Blanche: A Story for Girls

It was impossible to reply with any feeling of indignation to a suit so gently urged.

“I am very sorry,” was all Blanche could say.

“I would do anything,” he went on – “anything in the world that you wished. I am perfectly independent, entirely my own master, and I have no one very near me. Your family would be like my own to me. It would be a delight to be able to release them from any necessity like this present arrangement.”

“You are very good,” murmured Blanche, really touched, “but – ”

“Don’t say ‘but’ just yet; let me finish,” he went on. “I am leaving England almost immediately, for two months at least. I won’t ask to see you again till I come back. I won’t say anything if you feel that you must stay on here in the meantime, though I would give worlds to see you back in your own home. If you will only agree to think it over, to try to get accustomed to the idea? That is all I ask just now.”

Blanche stopped short. They had been walking on slowly.

“Please don’t say any more,” she said. “Mr Dunstan, I can’t agree to anything, I don’t care for you – I mean, I don’t love you in the very least. I never dreamt of your having thought of me in any way. You must see, under the circumstances, it would be perfectly impossible for me to say I would try to get to care for you, except as a friend. Your very goodness and kindness make it impossible. I do thank you most heartily for what you have said about us all I am not proud in some ways. If – if I loved anybody, it would not be painful to me to accept whatever he was able to do for those I love. But you wouldn’t have me try to care for you because of that?”

“It might come to be for myself,” said Archie. “Certainly, I agree with you that nothing I could possibly do would deserve such a reward.”

“I don’t mean that,” said Blanche. “I could never disassociate the two. I should always feel that pity and sympathy had made you imagine your own feelings deeper than they were.”

“No, no,” he almost interrupted. “It was long before I knew of all this. It is hard upon me that you will not even give me the chance, which you might have done had circumstances been otherwise.”

Blanche shook her head.

“I want to be quite fair,” she said. “Honestly, I can’t imagine myself ever caring for you in that way, putting all secondary feelings out of consideration.”

“You are so young,” he said, “you can’t judge.”

“I think I can,” she replied. “I am older in some ways than you imagine. Good-bye, Mr Dunstan,” she went on. “I am glad you are going away, for I hate to feel myself ungrateful, and yet, what could I do? Good-bye.”

She held out her hand.

“Good-bye, then,” he repeated, and in another moment he was gone.

She was wanted indoors, Blanche knew. A quarter of an hour before, she had felt almost feverishly anxious for Mr Dunstan to leave, for she was much interested in the important order they had unexpectedly received. Nevertheless, when she had seen the young man’s figure disappear into the house, she turned again and slowly retraced her footsteps along the gravel walk to the farther end of the garden, feeling that for a few minutes she must be alone.

Every sensation seemed absorbed for the time in an intense, overpowering rush of pity for the disappointment she felt she had inflicted.

“I wonder if all girls feel like this when this sort of thing happens,” she said to herself. “If so, I pity them; it is quite horrible. I feel as if I had been so terribly unkind and ungrateful. But how could I have guessed that such a thing was in his mind! It seems too extraordinary. And why should he have thought of me, among the crowds of girls he must meet?”

She went on musing to herself a little longer. Then, though not without some amount of effort, she made her way slowly back to the house.

“I will not tell mamma,” she decided. “I don’t think it would be wrong not to do so, and though she is so good and unworldly, she might feel, considering everything, a little disappointed that I had been so decided about it.”

Five minutes later she was in the middle of a discussion as to the prettiest shade of blue for Miss Levett’s bridesmaids’ hats.

The next few weeks passed, on the whole, quickly; for though it was what Miss Halliday described as “between the seasons,” the good woman had never, even in her palmiest days, been so busy. She was overflowing with delight; her most sanguine dreams bade fair to be realised.

It was an unusually fine and hot summer, and early autumn crept on imperceptibly, so mild and genial did the weather continue. Blissmore and the neighbourhood broke out into an unprecedented succession of tennis and garden-parties, picnics and the like. And whether the entertainers and the entertained on these festive occasions belonged to the exclusive county society or to the inhabitants of the town itself, the practical result, so far as the milliner and her friends were concerned, was the same.

Everybody needed new hats and bonnets, for a fine and prolonged summer necessarily makes great havoc with such articles of feminine attire, and orders succeeded orders from all directions with almost overwhelming rapidity.

The secret of the young milliners’ extended fame was not long left undivulged. For one day, a week or two after young Mr Dunstan’s visit, a carriage from Alderwood drew up again at the door in the High Street, and from it descended, without any preliminary summons by bell or knocker, the short stout figure of Lady Harriot in person.

She walked straight into the shop, looking round as she did so with short-sighted eyes. The first person they lighted upon was Miss Halliday.

“Oh – ah,” began the visitor, “I came to see Miss Derwent. Is she not here?”

Blanche emerged from the farther part of the shop and came forward.

“How de do?” began the old lady, holding out her hand with what she intended for marked affability. “I’m pleased to see you again. Well, now, I don’t exactly know whether I should say that. At least, I mean, I should rather have seen you at Pinnerton than here. I’m very sorry for what’s happened – I am indeed. Mrs Selwyn told me all about it, and I promised her I’d look you up as soon as I came back. I think you’re a very brave girl, I do indeed, my dear. I wish you success with all my heart.”

“Thank you,” said Blanche cordially. “It was very good of Mrs Selwyn to think of us. And is there anything I can do for you, Lady Harriot?” she went on, with a twinkle of fun in her eyes. “I do hope you want a new bonnet.”

The fun was lost upon Lady Harriot, whose density was her predominating characteristic, but the practical suggestion was quite to her mind.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s just what I do want. I’ve gone through such a number this year in London, with the fine weather and the sun and the dust. And I was going to bring down one or two new ones with me, just when I saw Aunt Grace; so then I said to her I would wait till I came back here, and see what you could do for me. And I hope to get you some more customers, but the best way to begin is by getting something for myself. One’s head shows off a bonnet so, you know.”

Blanche glanced up at the good woman’s headgear with some trepidation. She felt rather caught in her own trap, for Lady Harriot’s bonnets were remarkable, to say the least. Like many stout, elderly ladies, she loved bright colours, and was by no means amenable to her milliners suggestions, and Blanche’s misgivings were great as to the desirability of Lady Harriot in the shape of an advertisement.

An amusing consultation followed. Blanche would have liked to summon Stasy to her aid, but she dared not.

“What would happen,” she asked herself, “if Stasy made fun of the old woman to her face? I couldn’t keep my gravity, even if Lady Harriot didn’t find it out.”

And probably her own tact and powers of persuasion were far more effectual than Stasy’s rather despotic decisions on all questions of taste or arrangement.

And Lady Harriot departed in immense satisfaction, firmly convinced that the bonnet was to owe its success to her own suggestions, and that Blanche Derwent was really “a sensible girl, with no nonsense about her.”

“And really very pretty,” she added to herself. “I must call on their mother the next time I am in the town, and I mustn’t forget to speak about them everywhere. I do hope, for their sakes as well as my own, that she’ll remember all I said about the bonnet.”

Two or three days later saw her again at Miss Halliday’s. The bonnet was ready, and this time Stasy was with her sister, having faithfully promised to behave with immaculate propriety. Blanche’s face was very grave as she lifted out her handiwork – or more strictly speaking, Stasy’s, for it was the young girls clever fingers that were usually entrusted with orders of special importance – out of its nest of tissue-paper, and held it up for their visitors inspection.

Out came Lady Harriot’s pince-nez.

“Very nice, very nice indeed, so far as I can tell before trying it on. I will do so at once.” And she proceeded to divest herself of the bonnet she had on, a creation which Stasy’s eyes took in with silent horror.

“Stasy!” said Blanche, when the new erection was placed on Lady Harriot’s head, and there was a decided touch of triumph in her tone.

Stasy came a little nearer.

“It must be just a shade farther forward,” she said, skilfully touching it as she spoke.

Lady Harriot submitted, but looked at the girl with surprise.

“Do you mean to say?” she began, hesitating.

“Oh yes,” said Blanche, replying to the unspoken inquiry. “My sister’s much cleverer at millinery than I am. She always does our most particular things.”

“Really,” said Lady Harriot; but she could not say more, for by this time she was absorbed in her own reflection in the looking-glass.

“Doesn’t it look nice?” said Blanche gleefully. “You are pleased with it, aren’t you, Lady Harriot?”