Blanche: A Story for Girls

“Sir Conway and Lady Marth?” she replied. “Oh yes, they are there most of the year; they have several sons, some grown up and some still at school, and one quite little daughter. They are very much liked and highly thought of in the county.”

“And,” began Blanche, “there is a grown-up girl, is there not? A niece or a ward of Sir Conway’s?” Miss Halliday’s face grew still brighter.

“Lady Hebe, Miss, you must mean; Lady Hebe Shetland. Yes, she is their ward, and Sir Conway’s niece too. A great heiress, and to my mind the most beautiful and charming young lady in all the country round. Her face makes one think of everything sweet and pleasant.”

“And happy,” said Blanche. “I never did see any one look so happy.”

“She has everything to make her so,” said Miss Halliday. “But that wouldn’t do it without a happy nature.”

“How old is she?” asked Stasy abruptly.

“Nineteen, I think, Miss. They do say she is engaged to young Mr Milward, a fine young gentleman, and well suited to her. But I don’t know if it is true.”

“Do you mean the Milwards of Crossburn?” said Mrs Derwent.

“Yes; that is where they live, I believe,” was the reply.

“I hope it’s not true that that girl of Blanche’s is engaged,” said Stasy, later in the evening, after she had been sitting silent for some time.

“Why?” said her sister, looking up in surprise; “what difference could it make to us?”

“All the difference. If she were married, she’d go away to a home of her own, and we would never see her. But living there, so near, she would be a nice friend for us. She is just about your age, Blanchie.”

“Well,” said Blanche, “we shall see. It is not even certain yet that we are going to live at Pinnerton at all.”

“I’m sure we shall. I have a presentiment that we shall,” said Stasy oracularly.

Chapter Six

The Doctor’s Wife

Stasy’s presentiment came true. The reports of the builder the next morning, when he called to enter into particulars with Mrs Derwent, were favourable; and later in the day the mother and daughters returned to London with very little doubt in their minds as to their future home being Pinnerton Lodge.

London looked very grim and dreary after the clear fine sky in the country, and Stasy shivered at the thought of how many days must yet forcibly be spent there, before they could install themselves in their new quarters.

But the things we dread are not always those that come to pass. Mrs Derwent, as I have said, was in some ways extremely inexperienced in English life and rates of expenses. Busy and eager about the arrangements for their new house, she put off asking for her hotel bill till fully a fortnight after the little party’s arrival in London. And when she received it and glanced at the total, she was aghast!

“Blanche, my dear,” she exclaimed, “just look at this. Is it not tremendous? Why, we might have lived at a hotel at home for nearly a year for what this fortnight has cost us!”

“Not quite that, mamma,” said Blanche, smiling, though her own fair face was flushed with annoyance. “But, no doubt, it is very dear. And yet we seem to have lived plainly enough. Mamma,” she went on decidedly, “we mustn’t stay here; that is quite certain. All you have got in reserve for furnishing our house and paying for the alterations will be wasted, and what should we do then?”

Mrs Derwent sat silent, considering.

“You are quite right, dear,” she said at last. “We must look out for lodgings. But I have a horror of London lodgings. They are so often detestable.”

“Why stay in London at all?” said Stasy suddenly from her corner of the room, where, though engrossed with a story-book, her quick ears had been caught by the sound of vexation in her mother’s voice. “I am sure it is horrid – so dull, and knowing nobody. Why shouldn’t we go down to Blissmore, to that nice little Miss Halliday’s, and stay there till the house is ready? We meant to go there for the last week or two, anyway.”

Blanche’s face lighted up, and she looked at her mother anxiously. But Mrs Derwent hesitated.

“It would certainly be comfortable enough,” she said; “quite as comfortable as here. But to stay there for so long – for several weeks? Is it not rather lowering? I don’t want to get mixed up with Blissmore people: they must be a very heterogeneous society; not like in the old days when there were just a very few thoroughly established people living in the town, whom everybody knew and respected.”

“I don’t see that we need know people we don’t want to know, any more when living in the town than in the neighbourhood,” said Blanche. “We can keep quite to ourselves; unless, of course, you can look up some of your old friends, who would understand how we were placed.”

Mrs Derwent seemed perplexed.

“I wish I could,” she said, “but I scarcely know how to begin. There seems nothing but changes. It is such a disappointment about dear old Sir Adam to start with.”

“Still we are gaining nothing in that way by remaining in London,” said Blanche. “And when at Blissmore you can find out about the people you used to know, and perhaps write to them.”

“I can find out about them, certainly,” Mrs Derwent agreed. “But I don’t think I should actually write or suggest any one’s calling, till we are in our own house, and have everything nice and settled. People are so prejudiced. They would immediately begin saying we lived poorly or messily because we had been so long in France.”

“I don’t think any one could live ‘messily’ in Miss Halliday’s house if they tried. It is so beautifully neat,” said Stasy, who had taken a great fancy to their little landlady. “Do let us go there, mamma. I am so tired of being here. London is horrid in winter, especially if you have no friends. And why should you and Blanche worry about the hotel bills, when there is no need, and none of us want to stay?”

And in the end, as not unfrequently happened – for there was often a good deal of wisdom in her suggestions – Stasy’s proposal was adopted; so that about three weeks after their first arrival in England, the Derwents found themselves settled for the time being at Number Twenty-Nine in the old High Street of Blissmore.

It was not exactly the beginning of life in England which Mrs Derwent had pictured to herself. It was a trifle dreary to be back again, really back again in the immediate neighbourhood of her old home, with no one except Miss Halliday – herself a new-comer in the place – to welcome her and her children, or take the slightest interest in their advent.

“If there had been even one or two of our old servants left somewhere near,” she could not help saying to Blanche that night, when Stasy and little Hertford had gone to bed, in high spirits at having really got away from “that horrid London,” as they both called it. “But every one seems gone that I had to do with,” she concluded, in a depressed tone.

“You really can’t judge yet, mamma,” said Blanche. “You haven’t looked up anybody except Sir Adam Nigel, and you said you would rather wait till we were settled in our own house.”

“I know I did. Oh yes, I daresay it will all be right enough. I am going to make out a list of all the friends I remember, and inquire about them by degrees. Some day soon we must drive over to Fotherley, Blanchie. Just think, I have never even seen your dear grandfather’s grave! I am tired to-night, and everything seems wrong when one is tired.”

Things did brighten up even by the next morning. The weather, though cold, was clear and bracing; very different from the murkiness of London, which had been peculiarly trying to nerves and lungs accustomed to the pure smokeless air of southern France. And the work at Pinnerton Lodge was already begun. It was most interesting to go all over the house again with the delightful sense of proprietorship, planning which rooms should be for what and for whom; how the old furniture would “come in,” and what it would be necessary to add to it. And an occasional day in London, with definite shopping for its object, made Stasy allow that for some things, and in some ways, the great city was not altogether a bad place after all.

Still, though they were not “dull” in the sense of having nothing to do, and feeling in consequence listless and dreary, the little family felt curiously lonely.

Miss Halliday was no gossip – that is to say, she drew the line at the concerns of her visitors, and sternly refused to tell any of her cronies anything about them. And though this rule of hers was well known, still it added a slight element of mystery to her present lodgers, which, in reality, led to more gossip about them than they were in the least aware of. It was not often that visitors stayed so long at Miss Halliday’s; as a rule, her rooms were merely taken as a half-way house for a very few days, by families pitching their tents in the now sought-after little town. And for some time no one knew anything about Pinnerton Lodge, as the distance between it and Blissmore was sufficient, in winter especially, to prevent much passing by. Added to which one of the good qualities of the Otterson and Bewley firm was discretion carried to the limits of surliness, in their determination that all knowledge of their clients’ affairs should be confined to the office itself.

So Blanche and Stasy walked up and down the Blissmore streets, intent on such amount of shopping as Mrs Derwent would allow them to do there, or marched out bravely to Pinnerton and back, however cold it was, rejoicing in the “delightful English freedom,” as Stasy called it, which made it possible for them to do so without any breach of accepted rules, innocent of the remarks and comments their appearance in public called forth.

“I can’t make them out,” said the wife of one of the doctors – Blissmore now rejoiced in four or five, though formerly one and an assistant had been all that was required – the wife, unluckily, of the doctor whose house in the High Street was nearest to Miss Halliday’s. “I can’t make them out. Do they never mean to know anybody or tell who they are? People who have come from abroad should tell all about themselves, or how can they expect any one to notice them.”

Which was, to say the least, a begging-the-question kind of reproach, seeing that in no way had the Derwent family expected, or seemed to expect, the “notice” of Mrs Burgess or any of her coterie!

But it is not only the brave that chance sometimes favours. It favours the idle and inquisitive and the busy-bodies too, now and then. And I am afraid, without judging her too harshly, Mrs Burgess might come under these heads.

The chance was that of Stasy getting a sore throat. It was not a very bad one, but she was rather subject to sore throats, and the change of climate made Mrs Derwent extra cautious about her. It got suddenly worse one evening, and though Stasy was not cowardly or impatient when she was ill, she had to own to feeling pretty bad, and depressing visions of a quinsy she had had on one or two occasions rose before her.

“We must not trifle with it,” her mother decided, and Miss Halliday was summoned and consulted as to sending for the doctor. Her own doctor, the one of oldest standing in the place, was unfortunately away for a few days, she happened to know. But there were others. Mr Meyrick was considered second best, but he lived quite at the other side of the town, and —

“I do not think it is anything complicated,” said Mrs Derwent. “If we were at home” – and she sighed just a little – “I should know how to treat it myself. But I have forgotten the names of English medicaments, and, indeed, I doubt if we could get the herbs and simple drugs here at all. No, it is best to have a doctor. Who is the nearest, Miss Halliday?”

“Mr Burgess lives only a few doors off,” the little woman replied. “And he is clever, I believe.”

“But you don’t like him, I see,” said Mrs Derwent. “Is there anything against him?”

“Oh dear, no. But they – Mr Burgess and his wife – are not like Dr Summers and Miss Summers. Mrs Burgess has the name of chattering a great deal, and rather spitefully sometimes,” Miss Halliday admitted.