Description

This is it.
The massive, oaken double doors are the only things that stand between you and what will be heralded as the most spectacular ball of the season, hosted by the Queen of England herself.
You take a deep breath and, despite the nervous butterflies in your stomach, place your hands on the doors and heave them open.
Your senses begin to tingle at the dizzying spectacle before you. Everything on the other side of the doors is completely forgotten as you are swept into the hectic grandeur of the ballroom. Brightly colored satin skirts whirl across the dance floor, led by gentlemen in impressively large powdered wigs. The tinkling of crystal stemware, bursts of laughter, and the cadenced stomping of feet on the dance floor buzzes in your ears till you hardly know on what to focus. The romping rhythm of the fiddles pulses through you, igniting a rush of adrenaline until you can hardly force your limbs to be still. To the right of you, you observe a beautiful lady, in yellow silk with pink rosettes, offer her delicately gloved hand to a gentleman to be kissed. The gentleman, handsome and distinguished in his silken cravat and mulberry frockcoat, murmurs something as he takes the lady’s hand, inducing a feminine burst coquettish laughter.
Tiring of this scene, you turn to survey the supper. Tables nearly the length of the room bow under the weight of ornate silver platters and roasted fowl. Firelight from the massive hearth on the east end of the room flashes off of the silverware, as guests cut greedily into the bounty. Maidservants in subdued frocks and blindingly white aprons and caps scurry back and forth; making sure no one’s wineglass is ever empty. You notice that they seem to be hovering over one particular guest, and you wish they would move so that you could get a glimpse of this individual, whoever she might be. Expecting a princess or a noblewoman in lustrous satin and over-applied rouge, the creature that invades your vision induces nothing other than shock.
She is slightly humpbacked, undoubtedly dirty, and is shrouded in a dingy, shapeless mud-colored tunic that resembles a gunnysack. It is impossible to tell her age; her vivid blue eyes are strangely full of life and seem to belie the wrinkles spider webbing across her shrunken face. As for her hair, matted and limp with grease, it could be brown, gray, or any other color in between. As she opens her mouth to shovel in a spoonful of mint pudding, you realize she has no teeth.
Lowering your gaze under the table, you confirm that her feet are not only bare, deformed and caked with grime; they are dangling some six inches above the floor.
All the well-to-do folk sitting around her converse with her just as they do with everyone else at the party. A middle-aged duchess in red silk addresses the grubby beggar. The old woman replies with animated expression, blue eyes twinkling, waving her gnarled hands about excitedly. On each of her knobby, arthritis twisted fingers flashes a huge ring, bedecked with jewels of each color of the rainbow. Her coarse, gravelly, over-loud voice rips through the pleasant hum of genteel conversation.
You watch as the gentleman in the mulberry frock-coat approaches the beggar, lowering himself onto one knee and offering a spotlessly-gloved hand. The thick calluses on the woman’s paw catch on the fine cotton material as she accepts the gentleman’s invitation to dance. The pair spins out onto the dance floor, and the grubby brown sack-cloth is soon engulfed by whirling silks and flashing lights.

[Copyright Elisabeth Dawdy, 2009]