Blanche: A Story for Girls

“Bless you, my love,” said the old maid, wiping away another tear. “It is good of you to have such a thought, though, of course, I couldn’t so presume. I’m sure you’ll learn very quickly, having been brought up in France, where, they say, good taste comes with the air. Indeed, I have been thinking of trying for a French young person as a partner, and I once thought of consulting your dear mamma about it.”

“I can tell her what you say,” said Blanche. “But I scarcely think she would advise it. It’s a risk to bring any one so far, and as for what you say of French taste – well, I don’t know – in Paris, perhaps; but one sees plenty of vulgar ugliness in the provinces.”

“Indeed, Miss,” said the milliner, considerably impressed. “Well, I might be safer with an English girl, after all. And thank you, more than I can say, for your kind sympathy. Your visit has quite cheered me – it has indeed. You’ll let me make you a cup of tea before you go. It’ll be ready directly in your own parlour – we always call the drawing-room your own room since you were here, we do indeed.” And the little woman started up in her eager hospitality.

“We’ll stay to tea on one condition, Miss Halliday,” said Stasy – “that is, that if you do find us clever, you’ll promise to let us come and help you after our lessons with you are over.”

“My dear Miss Anastasia,” began Miss Halliday.

“Oh, but you must promise,” said Stasy. “It’s not all out of kindness that I want it! It would be something to do – some fun! I only wish you’d let me serve in the shop a little, it’s so dreadfully dull at Pinnerton, you don’t know.”

Miss Halliday’s face expressed commiseration.

“I’m sorry for that,” said she. “I was hoping that, when you got settled down, you’d feel quite at home, and find it more lively. But, of course, about now most of the families are going up to London.”

“That doesn’t make much difference to us,” said Stasy. “If you want to know, Miss Halliday, I think English people are horribly unfriendly and disagreeable.”

The milliner looked uncomfortable; she had delicacy enough to know that any distinct expression of sympathy in such a case would be an impertinence.

“You may find it pleasanter in the winter,” she said. “There are some nice young ladies in your neighbourhood – Lady Hebe Shetland at East Moddersham, now! She is a sweet young lady.”

“Yes,” said Blanche, speaking for the first time. “We know her a little, but still it is quite different from what it used to be when mamma was a girl here.”

“Well yes, to be sure,” said Miss Halliday, “for it was your dear mamma’s home; and no one was more respected in all the country-side, as I’ve heard my aunt say, than your dear grandpapa, the late Mr Fenning. It was quite a different thing in the next vicars time; his wife and daughters were not, so to say, in the county society at all.”

“Do you mean the Flemings?” asked Blanche; “yes, I have heard of them. I hope people don’t confuse mamma with them; sometimes I’ve been afraid they may do.”

Miss Halliday grew a little pink again.

“Well, Miss, as you’ve mentioned it,” she said, “though I wouldn’t have made free to speak of it myself, I’m afraid there may have been some mistake of the kind in one or two quarters, and seeing that it was so, I made bold to set it right; telling those that had made the mistake, that your dear mamma came of a very high family indeed, as my dear aunt has often told me, and that on both sides.”

Blanche could not help smiling, though she was touched by the little milliner’s loyalty.

“Thank you, Miss Halliday,” she said. “I should certainly be sorry for mamma’s family to be confused with the Flemings, not so much because they were – well, scarcely gentlepeople by birth – but because they were not particularly nice in themselves. It is misleading that the two names are so like, and I am glad you explained it.”

“I won’t mention names,” said Miss Halliday, beaming with satisfaction; “but it will all come right in the end, you will see, my dear young ladies. And now I think tea must be ready in the drawing-room, if you’ll be so good as to step that way.”

“But you are going to have tea with us,” said Stasy. “It would be no fun if you didn’t. And we have to settle the day for our first lesson; and you’ve never been out to see our house yet, Miss Halliday. Mamma sent a special message about that.”

“What a good little soul she is!” said Blanche, as Stasy and she were walking home together.

“Yes, isn’t she?” said Stasy. “Blanche,” she went on, thoughtfully, after a moment’s pause, “do you ever think how nice it would be to be really very rich? Not just comfortable, as we are, but really rich, with lots to give away. What nice things one could do for other people! We could pay for a very clever assistant for Miss Halliday, for instance, so that she might get to be quite a grand milliner, and the people here would go to her for their bonnets instead of sending to London.”

Blanche laughed.

“We should have to frank her over to Paris also once or twice a year. Fancy Miss Halliday in Paris!” she said. “However beautiful her bonnets were, no one could believe in her unless she went to Paris. Yes, it would be very nice to be able to do things like that. But, on the other hand – ” She stopped, and seemed to be thinking.

“What were you going to say?” asked Stasy.

“I was only thinking,” Blanche replied, “how little we can realise what it must be to be poor. To feel that one’s actual daily bread – food and clothes and common necessaries – depend on one’s work. I suppose, however, it does not seem hard or depressing to those who have always been accustomed to it.”

“I have thought of it sometimes,” said Stasy. “I’m not sure that there wouldn’t be a sort of pleasure about it. It would be very interesting and exciting. What I dislike most is the being nobody in particular, neither one thing nor the other, as we have rather felt ourselves here! Nothing specially to do, and no feeling that it would matter if you didn’t do it. That is so dull.”

“I suppose,” said Blanche thoughtfully again, “that things to do, things that you feel you could do better than any one else could do them, always do turn up sooner or later if one really wants to use one’s life well.”

“Oh,” said Stasy, with a touch of impatience. “I don’t look at things in such a grand way as you do, Blanchie. I want to get some fun out of life, and, after all, I’m not difficult to please. My spirits have gone up ever so high, just with the idea of learning millinery and teaching the girls, and perhaps helping good little Miss Halliday. Blanchie, don’t you think we might plan some kind of hats that the guild girls would look very nice in – something that Lady Hebe would be sure to notice when she comes back. Perhaps if we ordered a lot of them untrimmed, you know, and got ribbon and things, we could let the girls have them more cheaply than they could buy them. There’d be no harm in that, would there? Of course, I know the guild isn’t supposed to be at all a charity – ”

“We may be able to do something of the kind,” said Blanche. “But it wouldn’t do to have them all the same, or even very like each other. The girls wouldn’t care for it, and it would make a sort of show-off of the guild. We must think about it; and I want them to learn to trim their mothers’ bonnets and caps and their younger sisters’ things, as well as their own.”

Chapter Fourteen

Monsieur Bergeret’s Letter

The millinery lessons were begun and steadily carried on without the interest of either of the sisters flagging. For, in spite of Stasy’s capriciousness, there was a good of real material in her: she would have despised herself for not carrying out any plan she had formed. And she was not disappointed in her expectation of getting some “fun” out of this new pursuit. It was a pleasure to her to find how deft and neat-handed a little practice made her. Taste in harmonising and blending colours, and a quick eye for graceful form, she had by nature.

Miss Halliday was full of admiration.

“There’s nothing more I can teach you, young ladies,” she said, at the end of a fortnight, during which time they had had about half-a-dozen lessons. “Miss Stasy – if it wasn’t impertinent to say so – I would call you a born milliner. Now, I never would have thought of putting violets with that brown velvet, never! And yet there’s no denying they go most beautifully, and you do make the ribbons and trimmings go so far, too. I’ve always been told it was the best of French work that it’s so light – never overloaded. – And Miss Derwent, you are so neat; indeed, if I might say so, almost too particular.”

Blanche smiled.

“I haven’t got such fairy fingers as Stasy, I know,” she said admiringly, “though perhaps I could beat her at plain-sewing. Yes, I have run on that lace too heavily, I see. Well, and so you think we’re ready now to teach our girls, Miss Halliday, do you?”

“Indeed, yes, Miss; and I shall be so pleased to order the hats you want for you at any time, charging you, of course, just what I pay for them myself.”

“No indeed,” said Blanche; “that wouldn’t be fair; you must charge a little commission. I’ve made out a short list of the things we want to begin with. We’re thinking of having our first millinery class next Wednesday evening. We can’t have more than one a week, for Miss Wandle and Miss Bracy have two other evening classes, and we don’t want the mothers to think the girls are too much away from home.”

“I’m sure it’s better for them than idling about the lanes,” said Miss Halliday, “and that’s what they mostly spend their evenings in at this time of year.”

“Have you got anything settled about your own plans, Miss Halliday?” asked Stasy.

The milliner shook her head, and gave a little sigh.

“Not yet, Miss Stasy,” she replied; “and unless I can find a partner who could put a little money into the concern, I’m afraid I must make shift to go on alone for some time to come. I’ve got so behind with what I owe, for the first time in my life, all through that disappointment about Miss Green.”

“I really think she should have paid you something,” said Stasy. “I’m afraid you’re too good-natured, Miss Halliday. And now you’re going to be good-natured to us, and let us come in two or three times a week to help you a little.”

“You’re really too kind, Miss Stasy,” said Miss Halliday. “I don’t feel as if I could let you do such a thing. And what would your dear mamma think of it?”

“She’s quite pleased,” said Blanche; “she’s always glad for us to be of any use we can.”

“And really I have nothing to do now,” said Stasy. “The dancing class and the gymnastics are given up for the summer, and my lessons don’t take up long at all. I’ve got in the way of coming to Blissmore every day with Herty; it would be dreadfully dull to stay always at Pinnerton.”

So it was settled that the sisters should come two or three mornings a week to help poor Miss Halliday as much as possible, though, of course, the arrangement was to be kept perfectly private.

It certainly did Stasy a great deal of good to have more to do and some feeling of responsibility. She became more cheerful and more equable in temper than she had yet been in their new home. She was even amiable enough to offer no objection to Blanche’s consent to Florry Wandle’s eager, though modest, request that she and her cousin might be allowed to join the millinery class.

“I scarcely see that we have any right to refuse them,” Miss Derwent had said, “seeing that they actually belong to the guild. Anyway, it would be most ill-natured to do so, as they are good, nice girls.”