforte.
Meanwhile, amidst all this feverish scribbling and scratching, some ladypigeons notably some of those in the Fantail mansion were too busy thinking of bonnets to waste time jotting down their vacuous meandering thoughts.
Just one such ladypigeon was Miss Charlotte Fantail, who nevertheless broke off her hat-related daydreaming to practice her dancing. It was something which seemed rather sensible to her: indeed, it seemed so sensible she was almost loathe to do it, yet she recognised the need to dance with a certain degree of skill in order to snare a husband willing to purchase bonnets on her behalf; this would one day be necessary, she felt, as mother and father would not always be there to buy her bonnets, and her only attempt at knitting her own bonnet thus far in her admittedly not exceptionally long life had ended in terrible tragedy, and was not an experience she was willing to repeat.
So she danced, and she applied herself, and she became, she felt, a little more competent in the moving of her feet, and the rhythmic twitching of her wings in a way that might, were she fortunate, prove somehow attractive to a human.
The next day she turned her attention to the pianoforte. She loved the instrument greatly, and it was one of the great joys of her life that her parents were able to boast a rather splendid one as the centrepiece of their music room.
She sat down in front of the rows of keys, and flexed her nimble fore-feathers. She delighted in the warmth of the June sun flooding through the tall windows, licked the tip of a feather, and turned the page of her music to the beginning.
She played; she played for what seemed a rather long time, and as she played she lost herself in the gentle tinkling, in the ascending melodies and the beautiful harmonies that her left wing brought to meet them; she lost herself in a delightful waltz of considerable light-heartedness, but also of considerable prettiness not of depth, but of joy, which was what she felt as she played on in the sunlight, and then she leapt up with a start, fluttering her wings subconsciously and reminding herself that she was pigeon, and not air, light, and music: was that not Mr Arbury, with his face pressed up against her mother's window pane?
By Jove it was all dressed up in his fox hunting costume, and gazing in with rapt admiration. It made rather unsightly bulges in rather unsightly places, but Charlotte found that the costume suited him particularly well rendering him, if she were so bold to think so, almost handsome, in spite of the horridness that such a costume implied was not far away in either the past or the future.
She praised the Lord she was not born a fox, and wondered whether Mr Arbury was gazing admiringly at the pianoforte because she was playing it, or because he intended to break into the house one night and steal it.
She suspected it was the former.
Dancing increased!Pianoforte increased!Mr Arbury likes you more!Determined to minimize the chance of a future faux pas on the ballroom floor, Lady Montagu practices her dancing technique over the course of the next week. She also accepts a visitor, both for the pleasure of their company and also to further explore the fallout of the recent ball.
Dear diary,
This week I had to beat a peasant. Again. It was for the best, of course, as the fool dropped a small piece of salmon on me, and had I done anything else I should have been humiliated in front of the finest members of Derbyshire society. But is becoming a rather habitual occurrence, so much so that I wonder if the poorfolk around here have heard about it, and are in fact attacking me deliberately with the various canapιs and such like with which I have had accidents recently. Who knows. It was, I must admit, partly my fault I danced so wretchedly that the salmon practically leapt upon me: I have heard that this is something that they are wont to do, in the wild, and perhaps for them a rural ballroom in the middle of England counts as the wild, in the same way that a desolate moor would for one as delicate as me. I digress: it was partly my fault, were one to pick nits, and so I took it upon myself to improve my dancing, and thereby avoid further fish-based peasant-assault in future balls.
I feel that it may have done me good, but it is- oh gosh, a carriage doth approach! I shall return forthwith, once I have gazed longingly out of the window.
Hmm. 'Tis the Reverend. The only one to have been overtly offended by my recent inability to faint. Perhaps I should have taken fainting lessons, rather than dancing. Well, needs must when the er... blast. Ooh, I say. Um, I suppose I had better entertain the man.
One-on-one entertainment mode entered!In this mode awkward conversation between human and pigeon shall bluster forth until such time as it is determined that no more shall be had.
First step: decide upon a way of welcoming and entertaining yon guest!
Dancing increased!Once Lady Montagu is finished, the next ball shall commence. It will be Lady Rosanne Meyerschmidt-Cripeton's ball.
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Topic: Pigeons & Prejudice: Definitely deceased. (Read 23198 times)