Blanche: A Story for Girls

“I wish I had been,” she said. “We must have had the same feeling. I have wanted to meet your sister. I love her face, though I have only seen her twice. Perhaps, some day – ” Then she hesitated. “I was rather hurried,” she went on; “I promised to meet – a friend, who will walk back to Crossburn with me.”

“Then you are not staying here, at Alderwood?” said Stasy.

“Oh no; I am not staying anywhere, except at what is my home – East Moddersham, near you. I came over here this afternoon to see Lady Harriot, or, rather, to see a dear old lady who is staying here. I sent my ponies on to Crossburn, as I am dining there, and shall dress there, and drive home late.”

“How nice!” said Stasy. “How delightful to have your own ponies and do exactly as you like! I do think English girls have such nice lives – so much fun and independence. I should have liked England ever so much better than France if I had been brought up in it, but as it is – ” And Stasy sighed.

Lady Hebe listened with great interest. “And as it is,” she repeated, “do you not like it?”

“It is so very dull,” said Stasy lugubriously. “At least, I shouldn’t find it dull if I might amuse myself in ways mamma and Blanche would not like.”

Hebe looked rather startled, but Stasy was too engrossed with her own woes to notice it. “I mean,” she continued, “that there are some girls at the school I go to for classes, who are really nice, and there are lots who are very amusing. But mamma and Blanchie don’t want me to make friends with them, because, you see – well, they are not exactly refined.”

“I see,” said Hebe gravely; “and, of course, I think your mother and sister are quite right. But I can quite understand that it must be dull – for your sister too, is it not? She is not much older than you.”

“No,” said Stasy, “but she is different She has always been so very, very good, you see. She has never been – well, rather mischievous, and wanting a lot of fun, you know.”

“But she doesn’t look dull,” said Hebe. “She has a very bright expression sometimes in her eyes. I am sure she has some fun in her too. I don’t think I could have been so attracted by her if she had not had fun in her; I am so fond of it myself,” she added naïvely.

“Oh yes,” said Stasy, “Blanchie is very quick, and very ready for fun too. But she never grumbles. If things we want don’t come, she is just content without I’m not like that. Next to fun, I like grumbling. I couldn’t live without it.”

Hebe smiled, but in her heart she was thinking that there were some grounds for complaint in the present life of these pretty and attractive girls. They attracted her curiously; they were so unlike others – so refined, and yet original; so perfectly well-bred, and yet so unconventional.

“I wish,” she began, but then she stopped. What she was going to wish was nothing very definite, and yet it was better, perhaps, left unexpressed.

“When I am married,” she thought, “I shall have more in my power in many ways. Norman will understand; he always does. I fear there would be no use in trying to get Lady Marth to be kind to them. She would only think it one of my ‘fads.’”

But suddenly Stasy started.

“I am afraid,” she said, “that I am going too far, and mamma and Blanche may be looking for me. Perhaps I had better go back now.”

“I don’t think they are likely to have come out yet,” said Hebe. “But I don’t want to make you uneasy, so perhaps you had better go back. Good-bye, and – I hope we may meet again soon.”

She held out her hand, and Stasy, looking at her as she took it, felt the indescribable charm of the sweet, sunshiny face.

“Yes,” she thought, “Blanche was right, and Herty was right. She is lovely.”

“I do hope so,” she replied eagerly, as they separated. Lady Hebe walked on, thinking. For she thought a good deal.

“Poor little thing,” she said to herself, “it must be very dull. Yet they have each other, and their mother: the only things that have ever been wanting to me, they have! But still, the strangeness and the loneliness, and the not having any clear place of their own. I wonder they cared to settle in England; I wonder if there is nothing I can do for them.”

She had reached the lodge gates by this time. A little further down the road – scarcely more than a lane – was a stile, on the other side of which lay the field path, which was the short cut to Crossburn.

And leaning by the stile was a figure, which, at the first glimpse of Hebe emerging from the Alderwood grounds, started forward, hastening across with eager gladness; young, manly, full of life and brightness, he seemed almost a second Hebe, in masculine form.

“Norman,” she exclaimed, “I haven’t kept you long waiting, have I?”

“I enjoyed it, dear: not very long. I liked to watch for the first gleam of you,” he said simply.

And together, in the long rays of the soft evening sunshine, the two young creatures made their way across the fields.

“What have I done,” said Hebe Shetland to herself – “what have I done to be so very, very happy?”

Chapter Ten

At the Vicarage

The second event which about this time made a little break in the monotony of the lives at Pinnerton Lodge came out of the first; for it was the result of much consideration on Lady Hebe’s part as to what she could do to enliven things for these two girls, who seemed in a sense to have been thrown across her path.

She knew that it was useless to appeal to Lady Marth, her guardian’s wife – a woman who had deliberately narrowed her life and her sympathies by restricting all her interests to a small and very exclusive clique, which was the more to be regretted as she was naturally intelligent and quick of discernment, without the excuse of poor Lady Harriot Dunstan’s intense native stupidity. But Hebe managed to have a good talk with Mrs Selwyn – “Aunt Grace” – the very morning after the Derwents’ visit to Alderwood, and Aunt Grace’s own interest in the new-comers being keen, she was delighted to find Hebe’s enlisted on their behalf.

“I am very sorry I am leaving so immediately,” said Mrs Selwyn. “I might have been of a little use to them, even though very little. You see, no one is altogether to blame in a case like this. Life is short, and there are only so many hours in each day, and no one can be in two places at once, or full of conflicting interests at the same time. People who are half their lives in London, in the thick of the things of the day, all have too much upon them; it is difficult to get to know much of those who are quite out of it. And the Derwents are only half English, too.”

“Then do you think it a mistake for them to have come to live here?” said Hebe.

“I scarcely know; I can’t judge. They have put themselves in a difficult position, but there may have been excellent reasons for their leaving France. If they are very high-minded, superior women, they may be happy, and make interests for themselves, and not fret about things they cannot have. Certainly they – the mother, I should say – is far too refined to struggle or strain after society.”

“And the elder one is, I do believe, an extraordinarily high-minded girl,” said Hebe, with a sort of enthusiasm. “Still, it isn’t fair upon her to be shut out from things; and the little one, though she is as tall as I” – with a smile – “says frankly that she finds it woefully dull.”

“And she is only sixteen,” said Mrs Selwyn; “not out, and with French ideas about young girls. Dear me, it must be very dull indeed for a girl brought up on those lines to think it so.”

“She is not the very least French in herself,” said Hebe. “Just a touch of something out of the common in her tone and manners, perhaps. But I never met a more thoroughly English girl in feeling. Yes, indeed. What will she think when she is grown up?”

“Let us hope that things may improve for them a little, before then,” said Mrs Selwyn.

Then the two – the old woman and the young – put their heads together as to what they could do; the result being that, three or four days after the drive to Alderwood, a note was brought to Blanche one morning, inviting her and her sister to afternoon tea at the vicarage.

“I expect one or two young friends living in the neighbourhood,” wrote Mrs Harrowby, the vicaress, “whom you may like to meet, and who, on their side, have some hopes of getting you to help in their little local charities.”

“Humph,” said Stasy, when Blanche read this aloud; “I’ve no vocation for that sort of thing. I think you had better go without me.”

“No, I certainly won’t,” said her sister, without much misgiving. For she saw that, notwithstanding Stasy’s ungraciousness, she was secretly pleased at even this mild prospect of a little variety.

Mrs Harrowby’s attentions hitherto – though her good offices had been bespoken for the Derwents by her brother at Blissmore – had been less friendly, and more, so to say, professional. She was a very busy woman, almost too scrupulous in her determination to be “the same to everybody,” to show no difference between her bearing towards the retired tradespeople of Pinnerton Green, and towards Lady Marth, or other county dignitaries; the result being, that no attention she ever paid to any one was considered much of a compliment. But she was well-born and well-bred, though not specially endowed with tact.

And she was honestly pleased when Lady Hebe appealed to her to suggest something that might help to enliven the sisters at Pinnerton Lodge.

“Yes,” she agreed, “I have thought it must be very dull for them. And yet I could not exactly take it upon me to suggest their making friends with their neighbours here. Something in their manner has caused a slight prejudice against them. None of the families here have called.”

“What neighbours or families are you talking of, Mrs Harrowby?” said Hebe quickly. She knew the vicar’s wife very well – knew, too, her peculiar way of looking at social things, and was not in the very least in awe of her. “Lady Harriot has called, though – ”

“Of course, I was not speaking of neighbours of that kind,” replied Mrs Harrowby, interrupting her. “I meant the Wandles at Pinnerton Villa, and the Bracys: I am sure Adela Bracy is as nice a girl as one could wish to see, and Florence Wandle is good-nature itself. It is much wiser, as well as more Christian, to throw aside those ridiculous ideas of class prejudice, and make the best of the people you live among.”

“Then why should not all the county people call upon the Derwents, as well as the Wandles and Bracys?” said Hebe, with a very innocent air.

Mrs Harrowby coloured a little.

“I don’t know. I don’t see why you should blame them if they don’t, as you evidently don’t blame the Derwents for standing off from the Green people. But, the fact of the matter is, they would have nothing in common with the Derwents. You know yourself, Hebe, Lady Marth couldn’t find anything to talk to Mrs Derwent about – now, could she?”