Chapter Three – The Second Ball.”Oh, I say, am I a little early?”The words clattered like lead bricks thudding on the dried mud of misery, apprehension wafting silently across the waiting ladies and ladypigeons in a pestilential wind of rotten despair. It might be
minutes before another gentleman arrived at the ball; some of the ladypigeons had witnessed the effects of concentrated Reverend Halfton at close hand: Lady Katherine, in particular, had only been able to cease the continuous application of peasant-borne smelling salts that very morning.
Some of them, however, had not.
greet the Reverend.
"Oh! Reverend! You are here! Do you like my bonnet? Mother bought it for me and I think it looks splendid and there was another one, it was purple velvet with lace trimmings that I almost got instead but then that wouldn't have matched quite so well with my plumage and so it had to be this one and oh!— what a wonderful house Crikington is! And isn't Lady Roseanne wearing such a lovely gown and doesn't everything look simply delightful..."”I… the… indeed… Bonnets…”…Miss Charlotte was relentless in her blithering; and Reverend Halfton unwavering in his devotion to politeness. He listened on, and ventured forth into the dark heart of witless wittering.
"I do particularly like the..."”Yes, yes, fascinating…”"Rather delightful gold detailing on these wonderful chair arms..."”Magnificent, I say…”"And of course, mother always says that one should be polite, yet suspicious..."”Gosh, really…”"So I beat him thoroughly and yet more thoroughly, for one does rather dislike a scoundrel..."”Yes, I can imagine…”"But luckily I managed to find the right shade of violet for the ribbon."”Oh, my dear Miss Charlotte! I am terribly relieved to hear it! What a wonderful conversationalist you are. Do you also, by any chance, happen to be a wonderful theorist of accountancy or – better yet – an accomplished practiser of the wondrous art begotten to us by the Lord Himself?”Reverend Halfton likes you slightly more!
Reverend Halfton likes pigeons slightly more!greet and chat with Ms. Arcy given that there was no Ms. Arbury to be seen. Get to know why her somberness is as such.
"Good Evening Ma'am! I..can't help but notice if-"Miss Thain wasn't quite sure how to put it. She was sure that there was some human convention of which she must have failed to entirely grasp the meaning.
"-that... that your attire is..."Miss Arcy... Miss Arcy... What could have led her to dress almost entirely in black for what should be such a happy occasion?
"different from the rest. I don't want to dig deeper into this if its personal, but I can't stand unappeased curiosity."She had a sudden blast of inspiration.
...”Oh, oh! Miss Thain! It is so wonderfully compassionate of you to ask! Oh, these other, human types, they are restrained by the bounds of common decency, which you pigeon types so often yet so innocently lack, that barely a soul has offered me any consolation beyond the admittedly generous twitch of a left eyebrow... Oh woe! I miss my brother terribly so, and he only had his horrid accident cleaning his duelling pistols this last week... He accidentally blew his head clean right off, you see, Miss Thain – oh, please let me call you Miss Charlotte, if I may be so presumptuous – he accidentally blew his head clean right off, although we haven't yet found his poor blood-soaked corpse to bury, oh...”At this Miss Arcy covered her face in several fancy handkerchiefs, and sobbed profusely, and Miss Thain realised that her sudden blast of inspiration had been wrong, and the poor lady was not dressed in black so as to not overly dirty herself whilst chasing peasants down chimney stacks. She feared that she had been exceedingly close to an absolutely awful social faux pas, but for once her being a ladypigeon had played in her favour.
Miss Arcy likes you more!
Miss Arcy likes pigeons slightly less!Lady Montagu makes conversation with Miss Villar, searching for common interests beyond peasant-brutalizing (as such a hobby is, of course, ubiquitous in high society, and thus shared by any and all potential mates in both the platonic and romantic senses.))
Was that apprehension Lady Katherine Montagu felt well up from deep within herself? Or, indeed, was Lady Meyerschmidt-Cripeton for some reason beyond logical explanation planning to serve cabbage-based canapés? There were no canapés in sight, so Lady Montagu concluded that, in fact, it was clearly the taste of apprehension, turgid apprehension, that she could feel slithering up the back of her throat.
She fled gracefully to Miss Villar, the enthusiastic peasant-beater – or rather, since of course all right-thinking members of the British, and especially English, aristocracy were either an enthusiastic peasant-beater or a cad, the
generous peasant-beater – who she knew would offer such shining relief from the dark depths of Reverend Halfton's heinous soporificism that several minutes of conversation with her would probably leave the young ladypigeon blinded, in the conversational sense.
Lady Katherine thought this as she waddled delightfully over to Miss Villar, and wondered whether her thoughts were entirely... followable. She certainly seemed to lose herself in their meandering. She gathered her senses, and struck.
"What a pleasure to see you again!" she cooed happily.
”Oh, why, hello, Lady Katherine. 'Tis indeed delightful – perhaps we may share a canapé this evening, haha – of course, I mean share the act of beating a filthy peasant viciously about the head with one! Ha! Delightful! Yes.”"I say, Miss Villar! You do so brighten a room, with your sparkling wit as much as with your beauteous lustre. This, however, is not perhaps quite so luxurious a room as your own," she said, sniffing dismissively at her surroundings and resisting the urge to loose a discrete dropping,
"but even a den of mongrel dogs is ennobled when visited by a beautiful thoroughbred. Tell me, how do you feel about... swings?"...”Swings, my dear? Why, swings are... perfectly suited for the act of swinging, I suppose. No, sir, I am much keener on admiring male beauty in all its form – especially in its uniformed forms, or, indeed, its ununiformed forms, ahahah...”Miss Villar likes you slightly more!Double-triple-check the preparations. Do we have snacks? Are there drinks? Is the ballroom squeaky clean? Are the guests really coming? aaAAAAAaaaAAaa
Lady Meyerschmidt-Cripeton was careful. She was not a novice in the art of entertaining, or in the art of being in proximity to very very tedious Reverends. She performed the minimum act of politeness necessary, and riskable, and then stood before the frightful vicar, unable to move.
"Welcome to my humble abode! Make yourself at home, Reverend."Minutes passed.
"Er."More minutes passed, so awkwardly that Lady Meyerschmidt-Cripeton felt herself develop acute neck pain.
"The..."Another second passed, and then a second, and then a third, and Lady Meyerschmidt-Cripeton felt words rise from her bosom, and work their way up to her mouth. They were about to escape, she was about to scream out at the Reverend, about to renounce her faith and admit,
I am a heathen! I am an accursed heathen, and I don't even like tea!She was so close to this outburst, and so close to eternal social ostracism, as to be able to pass through the eye of a needle, yet then there was salvation! Miss Catherine Fantail rushed in, like a tsunami of idiocy, and washed away the stain of Reverend Halfton's presence. Lady Meyerschmidt-Cripeton fainted with joy.
A few seconds, or even minutes, of joyous silence passed, and she got up, moderately embarrassed but secretly pleased with herself, as a fainting lady should be. She realised her duties and rushed to the scullery, there to check that she had in fact ordered a peasant to prepare a very great deal of snacks and drinks and the crowd-pleasing favourite, the sharpened salmon canapé.
There was a very great deal, and Lady Meyerschmidt-Cripeton started counting, partly to reassure herself, and partly to keep herself away from the duties of a good host, which is to say entertaining the Reverend.
"One glass of exceedingly expensive champagne... two glasses of exceedingly expensive champagne... three glasses of exceedingly expensive champagne... Oh blast. I do believe I was only meant to count full glasses, and I appear to have counted the empty ones. I say, weren't they full, not so very long ago? Oh, is that the front gate? Good lord, what a relief...”...Lady Meyerschmidt-Cripeton is exceedingly slightly inebriated! -1 to Sense rolls for one turn!Away from the scullery, where the remaining ladypigeons did their best to keep Miss Villar and Miss Arcy both entertained and comforted, as well as Reverend Halfton either delighted or at arm's length, there was at last a return to the tremendous excitement that had preceded his unexpected entry.
The other guests had arrived!
Mr Garret Pinkerton-Smyth was there, daydreaming rather obviously about flutes; Mr Arthur Arbury strode purposefully up Lady Meyerschmidt-Cripeton's long and luxurious driveway. And, as their lovely and dainty host rushed in from counting the drinks, she beheld him – he was so more than averagely handsome! He was rumoured to be so ridiculously rich! His pot-bellied build and long face were so typically English, rugged, smouldering: and good Lord! He was attending the ball in his uniform.
Side by side with Mr Arthur Arbury strode his elder brother, Captain Richard Arbury.
Captain. The first and third most romantic of all military ranks.
Many apologies for the update schedule, which is even feebler than it was.
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Topic: Pigeons & Prejudice: Definitely deceased. (Read 22919 times)