Blanche: A Story for Girls

“Run out and tie him up, then,” said Blanche, and off Stasy set. Flopper was a new acquisition; a very interesting and aggravating retriever puppy, with all the charms and foibles of puppyhood intensely developed in him. Looking after Flopper was very wholesome for Stasy, her sister had discovered.

Blanche turned again to her mother.

“Mamma dear,” she said, “I really think we must not get into the way of seeing the worst side of things. If we are a little lonely, any way we have each other, and such a charming home. Could any one picture to themselves a sweeter room than this library? How our French friends would admire it!”

“Yes,” said Mrs Derwent, “it is a delightful room. Of course, the name is rather inappropriate, we have so few books.”

“We must get some more,” said Blanche; “by degrees, of course.”

“I fear it must be by degrees,” said her mother; “I cannot afford anything for the house at present, it has cost so much more than I expected. And there seems some little difficulty about our income still; the new partners are asking for longer time to pay us out in, and it will make it difficult to get good investments if the capital is realised so irregularly.”

“I don’t understand about it,” said Blanche. “But it doesn’t matter for the present. When Stasy is grown up, it would be nice to take her about a little; perhaps to London now and then, if by that time we have made some friends there. Mamma, couldn’t we invite some of our old friends to come to stay with us a little – Madame de Caillemont, for instance?”

“She is too frail now, I fear, to come so far,” said Mrs Derwent. “And as for any one else – no, I don’t feel as if I should like it. Do not think me small or childish, Blanchie, but – you know French peoples ideas? They are all already expecting, from one day to another, to hear of your making some grand marriage; they thought a good deal of us as well-connected English people, you know. And, I confess, it would mortify me for them, any of them, to see how – how completely ‘out of it all’ we are.”

“Poor little mother!” said Blanche caressingly, “you really mustn’t get gloomy. You don’t think I want to marry and leave you, do you? I can’t imagine such a thing. I cannot in my wildest dreams picture to myself the going away from you and Stasy! Never mind about that; but I do understand that you would feel rather sore at any friends thinking we were more friendless here than in France. There is no need to invite any one at present. I think I had a vague idea that it might cheer you up a little. This house is so pretty; I should enjoy showing it off.”

“I should like you to have the pleasure of doing so,” said Mrs Derwent wistfully. “You are always so sweet, my Blanchie. I can’t help feeling as if nothing and nobody would be good enough for you; the faintest idea of any one in the very least looking down upon you is – ”

“Mother dear, it is not that. These people don’t know us, or anything about us. There is nothing mortifying or worth minding that I can see in people’s ignoring you, when they know nothing about you. And as for rudeness – that always lowers the rude person, not the object of it.”

Mrs Derwent looked up quickly.

“You don’t mean that any one has been actually rude to you, Blanchie? Was there anything this afternoon?”

Blanche hesitated. She was incapable of uttering a word that was not true; yet, again, she was determined to tell her mother nothing of Lady Marth’s impertinence.

“Mamma,” she said, “I am thinking a great deal about Stasy. She was rude, at least it was tacitly rude, this afternoon,” and she related the incident we know of.

“It was unladylike and unkind,” said Mrs Derwent. “Yes, I am anxious about Stasy. This uncertain position that we have got into is bad for her in every way.”

“It may all come right,” said Blanche cheerfully. “But I am glad you think I spoke properly to Stasy. Let us hope it will all come right, mamma, if we do our best to be kind and good.”

Chapter Twelve

A Sprained Ankle

For a time it seemed as if Blanche’s hopeful prognostications were likely to be fulfilled. The meeting with Lady Hebe at the vicarage led to one or two others, for though Blanche was naturally quick and orderly, it took longer than either she or her new friend had expected to initiate her into work of which the whole idea and details were completely new to her. And the more the two girls saw of each other, the stronger grew the mutual attraction of which both had been conscious since that first evening when they came together in the fog at Victoria Station.

But Hebe was powerless to do more. She found it best to avoid all mention even of the Derwents’ name at East Moddersham, so evident was it that Lady Marth had conceived one of her most unreasonable prejudices against the strangers.

“It is a good deal thanks to Archie Dunstan,” thought Hebe. “He made Josephine furious that day. It’s really too bad of him, and if I can, I’ll give him a hint about it. Of course, it doesn’t matter to him whether people are nice to the poor Derwents or not, but he’s quite worldly wise enough to know that with a woman like Josephine, and, indeed, with all these good ladies here about, his advocacy would do them far more harm than good. Why, I’ve known Josephine jealous and angry when he or Norman refused to give up an engagement of long standing, if she chose to want them. She doesn’t think Archie should know any one whom she hasn’t taken up.”

She did speak to Archie, and he listened attentively. But at the close of her oration, when his silence was encouraging her to hope that she had made some impression, he entirely discomposed her by inquiring calmly if there were to be any more guild meetings at the vicarage before she went to town, as if so, he would make a point of looking in as he had done the week before.

“How can you, Archie?” said Hebe. “The very thing I have been trying. No,” she broke off, “there are to be no more meetings, and if there were, I would not let you know.”

“All right,” said Archie; “it doesn’t matter in the least. I’ve little birds in my service who are much more reliable sources of information than your wise ladyship. And one of them has informed me that there is going to be a tea-fight in the garden at Pinnerton Lodge for the damsels who have the honour to belong to the guild. And I mean to be at it.”

“Archie?” exclaimed Hebe, stopping short, and looking at him in a sort of despair. “You go too far sometimes in your love of fun and amusing yourself; you do, really. The Derwents are not people to take freedoms with. Just because Blanche – Miss Derwent, I mean – is so charming and lovely, and unlike the common run of girls, you’re much mistaken if you think that you can treat her with less deference than if she – ”

“If she what?” said Archie.

“Than if she – well – belonged to our set, you know. Was quite in everything.”

“How do you know that I’ve not fallen desperately, in love with her?” he inquired coolly, looking Hebe full in the face.

“For two reasons,” she replied. “You don’t know what really falling in love means; and secondly, if such a thing had happened, you wouldn’t talk about it like that.”

Archie laughed.

“All the same,” he said, “I am going to be at the Pinnerton Lodge tea-fight. See if I’m not.”

Hebe turned away in indignation. She was fond of Archie, and they were very old friends, almost on brother-and-sister-like terms, but he sometimes made her more nearly angry than was at all usual with her.

“How glad I am Norman is not like that!” she said to herself – “turning everything into joke. I wonder if it would be any good to make him speak to Archie, and warn him not to begin any nonsense about Blanche Derwent? No, I am afraid it might lead to disagreeables; Norman would be so vexed with Archie for annoying me.”

It was quite true that there was going to be an entertainment for the members of the guild at Pinnerton Lodge. The idea had been started in one of the talks on the affairs of the little society between Lady Hebe and Blanche, and Mrs Derwent had taken it up with the greatest cordiality. She was glad of anything which promised some variety for her daughters, and delighted to be the means of giving pleasure to others. Nor was she sorry to, as it were, assert her position in even so simple a way as this.

“I shall be so glad to see your Lady Hebe at last,” she said to Blanche.

“I am sure you will like her as much as I do,” said Blanche. “Stasy has promised me,” she went on, “to be very nice indeed to those other girls, to make up for that day at the vicarage.”

A few days later the little entertainment came off. It was almost the eve of the East Moddersham family’s leaving for London. Hebe had been staying at Crossburn for a few days, only returning home the morning of the party, on purpose to be present at it. Rosy Milward accompanied her, in order, as she said, to see how things went off, as she had promised an entertainment of the same kind herself to Hebe’s girls a little later in the season.

Rosy was a little shy of offering herself as a guest to the Derwents, for she had not succeeded in her endeavours to persuade her grandmother to call at Pinnerton Lodge. Old Mrs Milward was becoming increasingly frail, and even a small effort seemed painful to her. Yet, as is often the case with elderly people in such circumstances, she stood increasingly on her dignity, and would not hear of her grand-daughter “calling for her,” as Rosy ventured to suggest.

“We know nothing of these people,” she said, “except that Grace Selwyn knew the mother as a child. But no one else is calling on them, and I really don’t see why we need do so.”

“Lady Harriot has called,” said Rosy.

“I can’t help that, my dear,” was the reply. “Lady Harriot has no young daughters or grand-daughters, so her calling involves nothing.”

“She has a nephew,” Rosy said to herself, for she was far too quick not to have noticed Archie Dunstan’s evident admiration of Miss Derwent. But she had the discretion to keep this reflection to herself.

And, after all, Mrs Milward made no objection to her grand-daughter’s accompanying Lady Hebe to Pinnerton Lodge on the afternoon in question.

“That sort of thing,” she remarked, with some inconsistency, “is quite different. You can go anywhere for a fancy fair or a charity entertainment;” forgetting that her grand-daughter was sure to be specially thrown into the society of the Derwent girls on such an occasion, and little suspecting that Rosy intended to profit to the utmost by such an opportunity of seeing more of both Blanche and Stasy. For Hebe quite reassured her as to the welcome she would receive.

“They’re so thoroughly nice, so simply well-bred,” Hebe said, “so pleased to give pleasure. Otherwise, I should have felt almost ashamed to go myself, for it is much more marked for Josephine not to call, than your grandmother – an old lady, and living at some distance.”

All went well. The weather was mild, almost warm; there were no threatening rain-clouds or clouds of any kind on the afternoon fixed upon; so, to Stasy’s great delight, it was decided that the tea-tables should be set out in the garden, or rather on the tennis-lawn at one side of the house. Lady Hebe and her friend were the first to arrive, and were full of admiration of the way in which the Derwents had arranged their preparations.

“How pretty you have made the tables look!” said Hebe to Mrs Derwent. “It’ll be quite a lesson in itself to the girls. I’m afraid our part of the country is very deficient in taste. We are so dreadfully old-fashioned and conservative.”

“But many old-fashioned ways and things are in much better taste than new-fashioned ones,” Mrs Derwent replied. “Good taste seems to come in cycles. I must say there was great room for improvement in such things when I was a girl.”

“You lived near here then, did you not?” said Hebe. “Yes, at Fotherley, near Alderwood, you know,” said Mrs Derwent. “I was so happy there, that it made me choose this part of England in preference to any other, when the time came for us to make our home here.”