“‘Where have you been all day? You promised to drive me out—you know you did!’”

([Page 77])

General Bounce
or
The Lady and the Locusts

By
G. J. Whyte-Melville
Author of “Katerfelto,” “The Interpreter,” “Market Harborough,” etc.

Illustrated by Frances E. Ewan

London
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
New York and Melbourne

[PREFACE]

Where the rose blushes in the garden, there will the bee and the butterfly be found, humming and fluttering around. So is it in the world; the fair girl, whose sweetness is enhanced by the fictitious advantages of wealth and position, will ever have lovers and admirers enough and to spare.

Burns was no bad judge of human nature; and he has a stanza on this subject, combining the reflection of the philosopher with the canny discrimination of the Scot.

“Away with your follies of beauty’s alarms,

The slender bit beauty you clasp in your arms;

But gi’e me the lass that has acres of charms,

Oh, gi’e me the lass with the weel-plenished farms.”

Should the following pages afford such attractive young ladies matter for a few moments’ reflection, the author will not have written in vain.

May he hope they will choose well and wisely; and that the withered rose, when she has lost her fragrance, may be fondly prized and gently tended by the hand that plucked her in her dewy morning prime.

[CONTENTS]

GENERAL BOUNCE
OR, THE LADY AND THE LOCUSTS

[CHAPTER I]
MY COUSIN

AN ENGLISHMAN’S HOLIDAY—ST. SWITHIN’S IN A CALM—THE MERCHANT’S AMBITION—“MON BEAU COUSIN”—CASTLES IN THE AIR—A LIVELY CRAFT—“HAIRBLOWER” AND HIS COLD BATH

Much as we think of ourselves, and with all our boasted civilisation, we Anglo-Saxons are but a half-barbarian race after all. Nomadic, decidedly nomadic in our tastes, feelings, and pursuits, it is but the moisture of our climate that keeps us in our own houses at all, and like our Scandinavian ancestors (for in turf parlance we have several crosses of the old Norse blood in our veins), we delight periodically—that is, whenever we have a fortnight’s dry weather—to migrate from our dwellings, and peopling the whole of our own sea-board, push our invading hordes over the greater part of Europe, nor refrain from thrusting our outposts even into the heart of Asia, till the astonished Mussulman, aghast at our vagaries, strokes his placid beard, and with a blessing on his Prophet that he is not as we are, soothes his disgust with a sentiment, so often repeated that in the East it has become a proverb—viz. that “There is one devil, and there are many devils; but there is no devil like a Frank in a round hat!”

It was but last autumn that, stepping painfully into our tailor’s shop—for, alas! a course of London dinners cannot be persisted in, season after season, without producing a decided tendency to gout in the extremities—hobbling, then, into our tailor’s warehouse, as he calls it, we were measured by an unfledged jackanapes, whose voice we had previously heard warning his brother fractions that “an old gent was a waitin’ inside,” instead of that spruce foreman who, for more years than it is necessary to specify, has known our girth to an inch, and our weight to a pound. Fearful that in place of the grave habit of broadcloth which we affect as most suitable to our age and manner, we might find ourselves equipped in one of the many grotesque disguises in which young gentlemen now-a-days deem it becoming to hide themselves, and described by the jackanapes, aforesaid, who stepped round us in ill-concealed admiration of our corpulence, as “a walking coat, a riding coat, a smoking coat, or a coat to go to the stable in!” we ventured to inquire for “the person we usually saw,” and were informed that “the gent as waited on us last year had gone for a few months’ holiday to the Heast.” Heavens and earth, Mr. Bobstitch was even then in Syria! What a Scandinavian! rather degenerate to be sure in size and ferocity—though Bobstitch, being a little man, is probably very terrible when roused—but yet no slight contrast to one of those gaunt, grim, russet-bearded giants that made the despot of the Lower Empire quake upon his throne. And yet Bobstitch was but obeying the instinct which he inherits from the sea-kings his ancestors, an instinct which in less adventurous souls than a tailor’s fills our watering-places to overflowing, and pours the wealth, while it introduces the manners, of the capital into every bight and bay that indents the shores of Britain.

Doubtless the citizens are right. Let us, while we are in Scandinavian vein, make use of an old Norse metaphor, and pressing into our service the two Ravens of Odin, named Mind and Will, with these annihilate time and space, so as to be, like the Irish orator’s bird, “in two places at once.” Let us first of all take a retrospective glance at Mrs. Kettering’s house in Grosvenor Square, one of the best houses, by the way, to be had in London for love or money. We recollect it well, not so many years ago, lit up for one of those great solemnities which novelists call “a rout,” but which people in real life, equally martially as well as metaphorically, designate “a drum.” To us creeping home along the pavement outside the fête, it seemed the realisation of fairyland. Row upon row, glaring carriage-lamps, like the fabulous monsters keeping watch, illuminated the square and adjoining streets, even to the public-house round the corner, that night driving a highly remunerative trade; whilst on a nearer inspection magnificent horses (horses, like ladies, look most beautiful by candle-light), gorgeous carriages—none of your Broughams and Clarences, but large, roomy, well-hung family coaches, with cartoons of heraldry on the panels—gigantic footmen, and fat coachmen, struck the beholder with admiration not totally unmixed with awe. Then the awning that was to admit the privileged to the inner realms of this earthly paradise, of which the uninitiated might know but the exterior; what a gauzy, gaudy transparency it was, no unfitting portal to that upper storey, from which the golden light was hardly veiled by jalousies and window-blinds. Ever and anon, much lashing of bay, brown, or chestnut sufferers, and the interference of a tall policeman, with a hat made on purpose to be assaulted by bludgeons, betokened the arrival of a fresh party, and angelic beings in white robes, with glossy hair, tripped daintily up the steps over a cloth, not of gold exactly, but of horse-hair, amongst a phalanx of unwashed faces, gazing half enviously at such loveliness in full dress. How beautiful we used to think these apparitions as we plodded home to our quiet chambers! but young Bareface, our connecting link with the great world, who goes to all the best places, through the influence of his aunt, Lady Champfront, assures us they don’t look half so beautiful inside, and that he sees quite as pretty faces, and hair quite as nicely done, at the little gatherings in Russell Square and Bloomsbury, to which even we might go if we liked. A radical dog! we don’t believe a word of it. Never mind, let us look at that house in the dead time of year. Without and within, from attics to basement, from the balcony facing the square to the empty bird-cage overlooking a precipice of offices at the back, Repose and Ennui reign supreme. Were it not for the knocking of the workmen next door, we might as well be in the Great Desert. There is, we presume, a woman in possession, but she has gone to “get the beer,” and if you have ever sighed for a town-house, now is the time to be satisfied with your rustic lot, and to hug yourself that you are not paying ground-rent and taxes, church-rate, poor’s-rate, and water-rate, drainage, lighting, and paving, for that ghastly palace of soot and cobwebs, dust, dreariness, and decay. There is a scaffolding up in every third house in the square; and workmen in paper caps, with foot-rules sticking out of their fustian trousers, and complexions ingrained with lime-dust, and guiltless of fresh water, seem to be the only inhabitants of this deserted region, and even they are “between earth and heaven.” Brown and parched are the unfortunate shrubs in those gardens of which discontented householders “round the corner” covet so to possess a key; and the very birds, sparrows, every feather of ’em, hop about in dirty suits of plumage that can only be described as of that colour unknown to naturalists, which other people call “grimy.” Who would be in London in the autumn? Not Mrs. Kettering, certainly, if she might be elsewhere; and although she had possessed this excellent and commodious family mansion, with all its boudoirs, retreats, and appurtenances, so well described in the advertisement, but a short time, and was not the giver of that “reunion of fashionables” we have depicted above (indeed, the hostess of that evening has since been economising up two pair of stairs at Antwerp); yet Mrs. Kettering having plenty of money, and being able to do what she liked, had wisely moved herself, her fancies, her imperials, and her family to the coast, where, obeying the instinct for freedom that has driven Bobstitch to the desert, she was idly inhaling the salt breezes of the Channel, and dazzling her eyes with the sun-glint that sparkled over its dancing waves.

Some few years have elapsed since the events took place which we shall endeavour to describe; but the white cliffs of our island change little with the lapse of time, though the sea does make its encroachments ever and anon when the wind has been blowing pretty steady from the south-west for a fortnight or so, and the same scene may be witnessed any fine day towards the middle of August as that which we are about to contrast with the dulness, closeness, and confinement of the great town-house in Grosvenor Square.

First, we must imagine a real summer’s day, such a day as in our island we seldom enjoy till summer has well-nigh given place to autumn, but which, when it does come, is worth waiting for. Talk of climate! a real fine day in England, like a really handsome Englishwoman, beats creation. Well, we must imagine one of these bright, hot, hay-making days, almost too warm and dusty ashore, but enjoyable beyond conception on the calm and oily waves, unruffled by the breeze, and literally as smooth as glass. A sea-bird occasionally dips her wing on the surface, and then flaps lazily away, as if she too was as much inclined to go to sleep as yonder moveless fleet of lugger, brig, bark, and schooner, with their empty sails, and their heads all round the compass. There is a warm haze towards the land, and the white houses of St. Swithin’s seem to glow and sparkle in the heat, whilst to seaward a modified sort of mirage would make one fancy one could plainly distinguish the distant coast of France.

Ashore, in those great houses, people are panting, and gasping, and creating thorough draughts that fill their rooms with a small white dust of a destructive tendency to all personal property. The children up-stairs are running about in linen under-garments, somewhat more troublesome than usual, with a settled flush on their little peach-like cheeks, and the shining streets are deserted, save by the perspiring pot-boy, and the fly-men drinking beer in their shirt sleeves. Only afloat is there a chance of being cool; and sailing-boat, gig, dinghy, and cobble, all are in requisition for the throng of amateur mariners, rushing like ducklings to the refreshing element.

It was on just such a day as this that Mrs. Kettering found it extremely difficult to “trim the boat.” A mile or so from the shore, that boat was slowly progressing, impelled by the unequal strength of her nephew Charles, commonly called “Cousin Charlie,” and its worthy proprietor, a fine specimen of the genus “seaman,” who certainly had a Christian name, and probably a patronymic, but had sunk both distinctions under the sobriquet of “Hairblower,” by which appellation alone he was acknowledged by gentle and simple, bold and timid, delicate ladies and bluff fishermen, along many a mile of sea-board, up and down from St. Swithin’s.

“The least thing further, Master Charles,” said Hairblower, ever and anon pulling the stripling’s efforts round with one hand. “Don’t ye disturb, madam—don’t ye move, Miss Blanche; it’s not your weight that makes her roll.” And again he moistened the large, strong hand, and turned to look out ahead.

In vain Mrs. Kettering shut up her parasol, and shifted her seat; in vain she disposed her ample figure, first in one uncomfortable position, then in another; she could not “trim the boat,” and the reason was simple enough. Mrs. Kettering’s weight was that of a lady who had all her life been “a fine woman,” and was now somewhat past maturity; whilst her daughter and only child, “Blanche,” the occupant of the same bench, had but just arrived at that period when the girl begins to lengthen out into the woman, and the slight, lanky figure, not without a grace peculiar to itself, is nevertheless as delicate as a gossamer, and as thin as its own gauzy French bonnet.

Mother and daughter were but little alike, save in their sweet and rather languid tone of voice—no trifling charm in that sex which is somewhat prone, especially under excitement, to pitch its organ in too high a key. Mrs. Kettering was dark and brown of complexion, with sparkling black eyes, and a rich colour, much heightened by the heat. Not very tall in stature, but large and square of frame, well-filled out besides by a good appetite, a good digestion, and, though nervous and excitable, a good temper. Blanche, on the contrary, with her long violet eyes, her curving dark eyelashes, and golden-brown hair, was so slight of frame and delicate of tint as to warrant her mother’s constant alarm for her health; not that there was any real cause for anxiety, but mamma loved to fidget, if not about “dear Blanche,” about something belonging to her; and failing these, had a constant fund of worry in the exploits and escapades of graceless “Cousin Charlie.”

“Now, Charlie, my own dear boy” (Mrs. K. was very fond of Charlie), “I know you must be over-heating yourself—nothing so bad for growing lads. Mr. Hairblower, pray don’t let him row so hard.”

“Gammon, aunt,” was Charlie’s irreverent reply. “Wait till we get her head round with the flood; we’ll make her speak to it, won’t we, Hairblower?”

“Well, Master Charles,” said the jolly tar, “I think as you and me could pull her head under, pretty nigh,—howsoever, we be fairish off for time, and the day’s young yet.”

“Blanche, Blanche!” suddenly exclaimed Mrs. Kettering, “look at the weed just beyond that buoy—the alga, what’s its name, we were reading about yesterday. Charlie, of course you have forgotten. I shall soon be obliged to get a finishing governess for you, Blanche.”

“Oh no, dearest mamma,” said the young girl, in her soft, sweet voice, which always drew Hairblower’s eyes, in speechless admiration, to her gentle countenance. “I could never learn with any one but you; and then she might be cross, mamma, and I should hate her so after you!” And Blanche took her mother’s plump, tightly-gloved hand between her own, and looked up in her face with such a fond, bewitching expression, that it was no wonder mamma doted on her, and Hairblower and “Cousin Charlie” too.

Mrs. Kettering was one of those people whose superabundant energy must have a certain number of objects whereon to expend itself. Though a pleasant, cheerful woman, she was decidedly blue—that is to say, besides being a good musician, linguist, draughtswoman, and worsted worker, she had a few ideas, not very correct, upon ancient history, a superficial knowledge of modern literature, thought Shakespeare vulgar and Milton dry, with a smattering of the ’ologies, and certain theories concerning chemistry, which, if reduced to practice, would have made her a most unsafe occupant for a ground-floor. With these advantages, and her sunny, pleasant temper, she taught Blanche everything herself; and if the young lady was not quite so learned as some of her associates, she had at least the advantage of a mother’s companionship and tuition, and was as far removed as possible from that most amusing specimen of affectation, an English girl who has formed her manner on that of a French governess.

Mrs. Kettering had gone through her share of troubles in her youth, and being of a disposition by no means despondent, was rather happy under difficulties than otherwise. We do not suppose she married her first love: we doubt if women often do, except in novels; and the late Mr. K. was a gentleman of an exterior certainly more respectable than romantic. His manners were abrupt and commercial, but his name at the back of a bill was undeniable. The lady whom he wooed and won was old enough to know her own mind; nor have we reason to suppose but that in pleasing him she pleased herself. Many a long year they toiled and amassed, and old Kettering attended closely to business, though he never showed his books to his wife; and Mrs. Kettering exercised her diplomacy in migrating once every five years further and further towards “the West End.” Their last house but one was in Tyburnia, and then old Kettering put a finishing stroke to his business, made a shot at indigo which landed him more thousands than our modest ideas can take in, and enabling him to occupy that mansion in Grosvenor Square which looked so dull in the autumn, placed Mrs. Kettering at once on the pedestal she had all her life been sighing to attain;—perhaps she was disappointed when she got there. However that may be, the enterprising merchant himself obtained little by his new residence, save a commodious vault belonging to it in a neighbouring church, in which his remains were soon after deposited, and a tablet, pure and unblemished as his own commercial fame, erected to his memory by his disconsolate widow. How disconsolate she was, poor woman! for a time, with her affectionate nature: but then her greatest treasure, Blanche, was left; and her late husband, as the most appropriate mark of his confidence and esteem, bequeathed the whole of his property, personal and otherwise, to his well-beloved wife, so the blow was to a certain degree softened, and Mrs. Kettering looked uncommonly radiant and prosperous even in her weeds.

Now, it is very pleasant and convenient to have a large property left you at your own disposal, more especially when you are blessed with a child on whom you dote, to succeed you when you have no further occasion for earthly treasure; and, in the eyes of the world, this was Mrs. Kettering’s agreeable lot. The eyes of the world, as usual, could not look into the cupboard where the skeleton was; but our poor widow, or rather our rich widow, was much hampered by the shape which no one else knew to exist.

The fact is, old Mr. Kettering had a crotchet. Being a rich man, he had a right to a dozen; but he was a sensible, quiet old fellow, and he contented himself with one. Now, this crotchet was the invincible belief that he, John Kettering, was the lineal male representative of one of the oldest families in England. How he came to have lost the old Norman features and appearance, or how it happened that such a lofty descent should have merged in his own person as junior clerk to a large City counting-house, he never troubled himself to inquire; he was satisfied that the oldest blood in Europe coursed through his veins, and with the pedigree he supposed himself to possess (though its traces were unfortunately extinct), he might marry whom he pleased. As we have seen, he did marry a very personable lady; but, alas! she gave him no male heir. Under a female succession, all his toil, all his astuteness, all his money, would not raise the family name to the proud position he believed its due. He could not bear the idea of it; and he never really loved poor Blanche half so much as that engaging child deserved. When all chance of a son was hopeless, he resolved to bring up and educate his only brother’s orphan child, a handsome little boy, whose open brow and aristocratic lineaments won the old man’s favour from the first.

“Cousin Charlie,” in consequence, became an inmate of the Kettering family, and was usually supposed by strangers to be the elder brother of pretty little Blanche.

These intentions, however, were kept a dead secret; and the children knew as little as children generally do of their future prospects, or the path chalked out for them through life. With all his fancied importance, old Kettering was a good, right-feeling man; and although it is our belief that he revoked and destroyed several testamentary documents, he ended by leaving everything to his wife, in her own power, as he worded it, “in testimony of his esteem for her character, and confidence in her affection,”—previously exacting from her a solemn promise that she would eventually bequeath the bulk of her wealth to his nephew, should the lad continue to behave well, and like a gentleman—making a provision for Blanche at her own discretion, but not exceeding one-eighth of the whole available property.

The testator did not long survive his final arrangements. And though her promise cost his widow many a sleepless night, she never dreamed of breaking it, nor of enriching her darling child at the expense of her nephew.

Mrs. Kettering was a woman all over, and we will not say the idea of uniting the two cousins had not entered her mind; on the contrary, brought up together as they were, she constantly anticipated this consummation as a delightful release from her conflicts between duty and inclination. She was, besides, very fond of “Cousin Charlie,” and looked eagerly forward to the day when she might see this “charming couple,” as she called them, fairly married and settled. With all these distractions, it is no wonder that Mrs. Kettering, who, though a bustling, was an undecided woman, could never quite make up her mind to complete her will. It was a matter of the greatest importance; so first she made it, and then tore it up, and then constructed a fresh one, which she omitted to sign until things were more certain, and eventually mislaid; while, in the meantime, Blanche and “Cousin Charlie” were growing up to that age at which young people, more especially in matters of love-making, are pretty resolutely determined to have a will of their own.

The bridegroom presumptive, however, was one of those young gentlemen in whose heads or hearts the idea of marriage is only contemplated as a remote possibility, and a dreaded termination to a life of enjoyment—in much the same light as that in which the pickpocket views transportation beyond the seas. He believes it to be the common lot of mankind, but that it may be indefinitely postponed with a little circumspection, and in some cases of rare good fortune even eluded altogether.

It is curious to observe at what an early age the different instincts of the sexes develop themselves in children. Little Miss can scarcely waddle before she shoulders a doll, which she calls her baby, and on which she lavishes much maternal care, not without certain wholesome correction. From her earliest youth, the abstract idea of wife and motherhood is familiar to her mind; and to be married, though she knows not what it is, as natural and inevitable a destiny as to learn music and have a governess. Young Master, on the contrary, has no idea of being a “pater familias.” His notion of being grown up is totally unconnected with housekeeping. When “he is a man, he means to be a soldier, or a sailor, or a pastry-cook—he will have a gun and hunters, and go all day to the stable, and eat as much as he chooses, and drink port wine like papa;” but to bring up children of his own, and live in one place, is the very last thing he dreams of. “Cousin Charlie” entertained the usual notions of his kind. Although an orphan, he had never known the want of a parent—uncle and aunt Kettering supplying him with as kind and indulgent a father and mother as a spoilt little boy could desire. And although he had his childish sorrows, such as parting from Blanche, going to school, being whipped according to his deserts when there, and thus smuggled through that amusing work, the Latin Grammar; yet, altogether, his life was as happy as any other child’s of his own age, on whom health, and love, and plenty had shone from the day of its birth.

Of course, old John Kettering sent him to Eton, that most aristocratic of schools, where Charlie learnt to swim—no mean accomplishment; arrived at much perfection in his “wicket-keeping” and “hitting to the leg,” as, indeed, he deserved, for the powers of application he evinced in the study of cricket; was taught to “feather an oar” in a method which the London watermen pronounced extremely inefficient; and acquired a knack of construing Horace into moderately bad English, with a total disregard for the ideas, habits, prejudices, and intentions of that courtly bard. Of course, too, he was destined for the army. With his prospects, in what other profession could he get through his allowance, and acquire gentlemanlike habits of extravagance in what is termed good society? Old Kettering wanted to make his nephew a gentleman—that was it. When asked how Charlie was getting on at Eton, and what he learnt there, the uncle invariably replied, “Learn, sir! why, he’ll learn to be a gentleman.”

It is a matter for conjecture whether the worthy merchant was capable of forming an opinion as to the boy’s progress in this particular study, or whether he was himself a very good judge of the variety he so much admired. Our own idea is, that neither birth, nor riches, nor education, nor manner, suffice to constitute a gentleman; and that specimens are to be found at the plough, the loom, and the forge, in the ranks, and before the mast, as well as in the officers’ mess-room, the learned professions, and the Upper House itself. To our fancy, a gentleman is courteous, kindly, brave, and high-principled—considerate towards the weak, and self-possessed amongst the strong. High-minded and unselfish, “he does to others as he would they should do unto him,” and shrinks from the meanness of taking advantage of his neighbour, man or woman, friend or foe, as he would from the contamination of cowardice, duplicity, tyranny, or any other blackguardism. “Sans peur et sans reproche”—he has a “lion’s courage with a woman’s heart”; and such a one, be he in a peer’s robes or a ploughman’s smock—backing before his sovereign or delving for his bread—we deem a very Bayard for chivalry—a very Chesterfield for good breeding and good sense. We are old-fashioned though in our ideas, and doubtless our sentiments may be dubbed slow by the young, and vulgar by the great. Still, even these dissentients would, we think, have been satisfied with “Cousin Charlie’s” claims to be considered a “gentleman.”

Nature had been beforehand with old Kettering, and had made him one of her own mould. Not all the schools in Europe could have spoiled or improved him in that particular. And his private tutor’s lady discovered this quality, with all a woman’s intuitive tact, the very first evening he spent at the vicarage of that reverend Crichton, who prepared young gentlemen of fifteen years and upwards for both the universities and all the professions.

“What do you think of the new pupil, my dear?” said Mr. Nobottle to his wife—a dean’s daughter, no less!—as he drew up the connubial counterpane to meet the edge of his night-cap. “He was a wild lad, I hear, at Eton. I am afraid we shall have some trouble with him.”

“Not a bit of it,” was the reply; “he is a gentleman every inch of him. I saw it at once by the way he helped Tim in with his portmanteau. Binks, of course, was out of the way,—and that reminds me, Mr. Nobottle, you never will speak to that man,—what’s the use of having a butler? And then, he’s such a remarkably good-looking boy—but I daresay you’re half asleep already.”

And, sure enough, patient Joseph Nobottle was executing a prolonged and marital snore.

Mrs. Nobottle found no occasion to recant her predictions; and Charlie was now spending his summer vacation with Mrs. Kettering at St. Swithin’s.

We have left the party so long in their boat, that they have had ample time to “trim” or sink her. Neither of these events, however, took place; and after pulling round a Swedish brig, an enormous tub, very wholesome-looking, as Hairblower said, and holding a polyglot conversation with an individual in a red night-cap, who grinned at the ladies, and offered them “schnapps,” they turned the little craft’s head towards the shore, and taking “the flood,” as Charlie had previously threatened, bent themselves to their work, and laid out upon their oars in a style that satisfied even the seaman, and enraptured the lad.

“What a dear boy it is!” thought Mrs. Kettering, as she looked at Charlie’s open countenance, and his fair golden curls, blowing about his face, browned by the weather to a rich manly hue, and lit up with the excitement and exercise of his work. Many qualms of conscience crossed Mrs. Kettering’s mind, in the transit of that mile and a half of blue water which sparkled between “the Swede” and the shore. Much she regretted her want of decision and habits of delay in not completing the important document that should at once make that handsome boy the head of his family; and firmly she resolved that not another week should pass without a proper consultation of the universal refuge, “her family man-of-business,” and a further legal drawing-up of her last will and testament. Then she remembered she had left one unfinished, that would make an excellent rough draft for the future document; then she wondered where she had put it; and then she thought what a husband the handsome cousin would make for her own beautiful girl; and rapidly her ideas followed each other, till, in her mind’s eye, she saw the wedding—the bridesmaids—the procession—the breakfast—and, though last, not least, the very bonnet, not too sombre, which she herself should wear on the occasion.

Not one word did Mrs. Kettering hear of a long-winded story with which Hairblower was delighting Blanche and Charlie; and which, as it seemed to create immense interest and sympathy in his young listeners, and is, besides, a further example of the general superstition of sailors as to commencing any undertaking on a Friday, we may as well give, as nearly as possible, in his own words.

“Blown, Master Charles?” said the good-humoured seaman, in answer to a question from hard-working Charlie. “Blown? Not a bit of it; nor yet tired; nor you neither. I was a bit bamboozled though once somewhere hereaway. It’s a good many years past now; but I don’t think as I shall ever forget it. If you’d like to hear it, Miss Blanche, I’ll tell it you, as well as I can. You see, it was rather a ‘circumstance’ from beginning to end. Well, the fact is, I had built a smartish craft very soon after I was out of my time, and me and a man we used to call ‘Downright’ went partners in her, and although maybe she was a trifle crank, and noways useful for stowage, we had pretty good times with her when the mackerel was early, and the prices pretty stiffish. But there never was no real luck about her, and I’ll tell ye how it was. My uncle, he promised to help me with the money for her of a Friday. She was put upon the stocks of a Friday—finished off of a Friday—sailed her first trip of a Friday—and went down of a Friday; so, as I say, Friday’s the worst day, to my mind, in the whole week. Well, the Spanking Sally—that’s what we called her, Miss—always carried a weather helm. And one day—it was a Friday, too—me and my mate was coming in with a fairish cargo—Downright he said all along she was over-deep in the water—with a light breeze from the nor’-nor’-west, and the tide about half-flood, as it might be now. I had just gone forward to look to the tackle, when the wind suddenly shifted right on the other tack, and looking out down Channel, I saw what was coming. Black, was it, Master Charlie? Not a bit; it was a white one; and I knew then we should get it hot and heavy. It takes something pretty cross to frighten me, but I own I didn’t like the looks of it. Well, afore I could douse foresail the squall took her. She capsized, and down she went; and though me and Downright stood by for a start to windward, we never knew exactly how it was till we found ourselves grinning at each other over a spare oar that happened to be on board when she misbehaved, for all the world like two boys playing at see-saw with their mouths full of salt water. Downright he was an older man, and not so strong as me; so when I saw two was no company for one oar, I left it; and thinks I, if I can get off my fisherman’s boots and some of my clothes, I may have a swim for it yet.

“The squall was too soon over to get up anything like a sea, and Downright he held on to his oar and struck out like a man. Well, what between floating and treading water, I got most of things clear. I was as strong as a bull then, and though it was a long swim for a man I had before me, I never lost heart noway. Downright, too, kept on close in my wake; we didn’t say much, you may be sure, but I know I thought of his missus and four children. At last I hear him whisper quite hoarse-like, ‘Hairblower, it’s no use, I be goin’ down now!’ And when I turned on my back to look at him he was quite confused, and had let the oar cast off altogether. I couldn’t see it nowhere. I tried to get alongside of him, but he was gone. I saw the bubbles though, and dived for him, but it was no use, and after that I held on alone. The sun was getting down too, and queer fancies began to come into my head about Downright. Sometimes I thought he was in heaven then, and once I’ll swear I heard something whisper to me, but I couldn’t tell what it said. The gulls, too, they began to stoop at me, and scream in my ears; one long-winged ’un flapped me on the cheek, and for a bit I scarcely knew whether I was dead or alive myself. At last, as I came over the tops of the rollers, I saw the spars in the harbor, and the chimneys at St. Swithin’s, and for awhile I thought I should get home after all, so I turned on my side to get my breath a bit. I ought to have made a buoy, as I calculated, about this time, but seek where I would, I couldn’t see it nowhere, only looking down Channel to get my bearings a little, I saw by the craft at anchor in the bay that the tide was on the turn. My heart leapt into my mouth then. I had pulled a boat often enough against the ebb hereabouts, and I knew how strong it ran, and what my chance was, swimming, and nearly done too. First I thought I’d go quietly down at once, like my mate did, and I said a bit of a prayer, just inside like, and then I felt stronger, so I thought what was best to be done; and says I, ‘’bout ship’ now is our only chance, and maybe we shall get picked up by some fishing craft, or such like, afore we drift clean out to sea again. Well, the Lord’s above all, and though I thought once or twice I was pretty nigh out of my mind, I was picked up at last by a Frenchman. He’d no call to be where he was; I think he was there special, but I knew very little about anything else, for I was in the hospital nine weeks afore I could remember as much as I’ve told you. Howsoever, Friday’s an unlucky day, Miss Blanche, you may take your Bible oath of it.”

Hairblower did not tell them that half his earnings as soon as he got well went to the support of his mate’s widow and her four children; perhaps it was as well he did not, for Blanche’s eyes were already full of tears, and Charlie felt more than half inclined to embrace the honest seaman, but a bump against the shingle disturbed all their comments, at the same time that it broke through Mrs. Kettering’s day-dreams, and Blanche had hardly got as far as “Here we are, mamma, and here’s——” when she was interrupted by Cousin Charlie’s vociferous “Look alive, aunt. Hurrah! three cheers—who’d have thought it? There’s Frank Hardingstone!”

[CHAPTER II]
THE ABIGAIL

BLANCHE’S BOUDOIR—A LADY’S LADY’S-MAID—MRS. KETTERING AT LUNCHEON—AN HOUR’S PRACTICE—THE “MAN OF ACTION”—FOOD FOR THE MIND—A FRIEND IN NEED—A VISIT TO DAVID JONES

Whilst Mr. Hardingstone offers an arm—and a good strong arm it is—to each of the ladies, and assists them slowly up the toilsome shingle, let us take advantage of Blanche’s absence to peep into her pretty room, where, as it is occupied only by Gingham, the maid, we need not fear the fate of Actæon as a punishment for our curiosity.

It is indeed a sweet little retreat, with its chintz hangings and muslin curtains, its open windows looking upon the shining Channel, and all its etceteras of girlish luxury and refinement, that to us poor old bachelors seem the very essence of ladylike comfort. In one corner stands the book-case, by which we may discover the pretty proprietor’s taste, at least in literature. Divers stiffish volumes on the sciences repose comfortably enough, as if they had not often been disturbed, and although scrupulously dusted, were but seldom opened; but on the sofa, near that full-length glass, a new novel lies upon its face, with a paper-cutter inserted at that critical page where the heroine refuses her lover (in blank verse), on the high-minded principle that he is not sufficiently poor to test her sincerity, or sufficiently sensible to know his own mind, or some equally valid and uncomplimentary reason—a consideration for the male sex, we may remark en passant, that is more common in works of fiction than in real life—while on the table a drawing-room scrap-book opens of itself at some thrilling lines addressed “To a Débutante,” and commencing, “Fair girl, the priceless gems upon thy brow,” by an anonymous nobleman, who betrays in the composition a wide range of fancy and a novel application of several English words. Flowers are disposed in one or two common glass vases, with a womanly taste that makes the apartment in that hired house like a home; and loose music, of the double-action pianoforte school, scatters itself about every time the door opens, in a system of fluttering disorder, which provokes Gingham to express audibly her abhorrence of a place that is “all of a litter.” “She can’t a-bear it—can you, Bully?” smirks the Abigail; and Blanche’s pet bullfinch, the darling of her very heart, makes an enormous chest, and whistles his reply in the opening notes of “Haste to the wedding!” breaking off abruptly in the middle of the second bar. Gingham is very busy, for she is putting Blanche’s “things to rights,” which means that she is looking over the young lady’s wardrobe with a view to discovering those colours and garments most becoming to her own rather bilious complexion, and losing no opportunity of acquainting herself with Blanche’s likes, dislikes, feelings, and disposition, by reading her books, opening her letters, and peeping into her album.

Now, Gingham had been with Mrs. Kettering for many years, and was a most trustworthy person; so her mistress affirmed and thought. Certainly, with all her weaknesses and faults, she was devotedly attached to Miss Blanche; and it is our firm belief that she loved her young lady, in her heart of hearts, better than her perquisites, her tea, or even a certain Tom Blacke, whose dashing appearance and assured vulgarity had made no slight impression on her too susceptible feelings. “Every Jack has his Gill,” if he and she can only find each other out at the propitious moment; and although the Gill in question owned to two-and-thirty, was by no means transparent in complexion, and had projecting teeth, and a saffron-coloured front, yet she was no exception to the beautiful law of nature, which provides for every variety of our species a mate of fitting degree.

When a lady confines herself studiously to the house, avoids active exercise, and partakes heartily of five meals a day, not to mention strong tea and hot buttered toast at odd times, the presumption is, that her health will suffer from the effects of such combined hardships. With patients of Gingham’s class, the attack generally flies to the nerves, and the system becomes wrought up to such a pitch that nothing appears to afford the sufferer relief, except piercing screams and violent demonstrations of alarm upon slight and often imaginary occasions. Gingham would shriek as loudly to encounter a live mouse as Mrs. Kettering would have done to face a raging lion; and an unexpected meeting with any individual, even residing in the same house, was apt to produce a flutter of spirits and prostration of intellect, truly surprising to those who are unacquainted with the delicate organisation of a real lady’s-maid not on board wages. In this critical condition, Mrs. Gingham, on the first evening of her arrival at St. Swithin’s, “got a start,” as she expressed it, which influenced the whole destiny of her after life. Coming down from dressing her lady, she wended her way, as usual, to “the room,” that sanctum in which the etiquette of society is far more rigidly enforced than up-stairs, and to which “plush and powder” would find it far more difficult to obtain the entrée than into master’s study or “missus’s” boudoir. Expecting to see nothing more formidable than the butler, Gingham’s alarm can be more easily imagined than described, when on entering this privileged apartment, she found its only occupant a goodish-looking, flashily-dressed young man, “taking a glass of sherry and a biscuit,” and making himself very much at home.

A suppressed scream and sudden accession of faintness made it imperative on the new arrival to exert himself, and by the time they had got to “Goodness! how you frightened me, sir,” and “Dear Miss, I beg a thousand pardings!” they became very good friends, and the timid fair one was prevailed on to sit down and partake of the refreshments hospitably provided by the butler at his mistress’s expense.

Tom Blacke very soon informed the lady that “he was assistant to a professional gentleman” (in plain English an attorney’s clerk), and had merely looked in to see if the house was let, to inform his employer. “I am very unhappy, miss, to have been the cause of alarming of you so, and I trust you will look over it, and may feel no ill effects from the haccident.” To which Gingham, who was a lady of elaborate politeness, as became her station, and, moreover, much mollified by the constant use of the juvenile title “Miss,” courteously replied that, “Indeed, it had given her quite a turn, but she could not regret a meeting that had introduced her to such a polite acquaintance.” So they parted with many “good evenings,” and an openly expressed hope that they should meet again.

Tom Blacke was a scamp of the first water, but not deficient in shrewdness, to which his professional pursuits added a certain amount of acquired cunning. He naturally reflected that the sensitive, middle-aged dame whom he had thus alarmed and soothed was probably an old and esteemed servant of the family at No. 9. The whole arrangements looked like being “well-to-do.” The butler poured out sherry as if it was small beer, and probably in such an establishment the confidential maid might have saved a pretty bit of money, to which, even encumbered with the lady in question, Tom Blacke would have had no earthly objection. He was, as he said himself, “open to a match,” and being a rosy, dark-whiskered fellow, with good teeth and consummate assurance, though he never looked at you till you had done looking at him, he resolved to lay siege forthwith to the heart of Mrs. Gingham. A nervous temperament is usually susceptible; and though her fingers are occupied in folding Blanche’s handkerchiefs, and “putting away” her gloves, shoes, and etceteras, the Abigail’s thoughts are even now far away round the corner, up two pair of stairs, in the office with Tom Blacke.

“Goodness gracious! Missus’s bell!” exclaims Gingham, with a start, as if she had not expected that summons at its usual time—viz. when Mrs. Kettering came in to shake her feathers before luncheon—and she runs down, palpitating as if the house were on fire. Though we must not stay to see Blanche take her bonnet off and smooth those sunny ringlets, we may go and wait for her in the luncheon-room, to which she is soon heard tripping merrily down, with even brighter eyes than usual, perhaps from the excitement of meeting Cousin Charles’s friend, Mr. Hardingstone, whom sly Blanche knows but very little, and with whom she is consequently extremely diffident, notwithstanding the deference of his manner, and the respectful, almost admiring tone in which he always addresses the young girl.

“Blanche, have you fed Bully? and practised your music? and read your history? Women should never neglect history. And looked for the name of that weed, whilst we think of it? and shall I give you some chicken?” said Mrs. Kettering, without waiting for an answer, as she sat down to a very comfortable repast about three o’clock in the afternoon, which she called luncheon, but which was by no means a bad imitation of a good dinner.

“No, dear mamma,” said Blanche; “besides, it’s too hot for lessons; but tell me, mamma, what did Mr. Hardingstone mean about a mermaid, when he whispered to ‘Cousin Charlie,’ and Charlie laughed?”

“A mermaid, Blanche? pooh! nonsense; there’s no such animal. But that reminds me—don’t forget to look over that beautiful thing of Tennyson’s; girls should always be ‘up’ in modern literature. Do you know, Blanche, I don’t quite like Mr. Hardingstone.”

“O mamma,” said Blanche, “such a friend of Charlie’s—I’m sure we ought to like him; and I’m sure he likes us; what a way he came down through that horrid shingle to help you out of the boat; and did you see, mamma, what nice thin boots he had on? I think I should like him very much if we knew him better. Not so much as ‘Cousin Charlie,’” added the young girl, reflectively, “or dear darling Hairblower. How shocking it was when his partner went down, mamma. Did you hear that story? But I am sure Mr. Hardingstone is very good-natured.”

“That reminds me, my dear,” said Mrs. Kettering, who was getting rather flushed towards the end of the chicken; “I do hope that boy has not gone to bathe: I am always afraid about water. Blanche, hand me the sherry; and, my dear, I must order some bottled porter for you—you are very pale in this hot weather; but I am always fidgety about Charlie when he is bathing.”

From the conversation recorded above, we may gather that Mrs. Kettering, who, as we have said, was inclined to be nervous, was rapidly becoming so upon one or two important points. In the first place, with all a mother’s pride in her daughter’s beauty, she could not be blind to the general admiration excited thereby, nor could she divest herself of certain misgivings that Blanche would not long remain to be the solace of her widowhood, but that, to use her own expression, she was “sure to be snapped up before she was old enough to know her own mind.” The consequence was, that Mrs. Kettering much mistrusted all her male acquaintance under the age of old-fellow-hood—a period of life which, in these days of “wonderfully young-looking men,” seems indefinitely postponed; and regarded every well-dressed, well-whiskered biped as a possible subverter of her schemes, and a probable rival to “Cousin Charlie”; she kept him at bay, accordingly, with a coldness and reserve quite foreign to her own cordial and demonstrative nature. Frank Hardingstone she could not dislike, do what she would. And we are bound to confess that she was less guarded in her encouragement of that gentleman than of any other male visitor who appeared in the afternoons at No. 9, to leave a small bit of glazed paste-board, with an inward thanksgiving for his escape from a morning visit, or to utter incontrovertible platitudes while he smoothed his hat on his coat-sleeve, and glanced ever and anon at the clock on the chimney-piece, for the earliest moment at which, with common decency, he might take his departure.

Then the safety and soundness of Blanche’s heart was scarcely more a matter of anxiety than that of Charlie’s body; and the boy seemed to take a ghastly delight in placing himself constantly in situations of imminent bodily peril. Active and high-spirited, he was perpetually climbing inaccessible places, shooting with dangerous guns, riding wild hacks, overheating himself in matches against time, and, greatest anxiety of all, performing aquatic feats—the principal result of his Eton education—out of his depth, as his aunt observed with emphasis, which were totally inexcusable as manifest temptations of fate.

He was now gone off on an expedition with his friend and senior, Hardingstone; but well did Mrs. Kettering know that yonder blue, cool-looking sea would be an irresistible temptation, and that her nephew would “bundle in,” as he called it, to a moral certainty, the instant he got away from the prying gaze of the town.

“In the meantime,” thought she, “it’s a comfort to have Blanche safe at her studies; there is nothing like occupation for the mind to keep foolish fancies out of a young girl’s head; so bring your books down here, my love,” she added, aloud, “and after we have read the last act of ‘Don Carlos,’ you can practise your music, while I rest myself a little on the sofa.”

With all its beauties, “Don Carlos” is a work of which a few pages go a long way, when translated into their own vernacular by two ladies who have but a slight acquaintance with the German language; and Blanche soon tired of the princely step-son’s more than filial affection, and the guttural warmth with which it is expressed; so she drew mamma’s sofa to the open window, shut the door to keep her out of the draught, and sat down to her pianoforte with an arch “Good-night, mammy; you won’t hear any of my mistakes, so I shall play my lesson over as fast as ever I can.”

Snore away, honest Mrs. Kettering, in the happy conviction that you have given your daughter ample occupation of mind, to say nothing of fingers, in the execution of those black-looking pages, so trying to the temper and confusing to the ear. Snore away, and believe that her thoughts and affections are as much under your control as her little body used to be, when you put her to bed with your own hands, and she said her innocent prayers on your knee. So you all think of your children; so you all deceive yourselves, and are actually surprised when symptoms of wilfulness or insubordination appear in your own families, though you have long warned your neighbours that “boys will be boys,” or “girls are always thoughtless,” when they have complained to you of their parental disappointments and disgusts. You think you know your children—you, who can scarce be said to know yourself. The bright boy at your side, who calls you by the endearing appellation of “the governor,” you fondly imagine he is drinking in those words of wisdom in which you are laying down rules for his future life of frugality, usefulness, and content. Not a bit of it. He is thinking of his pony and his tick at the pie-shop, which will make a sad hole in the sovereign you will probably present to him on his return to Mr. Birch’s.

You describe in well-chosen language the miseries of a “bread-and-cheese” marriage to your eldest daughter, a graceful girl, whose fair, open brow you think would well become a coronet, and she seems to listen with all attention to your maxims, and to agree cordially with “dear papa,” in worldly prudence, and an abhorrence of what you call “bad style of men.” When her mother, with flushed countenance and angry tones, despatches you to look for her to-night between the quadrilles, ten to one but you find her in the tea-room with Captain Clank, “that odious man without a sixpence,” as your energetic spouse charitably denominates him. And yet, as child after child spreads its late-fledged wings, and forsakes the shelter of the parental nest, you go on hoping that the next, and still the next, will make amends to you for all the shortcomings of its seniors, till the youngest—the Benjamin—the darling of your old age—the treasure that was, indeed, to be your “second self”—takes flight after the rest, and you feel a dreary void at your heart, and a solemn, sad conviction that the best and holiest affections of an earthly nature are insufficient for its happiness—that there must be something better to come when everything here turns to heart-ache and disappointment.

But Blanche will not think so for many a long day yet. Though the minims and crotchets and flats and sharps were mixed up in sadly puzzling confusion, not a frown of impatience crossed that pure, open brow. Blanche’s own thoughts were a panacea for all the provocations that the stiffest piece of musico-mechanism, or mechanical music, could inflict. It is a task beyond our powers to detail the vague ideas and shadowy dreams that chased each other through that glossy little head; nor have we any business to try. A young girl’s brain is a page of poetry, without rhyme certainly, probably without much reason, but poetry notwithstanding. Before the world has lost its gloss of novelty, that gloss which is like the charm that dazzled the eyes of their mortal visitors, and made the fairies’ straws and withered leaves and cobwebs look like purple hangings, and tapestry, and ivory, and gold—before life has borne away much to regret, and sin brought much to repent of—before the fruit has been plucked which still hangs from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, there is a positive pleasure in the mere act of thinking; and that intellectual luxury Blanche enjoyed to the utmost, whilst her fingers were tripping over the pianoforte keys, and Mrs. Kettering was snoring comfortably on the sofa.

Now, Frank Hardingstone was prime favourite and beau idéal with “Cousin Charlie,” who, like all boys, had selected an idol a few years older than himself, and clothed him with those imaginary attributes which youth considers essential to constitute a hero. Frank was a country gentleman, in possession of his property at the early age of five-and-twenty, and, truth to tell, somewhat bored with his position. If we were to describe him, we should say he was “a man of action” rather than “a man of feeling,” or “a man of business,” or “a man of refinement,” or “a man of pleasure,” or a man of anything else. He looked energetic too, and vigorous, with his brown healthy complexion, his open forehead, clear penetrating eye, and short clustering hair and whiskers. Had he been the least thing of a coxcomb in dress or manner, the ladies would have voted him very handsome; but he was plain to simplicity in his attire, and rather abrupt in his address, so they abused him amongst themselves, but were very civil to him notwithstanding. The men, particularly the sporting ones, who are always ready with their judgments and opinions, pronounced that he “looked a good one all over,” alluding, as we understand the phrase, not so much to his virtue as his corporeal powers, and capability of resisting fatigue. We are not so far removed from a state of barbarism in the present day as we are prone to flatter ourselves. When young King James called the grim old Douglas “his Graysteil,” that royal heart was attached to Earl Angus for his magnificent frame, skill in feats of arms and efforts of strength, not for the giant’s wisdom, which was doubtful, or his honesty, which was entirely negative; and so amongst any assemblage of young gentlemen now in the nineteenth century, the quality which excites most admiration seems to be a certain combination of activity and recklessness, which they call hardness. “Was Rakes in time for parade?”—“Oh yes, he drank four bottles of claret, and never went to bed—he’s a deuced hard fellow, Rakes” (applause). “Was Captain Cropper hurt when he tumbled over that gate and broke his horse’s neck?”—“Hurt? not he; you won’t often see him hurt—there are not many fellows so hard as Cropper” (great applause); and thus it seems that the brain is chiefly honoured according to its capacity, not of reasoning, but of cellarage—and the head only becomes the noblest portion of the human frame when it may be fallen on with impunity. Tell these “physical force” gentlemen of a “clever horse,” and every ear is erect in motionless attention—talk to them of a clever man, their shoulders are elevated in pity—of a clever woman, their mouths are drawn down in disgust. But Frank Hardingstone was, to use their favourite word, “a great card” amongst all the associates of his age and standing. Square and muscular, with temper, courage, and address, he could walk, run, leap, ride, fence, play cricket, box, and swim with the best of them, and they never suspected that this powerful frame contained a mind capable and energetic as the casket in which it was concealed.

Frank was a well-informed, well-judging man—loved mathematics, logic, and such strong intellectual food—enjoyed working out a sum or problem, or otherwise exercising his powerful mind, and would go to an iron foundry, or to see a ship built, or even to the Polytechnic, for sheer amusement. Had he been born to work for his livelihood, he would have made a capital engineer; as it was, he ought to have been in the navy, or the artillery, or anything but an idle man, living at his own place in the country. He had no relations, consequently nothing to keep him at home; people said that when alone he had no established dinner-hour—a grievous sin in our gastronomic age: he was too energetic to care very much for farming, although he did occupy certain acres of his own land; and too practical to be enthusiastic about field-sports, though he was a good shot, and rode right well to hounds. Altogether, Frank was out of his place in the world; and, not having arrived at that age when, if a man don’t fit his destiny, he makes his destiny fit him, was in danger of becoming bored and careless, and a useless member of society. Luckily, Cousin Charlie’s private tutor, Mr. Nobottle, held his cure close to Hardingstone Hall, and leave to course over certain grounds thereunto belonging being applied for and granted, an introduction took place between the squire and the clergyman’s volatile pupil, which struck up an immediate alliance of obliger and obliged.

No two people could well be more different in disposition and appearance than were Frank and Charlie. The man—strong, sedate, practical, acute, and penetrating; the boy—light, active, hot-headed, and romantic, jumping to conclusions, averse to reasoning and reflection, acting on the impulse of the moment, and continually getting into scrapes, which his friend as continually had to get him out of. Yet after they had known each other a few months they became inseparable. Charlie went regularly, after his studies at the rectory, to pass the rest of the day at the hall; and Frank found a renewed pleasure in boating, cricket, hunting, shooting, and even fishing, from the keen enjoyment with which the “young one” entered upon these diversions. As for the “young one” himself, he thought there was nothing in the world equal to Hardingstone—so strong, so plucky, so well-read, so sagacious, with such faultless coats, and such a good seat upon a horse, he was the boy’s hero (we have all had such in our day), and he worshipped him accordingly. So ill could he bear to lose sight of his Mentor, even during the sunshiny hours of the vacation, that he had begged Hardingstone to come over to St. Swithin’s, no very great distance from his own place, and had promised to introduce him to the “Aunt Kettering,” and “Blanche,” of whom he had heard so much in the intervals of their amusements “by thicket and by stream.” The promise was made and kept—and Frank was living at the Royal Hotel, disgusting the landlord by the simplicity of his habits, and the waiter by his carelessness as regarded dinner, whilst he was growing day by day in the good graces even of Mrs. Kettering, and finding, as he himself thought with great penetration, a vast deal of sound merit in the fresh, inexperienced mind of Blanche. “Your cousin looks all the better for sea-bathing, Charlie,” said Hardingstone to his young companion, as they toiled slowly along the broiling parade, where every sunbeam was refracted with tenfold power from glaring houses and a scorching pavement. “It braces the system just as good head-work braces the intellect. People don’t train half enough, I think—even women ought to have sound minds in sound bodies; and look what indolent, unmeaning, insipid wretches half of them are—not like your aunt. Now that’s what I call a vigorous woman, Charlie; she’d do in the colonies or anywhere—she’s fit to be a queen, my boy, because she’s got some energy about her. As for you, young gentleman, you work hard enough out-of-doors, but you neglect your brains altogether—I don’t believe now that you have opened a book since you left Nobottle’s.”

“Wrong again, Frank, as usual,” replied Charlie; “I read for an hour this very morning, whilst I was dressing; I am very fond of reading when it’s not dry.”

“And may I ask what your early studies were, my industrious young philosopher?”

“‘Parisina’ and ‘The Bride of Abydos’—by Jove, old fellow, it’s beautiful.”

Frank made a face as if he had swallowed a pill. “‘Parisina’ and ‘The Bride of Abydos,’” he repeated, with intense disgust; “a boy of sixteen—I beg your pardon—a young man of your age reading Byron; why, you’ll arrive at a state of mental delirium tremens before you are twenty, particularly if you smoke much at the same time. I daresay you are ‘up’ in ‘Don Juan’ as well—not that I think he is half so bad for you; but no man should read sentiment in such an alluring garb as Byron dressed it, till his heart is hardened and his whiskers grown. All poetry, to my mind, has a tendency to make you more or less imbecile. You should read Bacon, my boy, and Locke, and good sound reasoning Butler; but if you must have works of imagination, take to Milton.”

“Hate blank verse,” remarked Charlie, who opined—in which prejudice we cannot help coinciding a little—that poetry is nothing without jingle; “I can’t read three pages of ‘Paradise Lost.’”

“Because your brain is softening for want of proper training,” interrupted Hardingstone; “if you go on like this you’ll very soon be fit for Jean Jacques Rousseau, and I shall give you up altogether. No, when you go back to Nobottle’s, I shall give him a hint to put you into a stiffish course of mathematics, with a few logarithms for plums, and when you are man enough to grapple with a real intellectual difficulty you will read Milton for pleasure, and like him more and more every day, for you will find——”

“Oh! bother Milton,” interrupted Charlie; “Frank, I’ll bet you half-a-crown you don’t jump that gate without touching;” and he pointed to a high white gate leading off the dusty road into the fresh green meadows, for they were now clear of the town.

Frank was over it like a bird, ere the words were out of his admiring disciple’s mouth, and their conversation, as they walked on, turned upon feats of strength and agility, and those actions of enterprise and adventure which are ever most captivating to the fancy of the young.

Charles Kettering, we need scarcely say, entertained an extraordinary fondness for all bodily exercises. Intended for the army, and “waiting for his commission,” as he expressed it, he looked forward to his future profession as a career of unalloyed happiness, in which he should win fame and distinction without the slightest mental exertion—an effort to which, in truth, Charlie was always rather averse. Like most young aspirants to military honours, he had yet to learn that study, reflection, memory, and, above all, common sense, are as indispensable to the soldier’s success as to that of any other professional man; and that, although physical courage and light spirits are very useful accessories in a campaign, a good deal more is required to constitute an officer, since, even in a subordinate grade, the lives of his comrades and the safety of his division may depend on his unassisted judgment alone. Charlie had good abilities, but it was a difficult matter to get him to apply them with anything like diligence; and his friend Hardingstone, whose appreciation of a favourite’s good qualities never made him blind to his faults, saw this defect, and did all in his power to remedy it, both by precept and example.

Mrs. Kettering’s misgivings as regarded her nephew’s duck-like propensities were founded on a thorough knowledge of his taste and habits. Another mile of walking brought the pair once more to the beach, where it curved away completely out of sight of St Swithin’s. The heat was intense; Charlie took his coat off, sat down upon a stone, and gazed wistfully at the sea.

“Don’t it look cool?” said he; “and don’t I wish, on a day like this, that I was a ‘merman bold’? I say, Frank, I must have a dip—I shall bundle in.”

“In with you,” was the reply; “I haven’t had a swim since I breasted the Mediterranean last year; only we won’t stay in too long, for I promised your cousin to bring her some of that seaweed she spoke about;” and in another minute, in place of two well-dressed gentlemen standing on the beach, a couple of hats and a heap of clothes occupied the shore, whilst two white forms might be seen, ever and anon, gleaming through the blue waves as their owners dived, floated, turned upon their sides, kicked up their feet, and performed all those antics with which masterly swimmers signalise their enjoyment of their favourite element. We often hear people wishing they could fly. Now, we always think it must be exactly the same sensation as swimming; you are borne up with scarcely an effort—you seem to glide with the rapidity of a bird—you feel a consciousness of daring, and a proud superiority over nature, in thus mastering the instinctive fear man doubtless entertains of water, and bidding ocean bear you like a steed that knows its rider. The horizon appears so near that your ideas of distance become entirely confused, and the “few yards of uneven” water seem to your exulting senses like as many leagues. You dash your head beneath the green transparent wave, and shaking the salt drops from your brow, gallantly breast roller after roller as they come surging in, and with a wild, glad sense of freedom and adventure, you strike boldly out to sea. All this our two gentlemen bathers felt and enjoyed, but Frank, who had not followed this favourite diversion for a length of time, was even more delighted than his young companion with his aquatic amusements; and when the breeze freshened and the dark blue waters began to show a curl of white, he dashed away with long, vigorous strokes to such a distance from the shore as even Charlie, albeit of anything but nervous mood, thought over-venturous and enterprising. The latter was emerging from the water, when, on looking for his companion, it struck him that Frank, in the offing, was making signals of distress. Once he saw a tremendous splash, and he almost thought he heard a cry through the roar of the tide against the shingle. “By all that’s fearful, he’s in grief,” was Charlie’s mental exclamation; and whilst he thought it the gallant boy was striking out for life and death to reach his friend. What a distance it seemed! and how his knees and thighs ached with the long, convulsive springs that shot him forward! Charlie never knew before what hard work swimming might be; and now he has reached the spot he aimed at—he raises himself in the water—what is this? Merciful Heaven! Hardingstone is down! but there is a swirling circle of green and white not ten yards before him, and the lad dives deep below the surface and comes up holding his friend’s motionless body by the hair; and now they are both down again, for Charlie is blown, and has not before practised the difficult feat of rescuing a man from drowning. But he comes up once more, and shakes his head, and coughs and clutches tightly to the twining hair, that even in the water has a death-like clamminess in his fingers. He is frightfully blown now, and a wave takes him sideways and turns him over—he is under Hardingstone, and this time he only comes up for an instant to go under again, with a suffocating feeling at his chest, and a painful pressure on his ears. Now he gulps at the salt water that appears to fill body, and lungs, and head; and now he seems to be whirling round and round; everything is green and giddy—there is something crooked before his face—and a feeling of pleasing languor forbids him to grasp it. The Great Uncertainty is very near—a glare of white light dazzles his eyes, and the waters settle over him, as he holds on to Hardingstone’s hair with the clutch of a drowning man.

[CHAPTER III]
THE HANDSOME GOVERNESS

BLIND-MAN’S BUFF—AN UNCEREMONIOUS INTRODUCTION—THE MUSIC-MISTRESS—A CATHEDRAL TOWN—THE YOUNG LADIES’ SEMINARY—MARY DELAVAL AND HER ADMIRER—AN ATTACK REPULSED—THE MILITARY ROUTED—A PRECARIOUS LIVELIHOOD

Little, indeed, do one half the world know how the other half live. Fortunate is it for us all, that we have neither the invisible cap, nor the shoes of swiftness, that did their owner such good service in the fairy tale. We might be astonished, not to say disgusted, could we follow our nearest and dearest for one short half-hour after they have left our sight; could we see them, when they think no mortal eye is upon their actions, we might smile or we might weep, according as our temperament bordered upon the sentimental or the cynical. Yet is there One that always watches. How comes it that when we hide ourselves from man, we think no shame to expose our follies to man’s Creator? Will a day come when everything shall be made known? when there will be no more hypocrisy—no more respectability—no more difference between vice on the house-top and vice in the corner? There will be some strange shifting of places when that day does come—much shrinking and wincing from the general Show-up—much scarlet shame, and livid remorse, when the brow can no more be covered, nor the past undone. ’Tis a pity we should think so little of payment till the bill comes due;—in the meantime we go blindly on, deceiving and deceived—we know but little of our neighbour, and we trust in heaven our neighbour knows nothing whatever about us; so we grope about in the dark, and call it Life.

Mrs. Kettering, on the sofa, knew nothing of what Blanche was thinking about, not six feet from her—knew nothing about Charlie, struggling convulsively for life half-a-mile out at sea—knew nothing about the woman she had left to take charge of her town-house—a pattern of respectability, sobriety, and trustworthiness, then reeling out of “The Feathers,” as drunk as Chloë, to use an old Eton expression, highly derogatory to the character of Horace’s young and tender love, she who bounded from the bard’s classical advances like a frightened kid. Our Chloë, meanwhile, was grasping a door-key, and calling for gin, regardless that she had left a tallow-candle flaring close to a heap of shavings in the back scullery, that “the airy-gate,” as she called it, was “on the latch,” and there was nobody to answer the front door. This last piece of carelessness was the means of inflicting an additional disappointment on one who had already in her short life known troubles and disappointments more than enough. Mary Delaval had walked up to the grim lion-headed knocker with a weary step and heavy heart; but when her summons was again and again unheeded, and the chance of finding out even Mrs. Kettering’s address became hopeless, she moved away with the heavy, listless air of one who has shot the last arrow from the quiver without attaining the mark, and begins to doubt if courage and energy are indeed qualities of the slightest advantage to our welfare, and whether blind fortune is not the controller of all here below.

The sun beat fiercely upon the pavement, and there was not a breath of air to refresh those arid gardens in the parched and dusty square—yet Mary put her thick, suffocating veil down before her face and quickened her pace as she went home from her hopeless errand; for to these inconveniences she was obliged to submit, because in the freest country in the world, and the most civilised capital in Europe, she was walking on foot, without a companion or a man-servant.

“Gad, that’s a good-looking woman!” said Captain Lacquers to his friend, Sir Ascot Uppercrust; “fine-ish goer, too, but tires over the pavement. If it was not so cursedly hot, ‘Uppy,’ we might cross over and get a look at her.”

“Women rather bore me,” replied Sir Ascot, who, being very young and a Body-guardsman, was of course blasé; “but I don’t mind, to oblige you,—only promise you won’t let her speak to me.” So, as Captain Lacquers turned up his moustaches, Sir Ascot went through the same pantomime, for practice against the time when his own should grow; and the couple sauntered carelessly on, and, by a dexterous manœuvre, came “right across the bows” of Mary Delaval.

We may be asked what two such undeniable dandies as good-looking Lacquers, of the Lancers, and Sir Ascot Uppercrust, of the Body-guard, should be doing in London at this time of the year. We cannot tell; for love or money probably—a redundancy of the one and a deficiency of the other being the two causes that generally drive young gentlemen to the metropolis, when their confiding companions are all “faded and gone.” Be it how it may, there they were, and Mary Delaval wished them anywhere else, as, following in her wake, they made sundry complimentary remarks upon her figure, ankles, and general appearance, which might have been gratifying if overheard casually, but which, under the circumstances, were doubtless extremely impertinent and reprehensible.

“I think I’ll get forward, and ask her if she’s going home,” said Lacquers; and, curling his great black moustaches, he quickened his pace to add this crowning insult to an unprotected woman.

Mary’s blood boiled in her veins—she was a soldier’s daughter, and her father’s spirit swelled her heart till it felt as if it would choke her—she clenched her long slender hand, and thought, almost aloud: “Oh, if I were but a man to strike the coward to the earth!—oh, if I were but a man to shoot him as he stands!” In such a mood women have shed blood ere now, but the excitement cannot last—the reaction too surely arrives; and, alas for woman’s pride and woman’s weakness! Mary returned the bold insolent stare with the defiant glance and the lofty carriage of a queen, and then—she burst into tears. It was too much; fatigue, anxiety, and disappointment had overcome her nerves, and she could have killed herself for the weakness, but she sobbed like a child.

Lacquers was a good-natured man, and a good fellow, as it is called, at heart—he was pained and thoroughly ashamed of himself. He took his hat off as if she had been a duchess, and with a readiness that argued this was not a first offence, and did more credit to his ingenuity than his candour, he begged her pardon, and assured her he thought she was “his cousin”—“Quite a mistake, ma’am, I assure you—pray forgive me—good-morning;” and so bowed himself off arm-in-arm with his companion, who had preserved an immovable stoicism, almost preternatural in one so young, during the whole interview.

As Mary Delaval walked on, and gradually recovered her composure, she reflected somewhat bitterly on her lot, and looked back upon her life with a feeling of discontent, that for a moment seemed almost to upbraid Providence that she had not had a fair chance. It was but for a moment—Mary had been schooled in adversity, and had profited by its lessons. In some situations of life such a temperament as hers might have been prone to grow fastidious and uncharitable. Her ideal of good would have been very high, and she would have looked down with contempt upon the grovelling spirits that constituted the mass of her fellow-creatures. But poverty and dependence had taught her many a lesson, hard to learn, but harder to forget. What had she to do with pride?—a question to be asked, if you contemplated her tall, graceful figure, with its majestic sweep and lofty gestures—her goddess-like head, set on as if the Greek had carved its proportions with his unerring chisel—her dark, deep-set grey eye, with its long lashes, veiling a world of penetration, reflection, ay, and sentiment, for the happy man who could bid it kindle into love—her faultless profile and firm determined mouth, her father’s legacy, with the courage it betokened—her low, lovable brow, with its masses of thick, dark brown hair plainly braided on each side of that pale, haunting face, beautiful in the deep expression which arrives only with the maturity of womanhood; with all this she might have been a queen, yet what had she to do with pride?—a question not to be asked of a friendless, desolate woman, trudging along the streets in the dreary isolation of loneliness in London, wasting her beauty in the strife for bread, wearing her talents threadbare in the drudgery of a daily music-mistress. What a lot if there were nothing beyond! To rise early in that dingy atmosphere—to breakfast hurriedly on such a spare meal as the lady’s-maid next door would deem insufficient for her mistress’s poodle—to leave the dreary lodging for the scarce less dreary street; day after day to make the same round, waiting upon vulgar parents and stupid children—day after day to bend rebellious fingers over the soul-breathing chords—to dissect the harmony of heaven into “one—two—three—four,” “one—two—three—four,”—and day after day to return, wearied out in body and mind, to the solitary room which cannot be called a home, and the rent of which, dear on account of the situation, swallows up the hard-earned coins that should decorate and supply its vacuity; with nothing to cheer, nothing to amuse, nothing to console, not even the consciousness of that beauty which is only a cause of annoyance and remark; and, above all, with nothing to love—what a lot would this be, were there not a something to look forward to—a humble hope that this is but a state of trial and probation—a humble confidence that the reward is sure to come at last!

And who was Mary Delaval? One of the many instances of a child suffering for the sins of its parents. We have said her father was a soldier, but, alas! her mother never was, properly speaking, Mrs. Delaval. Poor woman, she committed her one fault, and dearly she atoned for it. She shut the door upon herself, and her sex took good care that it should never again show a chink open to let her in. Trust them for that! she was not a proper person to be visited, and she remained outside. Captain Delaval would have married her, had he thought such a sacrifice on his part would have improved her position, for he loved her dearly; but he knew it could be of no use, in a worldly point of view, the only one in which he considered the subject, so he put it off and put it off, till too late. She never complained of the injustice done her, but it broke her heart. Rich in beauty and accomplishments, she had run away with the handsome, young artillery officer rather than be forced into a match which she detested, by a step-mother she despised. She had but one child, and on that child, it is needless to say, she doted foolishly. Delaval was a curious fellow, easy-tempered to a fault, careless of the world’s opinion, and of everything but his own comfort and indulgences; a gallant soldier, notwithstanding, as brave as a lion, and a perfect authority in the code of honour adopted by his profession. Yet, for all this, he allowed the mother of his child to go upon the stage, under a feigned name, that he might live in luxury upon her earnings. Fortunately, it may be, for all parties, the artillery officer caught cold out duck-shooting, and was honoured with a military funeral some ten days afterwards. He left all he had, a small pittance, to the woman he had so deeply injured, and she retired with her daughter into a humble cottage in the West of England, where, for a time, they lived as happy as the day is long. Her whole energies were devoted to the education of her child. She taught her all she had herself learned—no mean list of acquirements—and young Mary Delaval (for, by the deceased officer’s wish, they always bore his name) was skilled far beyond other girls of her age in the graceful accomplishments of womanhood, as well as in those deeper studies which strengthen the mind and form the character of youth. But Mary’s girlhood had an advantage, in which her mother’s was deficient. That mother, with the earnestness of one into whose soul the iron had deeply entered, impressed upon her daughter the lesson she had herself so painfully learned: “Put not your trust in man,” was the substance of many a tearful entreaty, many a sage homily, from the repentant sinner to her innocent child; and, though the girl’s faith was sadly shaken in the integrity of the creature, it was anchored all the more firmly in reliance on his Creator. The mother’s health was but precarious. Often she thought, “What will become of Mary when I must leave her alone in the world?” and, having little else to bestow, she bequeathed to her darling that best legacy of all, the heritage of an immortal soul. Poor thing! her own constitution had been sadly broken by anxiety and disappointment, and the heart-wearing conviction that she had given up home, comfort, friends, good fame, everything, to fasten her young pure love on an unworthy object. Oh! the sickening misery of that moment, when first the idol’s shrine is found to be a blank! when first the dreary misgiving dawns upon us, that the being for whom we have sacrificed our earthly all, and offered it with a smile—whom we have endued with all the attributes for which our own heart yearns—whom we have clothed with the gorgeous colouring of fancy, and decked in the false glitter of our own imagination—whom we have raised upon a pedestal, to place our neck beneath its feet, is but a stock or a stone, after all! Poor idolaters! are we not rightly punished? Have we not exalted man to be our God? and shall we worship the thing of clay with impunity? No; the very crime is made to bear its own atonement. Better that we should bow down to the dust, with crushed and empty hearts, than live on in the vain mockery of a false worship, in the degradation of a soul’s homage to a mortal deity.

Poor Mrs. Delaval (for as such was the penitent lady known) bore her punishment without a murmur; but it was a sad task to leave Mary among strangers, when failing strength and wasting limbs warned her that she must soon depart. The girl was in the first lovely bloom of womanhood, bright and beautiful as if she had never known sorrow or self-denial; and must she leave her now, when most she wants a mother’s care? God’s will be done! There is a humble grave, in the corner of a retired churchyard, far away in the West, marked by a plain grey stone, and the initial letters of a name—nothing more; and there the spring daisies are growing over the head of one who loved not wisely—who erred, and was forgiven, but not here.

Mary Delaval was left to fight single-handed against the world. A hard battle it is for those who are not furnished with the sinews of war.

The small sum bequeathed to her by her mother’s care was invested in a savings bank, which failed. By the way, the failure was casually mentioned in the morning papers, and trustees of savings banks, as they sipped their coffee, remarked, “Ah! another of these concerns broke: gross rascality somewhere, no doubt.” We hope it proved a warning to them, to look a little carefully into affairs which they had pledged themselves to superintend, and not to grudge half-an-hour’s labour, when such a trifling effort might ward off the direst calamities from their humble neighbours. What was Mary to do? Besides her beauty and the mourning on her back, she had literally nothing. And yet the girl’s heart never sank for a moment; she was possessed of that invincible Anglo-Saxon resolution, for which there is no better name than the colloquial one of “pluck.” Had she been a man, she would have distinguished herself; as it was, perhaps the humble part she had to play required more courage, self-command, and self-reliance than the career of many a hero. One advantage she had over many others equally indigent—her talents were brilliant, her education had been excellent, and the natural conclusion at which she arrived was, that she must be a governess or teacher in a school. The former situation there was much difficulty in attaining, qualities which are prized in a lady being considered great drawbacks to a governess; but youth and good looks are not so much out of place in the latter; and Mary, after considerable difficulty, and a voluminous correspondence, found herself installed as second assistant in one of those strongholds of innocence and propriety, termed a young ladies’ seminary.

How different the life on which the orphan now embarked from all her previous experience of the world! She had been a merry little girl, in barracks, petted by officers from every regiment in the service (soldiers are all fond of children), and spoilt by papa, who thought nothing in the world equal to his little pet. She had grown into womanhood in the closest retirement of a small out-of-the-way village, associating only with her refined and cultivated mother, and preparing for a life of difficulty by study and reflection; and now she found herself the inmate of a house in which there were thirty pupils, and where she had not even a room of her own, to escape from the gossiping chatter of the girls, or the solemn platitudes of Miss Primrose, the venerable Calypso who presided over these isolated nymphs. There never was such a place for ladies’ schools as the cathedral town of Bishops’-Baffler; but, as we believe all these repositories of beauty and education are conducted upon the same principles, it is needless to describe them. Health and morals are studiously attended to, and the use of the back-board inflexibly insisted on, the male sex, of course, strictly prohibited, and the arts and sciences, giving the former the preference, impartially administered. Young ladies are likewise taught to lie perfectly flat on their backs for several hours, we may say, literally, on a stretch, though of the object and intention of this feat, whether it is viewed in the light of a dreary penance, an innocent recreation, or a time-honoured institution, it does not become us, in our ignorance, to give an opinion.

But Bishops’-Baffler, with all its advantages of salubrious air, constant bell-ringing, and redundancy of ecclesiastics, has one considerable drawback to those who take upon themselves the responsible charge of young ladies in the vicinity of a cavalry barracks. The morals of a cathedral town are not very easily deteriorated; but an order from the Horse Guards, determining that a certain number of jaunty forage-caps, jingling spurs, and dyed moustaches, should be continually swaggering up and down the principal thoroughfares of any city, though it adds to the liveliness, is not supposed to conduce much to the general respectability of the place; and with all our terrors of invasion, and our admiration, as civilians, of the military character—particularly the mounted arm—we confess to a partiality for it chiefly when removed beyond flirting distance from our dwelling-house, and acknowledge with grief and shame that its vicinity, in our own experience, has invariably over-roasted our mutton, multiplied our cobwebs, and placed our female establishment generally at sixes and sevens. But if we, an independent bachelor, are thus fain to be removed from the insidious sounds of “stable-call” and “watch-setting,” from the fascinating sights of “watering-order” and “guard-mounting,” what must have been good Miss Primrose’s care and anxiety to preserve her tender fledgelings from the roving glances of those dashing serjeant-majors, far more brilliant warriors than the very lieutenants and captains of the sober foot regiment that preceded them; or the dangerous proximity of those good-looking officers in their braided frock-coats and their well-cultivated moustaches, which serve equally as an amusement to themselves and a terror to their foes—a defence in war and an occupation in peace? Miss Primrose was a large woman; but she ought to have been a giantess to cover her brood as she would have wished, when, walking two-and-two along the pavement, they were continually encountering “the Loyal Hussars,” mounted and dismounted, or entangling in the very sheep-fold of their innocence some wolf in undress uniform, who would persist in taking the wrong side of the “trottoir,” and then jingling his spurs together in feigned apologies; merely, Miss Primrose well knew, as a pretext for peeping under their parasols and “uglies” at the pretty faces, blushing not in anger beneath those defences.

But what made the principal of the establishment, as she called herself, more wrathful than anything else, was to perceive that the figure on whom these warlike glances rested with the greatest marks of approval and admiration was not one of the young ladies upon whom she “lavished a mother’s care, and conferred a gentlewoman’s education” (see advertisement)—not one of the lady pupils for whom she felt, as she expressed it, “she was responsible, body and soul,” but the majestic person, and the sweet, sad face, of the junior assistant, Mary Delaval! “Had it been myself, for instance,” thought Miss Primrose, drawing up her ample frame with a proud consciousness that, twenty years ago, she, too, had a lover, “or even Miss Meagrim” (the senior assistant, a gaunt and forbidding damsel), “who certainly has a ‘genteel’ figure, or little Miss Dashwood, or rosy Miss Wright, I could have understood it; but the idea of that dowdy thing, with her pale face and her shabby mourning! it only shows the extraordinary tastes men have, and the unaccountable creatures they are from beginning to end.”

And so poor Miss Primrose fell to ruminating on certain passages of her own early career, and a blight which nipped her young affections in the bud through the inconstancy of man.

“Have you served?” says a Frenchman to his acquaintance. “Have you suffered?” might women as well ask of each other; and there are few amongst them, we fancy, but at one time of their lives have gone through the freemasonry of sorrow.

Miss Primrose did not look like a heroine; yet she, too, had had her romance. Well, it had softened her character, for naturally she was a strong-minded woman; and the pretty gipsies over whom she presided little thought how much that austere lady sympathised with all the innocent “espiègleries” and girlish follies she thought it right to rebuke so severely.

Now, even Miss Primrose could not help remarking that, notwithstanding the open admiration Mary Delaval everywhere excited, no London beauty of half-a-dozen seasons could have accepted the homage due to her charms with greater coldness and carelessness than did the junior assistant. The girl seemed to live in a separate world of her own, apart from the common pleasures and foibles of her sex. She was kind and courteous to all, but she made no confidences, and had no female friend. She continued to wear her mourning-dress for years after the usual term that filial affection imposes, and with that mourning she seemed to bear about with her the continual memory, almost the companionship, of her dead mother. Even Miss Meagrim, whom she nursed through the jaundice, and who, with returning health, and a fresh accession of hideousness, confessed she owed her life to Miss Delaval’s care, owned that she could not make her out; and truth to tell, both that inquisitive lady and the formidable Miss Primrose herself, were a little afraid of their stately assistant, with her classical beauty and her calm, sad face.

Years rolled on, and Mary Delaval, now in the mature bloom of womanhood, was still junior assistant at Miss Primrose’s, and might have remained there till her glorious figure was bent, and her glossy braids were grey, had it not been for that order from the Horse Guards, mentioned above, which moved the head-quarters of the “Loyal Hussars” from Waterbridge to Bishops’-Baffler. Much commotion was there in the town when this regiment of “Cupidons” in pelisses marched in with all the honours of war; nor were the chaste retreats of our academical sanctuary entirely free from the excitement that pervaded the neighbourhood. Miss Primrose had her “front” freshly oiled, curled, and submitted to a process which, we believe, is termed “baking”; Miss Meagrim appeared with new ribbons in her cap, of a hue strangely unbecoming to her complexion; whilst a general feeling amongst the pupils in favour of “a walk,” whenever the weather afforded an opportunity, argued that the attraction, whatever it might be, was decidedly out-of-doors. Mary Delaval alone seemed supremely indifferent to the movements of the military, and yet her destiny it was that the arrival of these gaudy warriors influenced in a manner she of all people could least have foreseen.

We have said that of the usual pleasures of her kind she was utterly careless; but there was one enjoyment of which Mary never wearied, and in which she lost no opportunity of indulging when she could do so without attracting observation. This was, listening to a military band. It reminded her of her childhood—it reminded her of her mother—and she could stand entranced by its sounds for hours. In the gardens where the band played there used to be a porter’s lodge kept by an old fruit-woman, much patronised by the Primrose establishment, and with this ancient Pomona Mary made interest to occupy her little secluded parlour, and listen to the music, whenever her school duties permitted the indulgence. Now it happened that one sunny afternoon, when Mary, in her usual sombre attire, was snugly enjoying from her hiding-place the harmonious efforts of “the Loyals,” a certain wealthy manufacturer’s lady was seized with a physical giddiness as she promenaded in the gardens, and Captain D’Orville, the great card of the regiment, came clanking into the porter’s lodge to get a glass of water for the dame, upon whom he was in close attendance. Mary was eager to assist in a case of distress, and the Captain, an avowed admirer of beauty, was completely staggered by the apparition he encountered in place of the grimy old woman he had expected to find within. D’Orville was a gentleman of experience, and, as became a man of war, fertile in resources. He spilt half the tumbler of water over Mary’s black gown, which coup-de-main gave him an opportunity of excusing himself at length for his awkwardness, and prolonging his interview with the beautiful woman he had so unexpectedly fallen in with. The next day came a magnificent dress, and a note full of apologies, couched in the most respectful language, and addressed Mrs. Delaval. “I wonder how he found me out,” thought Mary, “and why he did not put Miss.” There was no signature to the note, and it was impossible to send the dress back, so she folded it in her drawer, and wondered what she ought to do, and what her mother would have advised. After this, wherever Mary went, there was Captain D’Orville; at church, in her school walks, when she went out with Miss Primrose—he seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of her movements, and never to lose an opportunity of gazing at her. Mary was a woman, after all; she thought it was “very disagreeable,” yet was the excitement not altogether unpleasing. Gaston D’Orville was strikingly handsome; in fact, generally considered “the best-looking fellow in the Loyals,” with a peculiar charm of manner, and a thorough knowledge of the whole art, method, and practice of war as carried on against the weaker sex. What chance had the friendless teacher’s heart against such a conqueror? This—there was no treachery in the citadel—there was no gratified vanity to be the enemy’s best auxiliary, no trifling pique nor unworthy jealousy to make a conquest valuable merely as a conquest. Mary was one of the few women who can see things as they are, and not through the glasses of their own imagination or prejudice; and when she came to know him better, she perceived the hollow selfishness of the hardened man of the world, with a perspicuity of which he would have supposed “the handsome governess” totally incapable. That she should know him better he took good care, but his advances were so well timed, so respectful, and in such thoroughly good taste, that it was impossible to take umbrage at them, and Mary found herself, she scarce knew how, meeting Captain D’Orville by accident, walking with him as far as the end of the street, amused by his conversation, and interested in his character, before she had time to think where or how she had made his acquaintance, and in what manner such an acquaintance was likely to end. And D’Orville himself was really in love, in his own way, with “the handsome governess.”

“There is no fool like an old one,” he confided to his friend Lacquers, of the Lancers, in an epistle addressed to that philosopher at Brussels. “If I were a ‘marrying man,’ which you well know I am not, I should spend the rest of my life, unjust as would be the monopoly, with this glorious Mrs. Delaval. I always call her by that matronly title; it is so much more respectful, and must make her feel so much more independent. She is only a teacher, my dear fellow, a teacher in a girls’ school; and yet, for dignity and grace, and real ‘high-bred’ manner, she might be a duchess. Such a foot and hand! I can take my oath she has good blood in her veins. Altogether, she reminds me of your old mare, Sultana—as beautiful as a star—and looks as if she would die rather than give in. I never in my life saw a woman I admired half so much; you know I am generally pretty hard-hearted, but upon my word I begin to fear I have a soft place in me somewhere. And then, my dear Lacquers, what makes the thing so exciting is this—I do not believe she cares one toss of a halfpenny for me after all, and that if I were fool enough to offer to marry her to-morrow, she would quietly balance the advantages and disadvantages of the plan, and accept, or very likely refuse me, with her calm, condescending dignity, extremely unflattering as it is, and without moving a muscle of her beautiful, placid countenance. Don’t she wish she may have the chance? and yet, absurd as it sounds, I am horribly in love with her. You will laugh at me ‘consumedly,’ and sometimes I feel half inclined to laugh at myself, dodging about the stupidest of places, as deeply smitten as if I were a cornet, regretting I ever came here, and yet not man enough to leave and go on detachment, which I have the option of doing. I shall see her again this evening, and come to a decision one way or the other, for this can’t go on. In the meantime, don’t show me up to a soul, and believe me,” etc.

That very evening, a tall, good-looking man, in undress uniform, might have been seen, as indeed he was seen, by Miss Primrose’s housemaid, walking a magnificent grey charger, with its bridle over his arm, close to the foot-pavement in Crozier Street, deep in what seemed an interesting conversation with a beautiful woman in black.

“So you don’t believe we unfortunates ever are disinterested, Mrs. Delaval? I am afraid you have a very bad opinion of the whole sex,” said the gentleman, with a slight tremor in his voice, extremely unusual to him, and contrasting strangely with the steady, measured tones of his companion. “I cannot give an opinion where I have so little knowledge, Captain D’Orville,” was the reply; she began to know him well now, and liked to talk out with him, as a woman never does with a man for whom she cares; “I can only judge by what I see. It appears to me that you all live wholly and entirely for yourselves. If you are clever, you pervert your talents to get the better of your friends in every allowable species of dishonesty; if you are brave, your courage is but made subservient to your vanity and self-aggrandisement; if you are rich, your money is devoted to your own indulgence and your own purposes. I never hear, now-a-days, of anything noble, anything disinterested, such as I have read of. But I am talking great nonsense,” said Mary, checking herself, and smiling at her own enthusiasm, unconscious of the burning admiration with which the hussar’s eyes were riveted on her face. Like all fast reckless men, there was a spice of romance about D’Orville, and he liked to bring out the latent powers of a mind somewhat akin to his own daring intellect, more particularly when that mind belonged to such a person as his companion.

“I could prove that men may be disinterested, even in the nineteenth century,” said he, and again his voice trembled as it sank almost to a whisper—“that there are men who would give up station, profession, ambition, everything,—the present they enjoy, and the future they look forward to,—for the sake of one whom they esteemed—admired—in short, whom they loved.” She would not understand him, and the calm brow was as calm as ever while she answered, “I cannot think so. I have seen quite enough as a child, for you know I am half a soldier myself, to give me no inclination to prosecute my studies in human nature. And yet I have my ideal of a hero too, but in these days there is no such character as a Leonidas, a Curtius (you know, we governesses must not forget our history), a William Tell, or a Montrose.”

“I’ll wear thy colours in my cap, thy picture next my heart,” muttered D’Orville; and then, carried away by the impulse of the moment, and forgetful of all his worldly prudence and good resolutions, he hurried impetuously on—“Listen to me, Mrs. Delaval; I may be presumptuous to speak thus to you on such short acquaintance, but you must have seen my regard—my attention—my devotion; I cannot bear to see you wasted here, thrown away in such a place as this—you who are meant for society and brilliancy, and everything that is worth having in life. Will you rely upon me? will you suffer me to rescue you from this obscure lot? will you consider?” Mary stopped dead short, drew herself up, and looked her admirer full in the face: “I am so unused to this sort of language, Captain D’Orville,” she observed, without a vestige of emotion, “that I do not clearly understand you. If what you have to say is fit for me to hear, pray explain yourself; if not, I wish you a good evening;” and pausing for an instant while she kept him, as it were, “chained in her eye,” she turned round, and walked calmly and deliberately straight home to Miss Primrose’s.

The hussar was completely taken aback by the simplicity with which his attack had been repulsed. There he stood, opposite the grey horse, utterly confounded, and not knowing whether to advance or retreat. Should he laugh the thing off, and descend to the meanness of pretending he had been in jest? He could not—no, he dared not meet that calm, contemptuous eye. What an eye it was, and how he felt its influence even now! Should he hurry after her, and make a bonâ fide proposal of marriage, such as no woman could receive but as a compliment? Psha! what! marry a governess? What would the mess say, and Lacquers, and his brother profligates? No, the good grey horse was galloped back to barracks, and D’Orville was the life and soul of the supper-party, which he returned just in time to join. What a contrast it was, with its brilliant lights, flushed countenances, noise, excitement, and revelry, to the still summer evening, and the pure, sweet face of Mary Delaval.

“She turned round and walked calmly and deliberately home.”

[Page 56]

The wealthy manufacturer’s lady thought Captain D’Orville very absent and distrait next day in the gardens; but from that time till he went on leave he devoted himself exclusively to her service, and she never dreamed that there was such a being in the world as the handsome governess at Miss Primrose’s, or the loss that establishment had sustained in its junior assistant’s departure.

And now Mary had been long dragging on her weary existence as a music-mistress in London. Miss Primrose’s severe comments on the impropriety of evening walks with cavalry officers led to a dignified rejoinder from her teacher, and the conversation terminated in a small arrear of salary being paid up, and Mary’s wardrobe (with the exception of a certain very handsome dress, afterwards sold cheap as “returned”) being packed for travelling. In London she obtained sufficient employment to keep her from starving, and that was about all. A situation as “Governess in a private family” was advertised for, and again and again she was disappointed in obtaining one, till at length hearing accidentally that Mrs. Kettering was in want of a “finishing governess” for Blanche, Mary Delaval proceeded to the town-house to make inquiries, and failing to obtain even the wished-for address, was returning in hopeless despondency, when she encountered the impertinences we have already detailed, and which were alone wanting to fill the bitter cup of dependency to overflowing. Poor Mary! hers was “a black cloud” through which it was indeed difficult to see “the silver lining.”

[CHAPTER IV]
“LIBITINA”

THE DROWNING MAN CATCHES AT A BOAT-HOOK—A BRITISH FISHERMAN—THE MOTHER STRUCK DOWN—THE SICK-ROOM—WATCH AND WARD—THE VISITOR THAT WILL NOT BE DENIED—A PRESSING SUITOR—THE CHIEF MOURNER

To keep a gentleman waiting any length of time, either in hot water or cold, is decidedly a breach of the laws of politeness, to repair which we must return as speedily as possible to “Cousin Charlie” and his friend, lying somewhat limp and blue at the bottom of “Hairblower’s” dinghy; this worthy, under Providence, having been the means of saving the rash swimmer and the gallant boy who strove to rescue him from an untimely death, which a very few seconds more of submersion would have made a certainty. That Hairblower’s boat-hook should have been ready at the nick of time was one of those “circumstances,” as he called them, which he designated “special,” and turned upon the fact of his having started a party of amateurs in the morning on a sort of marine picnic, from which they had returned prematurely, the gala proving a failure, with no greater loss than that of a spare oar and one or two small casks belonging to the seaman. It was on the hopeless chance of picking up these “waifs and strays” as they drifted down with the tide, that “Hairblower” was paddling about in a shallow skiff, denominated “a dinghy,” when his attention was arrested by an adventurous swimmer striking boldly out at a long distance from the beach. As he said himself, “There’s no depending on these gentlemen, so I thought it very likely I might be wanted, and stood ‘off and on’ till I saw Mr. Hardingstone making signals of distress. It’s no joke that cramp isn’t, half-a-mile out at sea; and I might have been too late with the boat-hook if it hadn’t been for Master Charles—dear, dear, there’s stuff in that lad you might cut an admiral out of, and they’re going to make ‘a soger’ of him!”

He had contrived to pull the two exhausted swimmers into his little craft; and although Charlie very soon recovered himself, his friend, who was farther gone in his salt-water potations, gave them both some uneasiness before he came thoroughly to his senses.

Whilst our hardy seaman is putting them upon their legs, and administering hot brandy-and-water in a fisherman’s house near the beach, we may spare a few lines to give some account of “Hairblower,” and the qualities by which he earned that peculiar designation. Born and bred a fisherman, one of that daring race with which our sea-board swarms, and from which Her Majesty’s navy and the British merchant service recruit their best men, he was brought up from his very childhood to make the boat his cradle, and the wave his home. Wet or dry, calm or stormy, blow high, blow low, with a plank beneath his foot, and a few threads of canvas over his head, he was in his element; and long ere he reached the full strength of manhood he was known for the most reckless of all, even amongst those daring spirits who seem to think life by far the least valuable of their earthly possessions. Twice, as a boy, had he volunteered to make up the crew of a lifeboat when the oldest hands were eyeing with doubtful glances that white, seething surf through which they would have to make their way to the angry, leaden sea beyond; and the men of Deal themselves, those heroes of the deep, acknowledged, with the abrupt freemasonry of the brave, that “the lad was as tough as pin-wire, heart to the backbone.” His carelessness of weather soon became proverbial, and his friends often expostulated with him on his rashness in remaining out at sea with a craft by no means qualified to encounter the sudden squalls of the Channel, or the heavy seas which come surging up from the Atlantic in a real Sou’-Wester. His uncle at length promised to assist him in building a lugger of somewhat heavier tonnage than the yawl he was accustomed to risk, and the Spanking Sally, of ill-fated memory, was the result. On the first occasion that the young skipper exultingly stamped his foot on a deck he could really call his own, he earned the nickname by which he was afterwards distinguished. His uncle expressed a hope that the owner would now be a trifle more careful in his ventures, and suggested that when it blew hard, and there was a heavy cargo on board, it was good seamanship to run for the nearest port. “Blow,” repeated the gallant lad, while he passed his fingers through thick glossy curls that the breeze was even then lifting from his forehead—“Blow, uncle! you’ll never catch me putting my helm down for weather, till it comes on stiff enough to blow every one of these hairs clean out of my figure-head!” From that hour, and ever afterwards, he was known by the sobriquet of Hairblower, and as such we verily believe he had almost forgotten his own original name.

Hardingstone was soon sufficiently recovered to walk back to his hotel, and with his strong frame and constitution scouted the idea of any ill effects arising from what he called “a mere ducking.” Once, however, on their way home, he pressed Charlie’s hand, and with a tear in his eye—strange emotion for him to betray—whispered, “Charlie, you’ve the pluck of the devil; you’ve saved my life, and I shall never forget it.” We are an undemonstrative people: on the stage, or in a book, here would have been an opportunity for a perfect oration about gratitude, generosity, and eternal friendship; but not so in real life; we cannot spare more than a sentence to acknowledge our rescue from ruin or destruction, and we are so afraid of being thought “humbugs,” that we make even that sentence as cold as possible.

Mrs. Kettering, though, was a lady of a different disposition. She was in a terrible taking when her nephew returned, and she observed the feverish remains of past excitement, which the boy was unable to conceal. Bit by bit she drew from him the whole history of his gallant efforts to save Hardingstone, and the narrow escape they both had of drowning; and as Charlie finished his recital, and Blanche’s eyes sparkled through her tears in admiration of his heroism, Mrs. Kettering rang the bell twice for Gingham, and went off into strong hysterics.

“Dear me, miss, how providential!” said the Abigail, an hour or so afterwards, popping her head into the drawing-room, where Blanche and Charlie were awaiting news of his aunt, having left her to “keep quiet”—“Dr. Globus is down here for a holiday, and Missus bid me send for him if she wasn’t any better, and now she isn’t any better. What shall I do?”

“Send for him, I should think,” said Charlie, and forthwith despatched a messenger in quest of the doctor, whilst Blanche ran up-stairs to mamma’s room with a beating heart and an aching presentiment, such as often foretells too truly the worst we have to apprehend.

The curtains were drawn round Mrs. Kettering’s bed, and Blanche, hoping it might only be one of the nervous attacks to which her mother was subject, put them gently aside to see if she was sleeping. Even that young, inexperienced girl was alarmed at the dark flush on the patient’s face, and the heavy snorting respirations she seemed to draw with such difficulty.

“O mamma, mamma!” said she, laying her head on the pillow by her mother’s side, “what is it? I beseech you to tell me! Dear mamma, what can we do to help you?”

Mrs. Kettering turned her eyes upon her daughter, but the pupils were distorted as though from some pressure on the brain, and she strove to articulate in vain. Blanche, in an agony of fear, rushed to the bell-rope, and brought Gingham and Charlie running up hardly less alarmed than herself. What could the lad do in a case like this? With the impetuosity of his character, he took his hat and hastened to Dr. Globus’s house with such speed as to overtake the messenger he had previously despatched; Gingham was sent down to hunt up a prescription of that skilful physician, which had once before been beneficial; and Blanche sat her down in her mother’s room, to watch, and tremble, and pray for the beloved form, stretched senseless within those white curtains.

She could scarce believe it. In that very room, not six hours ago, she had pinned her mother’s shawl, and smoothed her own ringlets. Yet it seemed as if this had occurred to some one else—not to herself. With the unaccountable propensity great excitement ever has for trifling, she arranged the disordered toilet-table; she even counted the curl-papers that lay in their little triangular box; then she went down on her knees, and prayed, as those pray who feel it is the last resource. When she rose, a passion of weeping somewhat relieved her feelings, but with composure came the consciousness of the awful possibility—the separation that might be—to-night, even; and the dim, blank future, desolate, without a mother. But the familiar noises in the street brought her back to the present, and it seemed impossible that this should be the same world in which till now she had scarcely known any anxiety or affliction. Then a soothing hope stole over her that these dreadful misgivings might be groundless; that the doctor would come, and mamma would soon be better; and she would nurse her, and love her more and more, and never be wilful again; but in the midst, with a pang that almost stopped her heart, flashed across her the recollection of her father’s death—the suspense, the confusion, the sickening certainty, the dreary funeral, and how, in her little black frock, she had clasped mamma’s neck, and thought she had saved all, since she had not lost her. And now, must this come again? And would there be no mother to clasp when it was over? Blanche groaned aloud. But hark! the door-bell rings, there is a steady footstep on the stair, and she feels a deep sensation of relief, as though the doctor held the scales of life and death in his hands.

Gingham, in the meantime, whose composure was not proof against anything in the shape of serious illness or danger, had been wandering over the house with her mistress’s keys in her hand, seeking for that prescription which she had herself put by, not three days before, but of which she had totally forgotten the hiding-place. Music, work-boxes, blotting-books were turned over and tumbled about in vain, till at length she bethought her of her mistress’s writing-desk, and on opening that “sanctum,” out fell a paper in her lady’s hand, which ignorant Gingham herself at once perceived was meant for no such eyes as hers. She caught a glimpse, too, of her own name between its folds, and even in the hurry and emergency of the moment we are not prepared to say that female curiosity could have resisted the temptation of “just one peep,” but at that instant “Cousin Charlie” and the doctor were heard at the door, and as Gingham thrust the mysterious document into her bosom, the former entered the room, and rated her soundly for prying about amongst Aunt Kettering’s papers when she ought to have been up-stairs attending to herself.

Dr. Globus felt Mrs. Kettering’s pulse, and turned to Blanche (who was watching his countenance as the culprit does that of the juryman who declares his fate) with a face from which it was impossible to gather hope or fear.

“Your mamma must be kept very quiet, Miss Blanche,” said the doctor, with whom his young friend was a prime favourite. “I must turn you all out but Mrs. Gingham. I should like to remain here for a while to watch the effect of some medicine I shall give her; but we cannot have too few people in the room.” And to enhance this significant hint he pointed to the door, at which Charlie was lingering with a white, anxious face.

“But tell me, dear doctor,” implored Blanche, in an agony of suspense, “pray tell me, is there any danger? Will nothing do her any good?”

Poor girl, did you ever know a doctor that would reply to such a question?

“We must keep her quiet, my dear,” was all the answer she got; and Blanche was forced to go down-stairs, much against her will, and wait in blank dismay, with her hand clasping Cousin Charlie’s, and her eyes turned to the clock, on which the minutes seemed to lengthen into hours, whilst ever and anon a footstep overhead seemed to indicate there would be some news of the patient; yet no door opened, no step was heard upon the stairs. Not a word did the cousins exchange, though the boy moved at intervals restlessly in his chair. The calm, beautiful evening deepened into the purple haze of night over the Channel, the lamps began to twinkle in the street, and still the cousins sat and waited, and still nobody came.

When the door was shut, and Globus was left alone with his patient, a solemn, sagacious expression stole over the worthy doctor’s face. He had long been the personal friend of Mrs. Kettering, as well as “her own medical man”; and although he would probably have felt it more had he not been called in professionally, yet it was with a heavy heart and a desponding brow that he confessed to himself there was little or no hope. He had put in practice all that skill and experience suggested—he had sent for a brother physician of high local repute, and now there was nothing more to be done save to wait for the result; so the kind-hearted man sat himself down in the chair Blanche had so lately occupied, and pondered over the many changing years, now like a dream, during which he had known that life which in yonder bed was dribbling out its few remaining sands. He remembered her the merry, black-eyed girl (once he thought her eyes brighter than those of Mrs. Globus); he saw her again the sparkling bride, the good-humoured matron, the doting mother, the not inconsolable widow. It was only yesterday he bowed to her on the parade, and thought how young she looked with her grown-up daughter; he was to have dined with them to-morrow; and the uncertainty of life looked him startlingly in the face. But the pride of science soon came to the rescue, and the practised healer forgot his private feelings in his professional reflections. And thus Dr. Globus passed his holiday—one afternoon of the precious fourteen, in which he had promised himself the fresh breezes and the out-of-doors liberty of St. Swithin’s. Mrs. Globus and the children were picking up shells on the beach; his brother, whom he had not seen for ten years, was coming to dinner; but the doctor’s time is the property of the suffering and the doomed, and still Globus sat and watched and calculated, and saw clearly that Mrs. Kettering must die.

The hours stole on, candles were brought into the drawing-room, and the cousins tried in vain with parched lips and choking throats to have some tea. A ring at the door-bell heralded the arrival of the other doctor, a stout man in a brown greatcoat, smelling of the night-dew. Blanche ran out to meet him—it was a relief to do something—and beckoned him silently up-stairs. She even stole into the sick-room, and caught a glimpse of her mother’s figure, recumbent and covered up; but the curtains were half closed, and she could not see the dear face. Globus kindly drew her away, and shut her out, but not before the frightened girl had glanced at a dark-stained handkerchief on the floor, and sickened with the conviction that it was clotted with blood. Outside, the little housemaid was sitting on the stairs, crying as if her heart would break. Poor Blanche sat down by her in the darkness, and mingled her tears with those of the affectionate servant. She began to get hopeless now. After a while she went down again to Cousin Charlie, and was surprised to find it so late; the clock pointed to five minutes past ten; and with trembling hands she closed the windows, listening for an instant to the dash of the waves outside, with a strange, wild feeling that they never sounded so before. Then she covered up “Bully,” who had been whistling ever since the lights were brought; but she had not the heart to exchange a syllable with Cousin Charlie; and that poor lad, affecting a composure that his face belied, was pretending to spell over the evening paper, of which he was vacantly staring at the advertisement sheet. Again there is a movement above, and the two doctors adjourn to another room to discuss the patient’s case. Great is the deference paid by the local Esculapius to the famous London physician. What Dr. Globus recommended—what Dr. Globus said—what Dr. Globus thought—were quoted by the former ever afterwards; yet could one have witnessed the consultation of these two scientific men, it might have been instructive to observe how professional etiquette never once gave way to the urgency of the moment—how the science of curing, like that of killing, has its forms, its subordination, its ranks, its dignities, and its “customs of war in like cases.” Gingham was left with the patient, and the weeping housemaid stood ready to assist, the latter showing an abundance of nerve and decision, when called upon to act, which her behaviour on the staircase would scarcely have promised. Even Gingham was less flustered than usual, now there was really something to be frightened at. Woman is never seen to such advantage as when tending the sick; the eye that quails to see a finger pricked, the hand that trembles if there is but a mouse in the room, will gaze unflinchingly on the lancet or the cupping-glass, will apply the leeches without a shudder, or pour the soothing medicament, drop by drop, into the measured wine-glass, with the steadiness and accuracy of a chemical professor. Where man with all his boasted nerve turns sick and pale, and shows himself worse than useless, woman vindicates the courage of her sex, that unselfish heroism, that passive devotion, which is ever ready to bear and be still. They seem to have a positive pleasure in alleviating the pangs of the sufferer, and taking care of the helpless. Look at a bustling matron, blessed with a large family of children, and whatever may be the opinion of the “paterfamilias,” however much he may grunt and grumble (so like a man!) at having the quiver as full as it will hold, she, in her heart of hearts, welcomes every fresh arrival with the hospitable sentiment of “the more the merrier”; and much as she loves them all, lavishes her warmest affections on the last little uninteresting morsel of underdone humanity, which, on its first appearance, is the most helpless, as it is the least attractive, of Nature’s germinating efforts; unless, indeed, she should own a dwarf, a cripple, or an idiot amongst her thriving progeny—then will that poor creature be the mother’s chiefest treasure, then will woman’s love and woman’s tenderness hover with beautiful instinct round the head which Nature itself seems to have scouted, and the mother will press to her heart of hearts the wretched being that all else are prone to ridicule and despise. So in the sick-room, when “pain and anguish wring the brow,” woman wipes the foaming lip and props the sinking head. Woman’s care speeds the long doubtful recovery, and woman’s prayers soothe the dying hour, when hope has spread her wings and fled away. In works like these she vindicates her angel-nature, in scenes like these she perfects that humble piety of which it appears to us she has a greater share than the stronger sex. The proud Moslem boasts there will be no women in his material paradise; let us look to ourselves, that the exclusion for us be not all the other way.

Blanche sits vacantly in the drawing-room, and thinks the doctors’ consultation is to be endless, and that it is cruel to keep her so long from her mamma. Charlie puts down the paper, and drawing kindly towards his cousin, finds courage to whisper some few words of consolation, which neither of them feel to be of the slightest avail. He has been thinking that Uncle Baldwin ought to be sent for, but he dares not excite more alarm in his companion’s mind by such a suggestion, and he meditates a note to his friend Hardingstone to manage it for him. Uncle Baldwin, better known in the world as Major-General Bounce, is Mrs. Kettering’s brother, and lives in the midland counties—“he should be sent for immediately,” thinks Charlie, “if he is to see my aunt alive.” Blanche is getting very restless, and thinks she might soon go up-stairs and see——Hush! the bedroom door opens—a rapid footstep is heard on the stairs—it is Gingham running down for the doctors—Blanche rushes to the door and intercepts her on the landing-place—the woman’s face is ashy pale, and her eyes stand strangely out in the dubious light—her voice comes thick and husky. The young girl is quite composed for the instant, and every syllable thrusts straight to her heart as the maid stammers out, “O Miss Blanche! Miss Blanche! your mamma——”

The sun rose, and the waters of the Channel glittered in the morning light, but the shutters were closed at No. 9—and honest Hairblower drew his rough hand across his eyes, as he sought to get some news of “poor Miss Blanche.” He met Hardingstone coming from the house, whither the “man of action” had repaired on the first intelligence of their calamity, and had made himself as useful as he could to the afflicted family. “Do she take on, poor dear?” said Hairblower, scarcely restraining the drops that coursed down his weather-beaten cheeks. “Such a young thing as that, Mr. Hardingstone, to go loose without a mother—and the poor lady, too, gone down like in a calm. They will not be leaving, sir, just yet, will ’em? I couldn’t bear to think of Miss Blanche cruising about among strangers, till she begins to hold up a bit—she should come out and get the sea-air, as soon as she is able for it, and I’ll have the boat covered in and ready day and night——O Mr. Hardingstone, what can I do, sir, for the poor young lady in her distress?” Frank shook the honest fellow’s hand, and could scarcely command his own feelings enough to reply. He had done everything that was necessary in the house of death, had sent off an express for the General, sealed up Mrs. Kettering’s jewel-boxes, writing-cases, etc., and performed all those offices of which the two children, for so we might almost call them, were incapable, and which, even in the presence of the Destroyer, are still hard, cold matters of business, and must be attended to, like the ordering dinner, and the arrangement for the funeral, though the survivors’ hearts may ache, and their wounds burst out afresh, till they too wish their bodies were laid at rest beneath the sod, and their spirits were away, free and unmourning, with the loved one in those realms with which, sooner or later, we are all to be acquainted.

On the child’s misery it would not become us to dwell. There are feelings over which a veil is drawn too sacred to be disturbed by mortal hand. Well might Margaret Douglas exclaim, in the old ballad—

“True lovers I may have many a one,

But a father once slain, I shall never see mair.”

And when a young, affectionate girl is wailing for a parent, the voice of sorrow cannot be hushed, nor the tears dried, till grief has had its course, and time has cured the wounds now so excruciating, which ere long shall be healed over and forgotten. “Cousin Charlie,” boy-like, was more easily consoled; and although at intervals his kind aunt’s voice would seem to sound in his ears, and the sight of her work, her writing, or any other familiar object associated with herself would bring on a fresh accession of grief, yet in the society of Frank Hardingstone, and the anticipation of Uncle Baldwin’s arrival, he found objects to divert his thoughts, and direct them to that brilliant inheritance of the young, the golden future, which never shall arrive. He was, besides, a lad of a sanguine, imaginative disposition, and these are the spirits over which sorrow has least power. The more elastic the spring, the more easily it regains its position; and a sensitive organisation, after the first recoil, will rise uninjured from a shock that prostrates more material souls to the very dust.

Over the rest of the household came the reaction that invariably follows the first sensations of awe inspired by sudden death. There was an excitement not altogether unpleasing in the total derangement of plans, the uncertainty as to the future created amongst the domestics by the departure of their mistress. The butler knew he should have to account for his plate, and was busied with his spoons and his inventory; the footman speculated on the next place he should get, with “a family that spent nine months of the year in London”; the very “boy in buttons” thought more of his promotion than of the kind mistress who had housed, clothed, and fed him when a parish orphan. Gingham herself, that tender damsel, was occupied and excited about Miss Blanche’s mourning, and her own “breadths” of black and “depths” of crape usurped the place of unavailing regrets in a mind not calculated to contain many ideas at a time. Besides, the pleasure of “shopping,” inexplicable as it may appear to man’s perverted taste, is one which ravishes the female mind with an intense delight; and what with tradesmen’s condolences, the interminable fund of gossip created thereby, the comparing of patterns, the injunctions on all sides “not to give way,” and the visits to linen-drapers’ shops, we cannot but confess that Gingham’s spirits were surprisingly buoyant, considering the circumstance under which she swept those costly wares from their tempting counters. Tom Blacke, too, lost no time in assuring her of his sympathy.

“O, Miss Gingham,” said wily Tom, as he insisted on carrying a huge brown-paper parcel home for her, and led the way by a circuitous route along the beach, “O, Miss Gingham, what a shock for your affectionate natur’ and kindly ’eart! Yet sorrow becomes some people,” added Tom, reflectively, and glancing his dark eyes into Gingham’s muddy-looking face, as he offered her an arm.

“Go along with you, Mr. Blacke,” replied the sorrowing damsel, forgetful of her despondency for the moment, which emboldened him to proceed.

“You ought to have a home, Miss Gingham—you ought to have some one to attach yourself to—you that attaches everybody” (he ventured a squeeze, and the maiden did not withdraw the brown thread glove which rested on his arm; so Tom mixed it a little stronger)—“a ’onest man to depend on, and a family and such like.”

Tom flourished his arm along a line of imaginary olive branches, and Gingham represented that “she couldn’t think of such a thing.”

“Service isn’t for the likes of you, miss,” proceeded the tempter; “hindependence is fittest for beauty” (Tom peeped under the bonnet, and “found it,” as he expressed himself, “all serene”); “a cottage and content, and a ’eart that is ’umble may ’ope for it ’ere;” with which concluding words Mr. Blacke, who was an admirer of poetry, and believed with Moore that would be given to song “which gold could never buy,” imprinted a vigorous kiss on those not very tempting lips, and felt that the day was his own.

Ladies of mature charms are less easily taken aback by such advances than their inexperienced juniors. The position, even if new in practice, is by no means so in theory, and having often anticipated the attack, they are the more prepared to receive it when it arrives. Ere our lovers reached No. 9 he had called her by her Christian name, and “Rachel” had promised to think of it. As she closed the “area-gate” Gingham had given her heart away to a scamp. True, she was oldish, uglyish, wore brown thread gloves, and had a yellow skin; yet for all this she had a woman’s heart, and, like a very woman, gave it away to Tom Blacke without a return.

In good time General Bounce arrived, and took the command from Frank Hardingstone, with many gracious acknowledgments of his kindness. The General was a man of far too great importance to be introduced at the conclusion of a chapter. It is sufficient to say, that with military promptitude and decision (which generally means a disagreeable and abrupt method of doing a simple thing) he set the household in order, arranged the sad ceremony, over which he presided with proper gravity, packed Cousin Charlie off to his private tutor’s, paid the servants their wages, and settled the departure of himself and niece for his own residence.

Do we think ourselves of account in this our world?—do we think we shall be so missed and so regretted? Drop a stone into a pool, there is a momentary splash, a bubble on the surface, and circle after circle spreads, and widens and weakens, till all is still and smooth as though the water had never been disturbed; so it is with death. There is a funeral and crape and weeping, and “callings to inquire,” then the intelligence gets abroad amongst mere acquaintances and utter strangers, a line in the Times proclaims our decease to the world. Ere it has reached the colonies we are well-nigh forgotten at home.

Mrs. Kettering was at rest in her grave; the General was full of his arrangements and his responsibilities; Charlie was back amongst his mathematics and his cricket and his Greek and Latin; the servants were looking out for fresh places; and the life that had disappeared from the surface was forgotten by all. By all save one; for still Blanche was gazing on the waters and mourning for her mother.

[CHAPTER V]
UNCLE BALDWIN

NEWTON-HOLLOWS AND ITS GROUNDS—BACHELORS’ BILLETS—THE HEIRESS AND HER COMPANION—GENERAL BOUNCE—A GENTLEMAN FARMER—THE LADIES’ CLUB—A WOMAN’S IDEAL

In an unpretending corner of the “Guyville Guide and Midland Counties’ Directory” a few lines are devoted to inform the tourist that “Newton-Hollows, post-town Guyville, in the Hundred of Cow-capers, is the seat of Major-General Bounce, etc., etc., etc. The lover of the picturesque obtains, from the neighbourhood of this mansion, a magnificent view, comprising no less than seventeen churches, a vast expanse of wood and meadow-land, the distant spires of Bubbleton, and the imposing outline of the famous Castle Guy.” Doubtless all these beauties might have been conspicuous had the adventurous tourist chosen to climb one of the lofty elms with which the house was surrounded; but from the altitude of his own stature he was obliged to content himself with a far less extensive landscape, seeing that the country was closely wooded, and as flat as his hand. But Newton-Hollows was one of those sweet little places, self-contained and compact, that require no distant views, no shaggy scenery, no “rough heath and rugged wood,” to enhance their charm. Magnificent old timber, “the oak and the ash, and the bonny ivy tree,” to say nothing of elms and chestnuts, dotted the meadows and pastures in which the mansion was snugly ensconced. People driving up, or rather along, the level approach, were at a loss to make out where the farms ended and the park began. Well-kept lawns, that looked as if they were fresh mown every morning, swept up to the drawing-room windows, opening to the ground; not a leaf was strewn on sward or gravel; not a weed, nor even a daisy, permitted to show its modest head above the surface; and as for a rake, roller, or a gardener’s hat being left in a place where such instruments have no business, why, the General would have made the unfortunate delinquent eat it—rake, roller, or “wide-a-awake”—and discharged him besides on the spot. No wonder the flower-garden adjoining the conservatory, which again opened into the drawing-room, looked so trim and well-kept: “Master’s” hobby was a garden, and, though utterly ignorant of the names, natures, and treatment of plants, he liked to see every variety in his possession, and spared no expense on their cultivation; and so a head gardener and five subalterns carried off all the prizes at the Bubbleton and Guyville horticulturals; and the General complained that he could never get a nosegay for his table, nor a bit of fruit for his dessert fit to eat. Yet were there worse “billets” in this working world than Newton-Hollows. The Bubbleton “swells” and county dignitaries found it often “suit their hunting arrangements” to go, over-night, and dine with “old Bounce.” He would always “put up a hack for you,” than which no effort of hospitality makes a man more deservedly popular in a hunting country; and his dinners, his Indian dishes, his hot pickles, his dry champagne, his wonderful claret (“not a headache in a hogshead, sir,” the General would say, with a frown of defiance), were all in keeping with the snug, comfortable appearance of his dwelling, and the luxurious style which men who have served long in the army, and often been obliged to “rough it,” know so well how to enjoy. Then there was no pretension about the thing whatever. The house, though it ranged over a considerable extent of ground, particularly towards the offices, was only two storeys high—“a mere cottage,” its owner called it; but a cottage in which the apartments were all roomy and well-proportioned, in which enough “married couples could be put up” to furnish a very good-sized dinner-table, and the bachelors (we like to put in a word for our fellow-sufferers) were as comfortably accommodated as their more fortunate associates, who travelled with wives, imperials, cap-boxes, and ladies’-maids.

It is a bad plan to accustom unmarried gentlemen to think they can do without their comforts; it makes them hardy and independent, and altogether averse to the coddling and care and confinement with which they expect to find matrimony abound. As we go through the world, in our desolate celibacy, we see the net spread in sight of many a bird, and we generally remark, that the meshes which most surely entangle the game are those of self-indulgence and self-applause. You must gild the wires, and pop a lump of sugar between them too, if you would have the captive flutter willingly into the cage. When young Cœlebs comes home from hunting or shooting, and has to divest himself of his clammy leathers or dirt-encumbered gaiters in a room without a fire and with a cracked pane in the window, he takes no pleasure in his adornment, but hurries over his toilet, or perhaps begins to smoke. This should be avoided: we have known a quiet cigar do away with the whole effect of a bran-new pink bonnet. But if, on the contrary, he finds a warm, luxurious room, plenty of hot water, wax candles on the dressing-table, and a becoming looking-glass, the quarry lingers over the tie of its neckcloth with a pleasing conviction that that is not half a bad-looking fellow grinning opposite, and moreover that there is a “deuced lovable girl” down-stairs, who seems to be of the same opinion. So the thing works: vows are exchanged, trousseaux got ready, settlements drawn out, the lawyers thrive, and fools are multiplied. Had Newton-Hollows belonged to a designing matron, instead of an unmarried general officer, it might have become a perfect mart for the exchanges of beauty and valour. Hunting men are pretty usually a marrying race; whether it be from daily habits of recklessness, a bold disregard of the adage which advises “to look before you leap,” or a general thick-headedness and want of circumspection, the red-coated Nimrod falls an easy prey to any fair enslaver who may think him worth the trouble of subjection; and for one alliance that has been negotiated in the stifling atmosphere of a London ball-room, twenty owe their existence to the fresh breezes, the haphazard events, and surrounding excitement of the hunting-field.

General Bounce’s guests, as was natural in the country where he resided, were mostly men like mad Tom,

“Whose chiefest care

Was horse to ride and weapon wear;”

nor, like him, would they have objected to place gloves in their caps or carry any other favours which might demonstrate their own powers of fascination, and their rank in the good graces of the heiress. Yes, there was an heiress now at Newton-Hollows. Popular as had always been the General’s hospitality, he was now besieged with hints, and advances, and innuendoes, having for their object an invitation to his house. What a choice of scamps might he have had, all ready and willing to marry his niece—all anxious, if possible, to obtain even a peep “of that little Miss Kettering, not yet out of the school-room, who is to have ever so many hundred thousand pounds, and over whom old Bounce keeps watch and ward like a fiery dragon.”

But the passing years have little altered Blanche’s sweet and simple character, though they have rounded her figure and added to her beauty. She is to “come out” next spring, and already the world is talking of her charms and her expectations. A pretty picture is so much prettier in a gilt frame, and she will probably begin life with the ball at her foot; yet is there the same soft, artless expression in her countenance that it wore at St. Swithin’s ere her mother’s death—the same essence of beauty, independent of colouring and features, which may be traced in really charming people from the cradle to the grave, which made Blanche a willing child, is now enhancing the loveliness of her womanhood, and will probably leave her a very pleasant-looking old lady.

“And Charlie comes home to-morrow,” says Blanche, tripping along the gravel walk that winds through those well-kept shrubberies. “I wonder if he’s at all the sort of person you fancy, and whether you will think him as perfect as I do?”

“Probably not, my dear,” replied her companion, whose stately gait contrasted amusingly with Blanche’s light and playful gestures. “People seldom come up to one’s ideas of them; and I am sure it is not your fault if I do not expect to meet a perfect hero of romance in your cousin.” We ought to know those low thrilling tones; we ought to recognise the majestic figure—the dark sweeping dress—the braided hair and classical features of that pale, serious face. Mary Delaval is still the handsome governess; and Blanche would rather part with her beauty or her bullfinch, or any of her most prized earthly possessions, than that dear duenna, who, having finished her education, is now residing with her in the dubious capacity of part chaperon, part teacher, and part friend.

“Well, dear, he is a hero,” replied Blanche, who always warmed on that subject. “Let me see which of my heroes he’s most like: Prince Rupert—only he’s younger and better-looking” (Blanche, though a staunch little cavalier, could not help associating mature age and gravity with the flowing wigs in which most of her favourites of that period were depicted); “Claverhouse, only not so cruel,—he is like Claverhouse in the face, I think, Mrs. Delaval; or ‘bonnie Prince Charlie’; or Ivanhoe,—yes, Ivanhoe, that’s the one; he’s as brave and as gentle; and Mr. Hardingstone, whose life he saved, you know, says he rides most beautifully, and will make a capital officer.”

“And which of the heroes is Mr. Hardingstone, Blanche?” said her friend, in her usual measured tones. Blanche blushed.

“Oh, I can’t understand Mr. Hardingstone,” said she; “I think he’s odd-ish, and quite unlike other people; then he looks through one so. Mrs. Delaval, I think it’s quite rude to stare at people as if you thought they were not telling the truth. But he’s good-looking, too,” added the young lady, reflectively; “only not to be compared with Charlie.”

“Of course not,” rejoined her friend; “but it is fortunate that we are to enjoy the society of this Paladin till he joins his regiment—Lancers, are they not? Well, we must hope, Blanche, to use the language of your favourites of the middle ages, that he may prove a lamb among ladies, as he is doubtless a lion among lancers.”

“Dear Charlie! how he will enjoy his winter. He is so fond of hunting; and he is to have Hyacinth, and Haphazard, and Mayfly to ride for his own—so kind of Uncle Baldwin; but I must be off to put some flowers in his room,” quoth Blanche, skipping along the walk as young ladies will, when unobserved by masculine eyes; “he may arrive at any moment, he’s such an uncertain boy.”

“Zounds! you’ve broke it, you fiddle-headed brute!” exclaimed a choleric voice from the further side of a thick laurel hedge, startling the ladies most unceremoniously, and preparing them for the spectacle of a sturdy black cob trotting rebelliously down the farm road, with a fragment of his bridle dangling from his head, the remaining portion being firmly secured to a gate-post, at which the self-willed animal had been tied up in vain. Another instant brought the owner of the voice and late master of the cob into the presence of Mrs. Delaval and his niece. It was no less a person than General Bounce.

“Uncle Baldwin, Uncle Baldwin,” exclaimed Blanche, who turned him round her finger as she did the rest of the establishment, “where have you been all day? You promised to drive me out—you know you did, you wicked, hard-hearted man.”

“Been, my dear?” replied the General, in a tone of softness contrasting strangely with the flushed and vehement bearing of his outward man; “at that—(no, I will not swear)—at that doubly accursed farm. Would you believe the infernal stupidity of the people—(excuse me, Mrs. Delaval)—men with heads on their shoulders, and hair, and front teeth like other people—and they’ve sent the black bull to Bubbleton without winkers—without winkers, as I live by bread; but I won’t be answerable for the consequences,—no, I won’t make good any damages originating in such carelessness; no, not if there’s law in England or justice under heaven! But, my sweet Blanche,” added the General, in a tone of amiable piano, the more remarkable for the forte of his previous observations, “I’ll go and get ready this instant, my darling; you shan’t be disappointed; I’ll order the pony-carriage forthwith. Holloa! you, sir; only let me catch you—only let me catch you, that’s all; I’ll trounce you as sure as my name’s Bounce!” and the General, without waiting for any further explanation, darted off in pursuit of an idle village boy, whom he espied in the very act, flagrante delicto, of trespassing on a pathway which the lord of the manor had been several years vainly endeavouring to shut up.

General Bounce was such a medley as can only be produced by the action of a tropical sun on a vigorous, sanguine Anglo-Saxon temperament. Specimens are becoming scarcer every day. They are seldom to be met with in our conventional and well-behaved country, though here and there, flitting about a certain club celebrated for its curries, they may be discovered even in the heart of the metropolis. On board transports, men-of-war, mail-steamers, and such-like government conveyances, they are more at home; in former days they were occasionally visible inside our long coaches, where they invariably made a difficulty about the window; but in the colonies they are to be seen in their highest state of cultivation; as a general rule, the hotter the climate, the more perfect the specimen.

Our friend the General was a very phœnix of his kind. In person he was short, stout, square, and active, with black twinkling eyes and a round, clean-shaved face—small-featured and good-humoured-looking, but choleric withal. His naturally florid complexion had been baked into a deep red-brown by his Indian campaigns. If Pythagoras was right in his doctrine concerning the transmigration of souls, the General’s must have previously inhabited the person of a sturdy, snappish black-and-tan terrier. In manner he was alternately marvellously winning and startlingly abrupt, the transition being instantaneous; whilst in character he was decided, energetic, and impracticable, though both rash and obstinate, with an irritable temper and an affectionate heart. He had seen service in India, and by his own account had not only experienced sundry hair-breadth ’scapes bordering on the romantic, but likewise witnessed such strange sights and vagaries as fall to the lot of few, save those whose bodily vision is assisted by that imaginative faculty denominated “the mind’s eye.”

The General was a great disciplinarian, and piqued himself much upon the order in which he kept the females of his establishment, Blanche especially, whose lightest word, by the way, was his law. Indeed, like many old bachelors, he entertained a reverence almost superstitious for the opposite sex, and a few tears shed at the right moment would always bear the delinquent harmless, whatever the misdemeanour for which she was taken to task. The men, indeed, found him more troublesome to deal with, and the newly-arrived were somewhat alarmed at his violent language and impetuous demeanour; but the older servants always “took the bull by the horns” fearlessly and at once, nor in the end did they ever fail to get their own way with a master who, to use their peculiar language, “was easily upset, though he soon came round again.” What made the General an infinitely less disagreeable man in society than he otherwise would have been, was the fact of his having a farm, which farm served him as a safety-valve to carry off all the irritation that could not but accumulate in an easy, uneventful life, destitute of real grievances as of the stirring, active scenes to which he had been accustomed in his earlier days. If a gentleman finds it indispensable to his health that he should be continually in hot water—that he should always have something to grumble at, something to disappoint him, let him take to farming—his own land or another’s, it is immaterial which; but let him “occupy,” as it is called, a certain number of acres—and we will warrant him as much “worry” and “annoyance” as the most “tonic”-craving disposition can desire. Let us accompany our retired warrior to his farm-yard, whither, after an ineffectual chase, he at length followed his black pony, forgetful of Blanche and the drive, on which, in the now shortening daylight, it was already too late to embark.

In the first place, the bull was come back—he had been to Bubbleton minus his winkers, but no one in that salubrious town caring to purchase a bull, he had returned to his indigenous pastures and his disgusted owner—therefore must the bailiff hazard an excuse and a consolation, in which the words “poor,” and “stock,” and the “fair on the fifteenth,” are but oil to the flame.

“Fair! he’ll be as thin as a whipping-post in a week—if anybody bids five shillings for him at the fair, I’ll eat him, horns and all! What weight are those sheep?” adds the General, abruptly turning to another subject, and somewhat confusing his deliberate overseer by the suddenness of the inquiry. “Now those turnips are not fit for sheep! I tell you they ought to be three times the size. Zounds, man, will you grow larger turnips? And have I not countermanded those infernal iron hurdles a hundred times? a thousand times!! a hundred thousand times!!! Give me the pail, you lop-eared buffoon—do you call that the way to feed a pig?” and the General, seizing the bucket from an astonished chaw-bacon, who stood aghast, as if he thought his master was mad, managed to spill the greater part of the contents over his own person and gaiters, rendering a return home absolutely indispensable. He stumped off accordingly, giving a parting direction to some of his myrmidons to catch the black cob, in as mild a tone and with as good-humoured a countenance as if he had been in this heavenly frame of mind the whole afternoon.

Now the General, when he first began to live alone, and to miss the constant interchange of ideas which a military life encourages, had acquired a habit of discoursing to himself on such subjects as were most interesting to him at the time; so as he toddled merrily along, much relieved by the bucolic blow-up, and admired his sturdy legs and swung his short arms, all the way up the long gravel-walk towards the house, his thoughts framed themselves into a string of disjointed sentences, now muttered scarcely above a whisper, now spoken boldly out in an audible tone, which would have led a stranger to suppose he was carrying on a conversation with some one on the other side of the screening Portugal laurels. “Thick-headed fellows, these bumpkins,” soliloquised the General, “not like my old friends at Fool-a-pore—could make them skip about to some purpose: there’s nothing like a big stick for a nigger—never mind. I’m young enough to begin again—man of iron—what an arm! what a leg! might have married a dozen peeresses, and beauties by hundreds—didn’t though. Now, there’s Blanche; I shall have fifty fellows all after her before Christmas—sharp dogs if they think they can weather old Bounce—Rummagee Bang couldn’t. By the by, I haven’t told Mrs. Delaval that story yet—clever woman, and good judgment—admires my character, I’ll bet a million—an officer’s daughter, too, and what a magnificent figure she has—Bounce, you’re an old fool! As for Charlie, he shall stay here all the winter; there’s mettle in that lad, and if I can’t lick him into shape I’m a Dutchman. He’ll show ’em the way with the hounds, and I’ll put him up to a thing or two, the young scamp. Snaffles! Snaffles!!” roared the General, as he concluded his monologue, and passed the stables on his way to the house, “don’t take any of the horses out to-morrow till you get your orders. Do you hear me? man alive!” And by this time, having reached home, he stumped off to dress for dinner, keeping up a running fire along the passages, as he discovered here a hearth-broom, and there a coal-scuttle, ready for him to break his shins over, and observed the usual plate and tea-cup standing sentry at each of the ladies’ doors.

We may be sure that not the least comfortable of the rooms at Newton-Hollows was especially appropriated as Blanche’s own, and that young lady was now sitting opposite a glass that reflected a smiling face, enduring with patience and resignation the ceremony of having “her hair done.” A French maid, named “Rosine,” a very pretty substitute for bilious-looking Gingham, was working away at the ivory-handled brushes, and occasionally letting fall a thick glossy ringlet athwart the snow-white cape in which the process of adornment was submitted to, whilst Mary Delaval, buried in an arm-chair drawn close to the blazing fire, and enveloped in a dressing-gown, with an open book in her hand, was quietly listening to Blanche’s remarks on things in general, and her own self and prospects in particular.

That hour before dinner is the period chosen by women for their most confidential intercourse, and the enjoyment of what they call “a cozy chat.” When Damon, in the small hours, smokes a cigar with Pythias, more especially if such an indulgence be treason against the rules of the house, he opens his heart to his fellow-trespasser, in a manner of which, next morning, he has but a faint recollection. He confides to him his differences with “the governor,” his financial embarrassments, the unsoundness of his horses and his heart, the latter possession much damaged by certain blue eyes in the neighbourhood; he details to him the general scandal with which he is conversant, and binding him by promises of eternal secrecy, proceeds deliberately to demolish the fair fame of maid and matron who enjoy the advantage of his acquaintance; finally, he throws his cigar-end beneath the grate and betakes him “to perch,” as he calls it, with an infatuated persuasion that the confidences which he has broken, will be respected by his listener, and that his debts, his difficulties, his peccadilloes, and the lameness of his bay mare, will not form the subject of conversation to-morrow night, when he, Damon, has gone back to London, and Pythias takes out his case to smoke a cigar with Dionysius. But the ladies by this time are fast asleep, dreaming, bless them, as it shall please Queen Mab—they must not wither their roses by sitting up too late, and though tolerant of smoking sometimes, they do not practise that abomination themselves, so tea-time is their hour of gossip, and heartily they enjoy the refreshment, both of mind and body, ere they come down demure and charming, in low evening dresses, with little or no appetite for dinner.

“Never mind Rosine,” said Blanche, as that attendant concluded an elaborate plait by the insertion of an enormous hair-pin; “she can’t speak a word of English. I agree with you that it is very charming to be an heiress, and I shall enjoy ‘coming out,’ and doing what I like; but I wish, too, sometimes, that I were a man; I feel so restrained, so useless, so incapable of doing any good. Mrs. Delaval, I think women are shamefully kept back; why shouldn’t we have professions and employments? not that I should like to be a soldier or a sailor, because I am not brave, but I do feel as if I was fit for something greater than tying up flowers or puzzling through worsted work.”

“There was a time when I, too, thought the same,” replied Mary, “but depend upon it, my dear, that you may do an infinity of good in the station which is assigned you. I used to fancy it would be so noble to be a man, and to do something grand, and heroic, and disinterested; but look at half the men we see, Blanche, and tell me if you would like to change places with one of them. Caring only for their dress, their horses, and their dinners, they will tell you themselves, and think they are philosophers for saying so, ‘that they are easy, good-tempered fellows, and if they can only get enough to eat, and lots of good hunting and good claret, they are perfectly satisfied.’ Indeed, my dear, I think we have the best of it; we are more resigned, more patient, more contented; we have more to bear, and we bear it better—more to detach us from this world, and to wean us from being entirely devoted to ourselves. No, I had rather be a woman, with all her imperfections, than one of those lords of the creation, such as we generally find them.”

“But still there are great men, Mrs. Delaval, even in these days. Do you think they are all selfish and egotistical, and care only for indulgences?”

“Heaven forbid, my dear; I only argue from the generality. My idea of man,” said Mary, kindling as she went on in her description, “is that he should be brave, generous, and unselfish; stored with learning, which he uses not for display, but for a purpose; careless of vanity and frivolous distinction; reliant on himself and his own high motives; deep and penetrating in his mental powers, with a lofty view of the objects of existence, and the purposes for which we are here. What does it signify whether such a one is good-looking in person or taking in manner? But as I am describing a hero, I will say his frame should be robust and his habits simple, to harmonise with the vigour of his intellect and the singleness of his character.”

“You have described Mr. Hardingstone exactly,” exclaimed Blanche, with rising colour, and a feeling not quite of pleasure at her heart. Yet what signified it to her that Mary Delaval’s Quixotic idea of a pattern man should typify so precisely her old friend Frank? Mary had never seen him; and even if she had, what was that to Blanche? Yet somehow she had taught herself from childhood to consider him her own property; probably because he was such a friend of Charlie; and she was a thorough woman—though she fancied she ought to have been born a hero—and consequently very jealous of her rights, real or imaginary. Silly Blanche! there was a sort of excitement, too, in talking about him, so she went on—“He is all that you have said, and people call him very good-looking besides, though I don’t think him so;” and Blanche coloured as she spoke, and told Rosine not to pull her hair so hard.

“Well, my dear,” said Mary, “then I should like to know him. But never mind the gentlemen, Blanche; there will be half-a-dozen here to dinner to-day. To return to yourself—you have a bright career before you, but never think it is traced out only for your own enjoyment. As a girl, you may in your position be an example to your equals, and a blessing to your dependents—think what a deal of good you can do even about a place like this; and then, should you marry, your influence may be the means of leading your husband and family into the right way. I have had a good deal of trouble, as you know, but I have always tried to remember, that to bear it patiently, and to do the best I could in my own path without repining, was to fulfil my destiny as nobly as if I had been a dethroned queen, or a world-famous heroine. No, my dear, this world is not a place only for dancing, and driving, and flirting, and dressing.—Good gracious! there’s the dinner-bell! and my hair not ‘done’ yet.” And away Mary rushed in the midst of her lecture, to complete those arrangements which brought her out, some ten minutes afterwards, the handsomest woman within fifty miles of Guyville.

Notwithstanding the lofty aspirations of these ladies, their contempt for the approbation of the other sex, and the short time they allowed themselves for adornment, two more tasteful and perfectly-finished toilettes have been seldom accomplished than those which at the well-lighted dinner-table enhanced the attractions of the pretty heiress and her handsome governess.

[CHAPTER VI]
THE BLIND BOY

THE GRUB BECOMES A BUTTERFLY—FAREWELL AND HOW D’YE DO—NOT WHAT WAS EXPECTED—THE GENERAL’S HOBBY—BLANCHE’S BIRTHDAY—FAMILY ARRANGEMENTS—“GIVE YOU JOY”—A COUNTRY DINNER-PARTY—TURNING THE TABLES—“THE COQUETTE”

Meanwhile the eventful Friday has arrived which has promoted “Cousin Charlie” to the rank of manhood. The Gazette of that day has announced the appointment of “Charles Kettering, Gentleman, to be Cornet in the 20th Lancers, vice Slack, who retires,” and the young one, who has been cultivating the down on his upper lip for months, in anticipation of this triumph, turns up those ends, of which there is scarcely enough to take hold, and revels in the consciousness that he is a boy no longer, but an officer, a cavalry officer, and a gentleman. Old Nobottle, whom the pupil has attached to himself as an imaginative boy often does a sober old gentleman, is of the same mind, and has confided to Mr. Hardingstone his opinion of Charlie, and the bright deeds he expects from him. “The lad has all the makings of a soldier, sir,” said the clergyman; “the cheerful spirits, the gallant bearing, the love of action, and the chivalrous vanity—half courageous, half coxcombical—which form the military character; and if he has a chance, he will distinguish himself. If he has a chance, do I say? he’ll make himself a chance, sir; the boy is cut out for a recruit, and he’ll learn his drill and know his men, and keep his troop-accounts smarter than any of ’em.” Nobottle was waxing enthusiastic, as the old recollections stole over him, and he saw, in fancy, a certain young artillery officer, gay amongst the gayest, and brave amongst the bravest, consulted by his seniors for his science and professional knowledge, and thanked in general orders for “his distinguished gallantry” in more than one decisive action. How different from the slouching, slovenly old man, in yesterday’s white neckcloth, who may now be seen budding his roses, poking about his parish, and stuffing stupid young gentlemen with as much learning as shall enable them to pass their dreaded examinations. Poor old Nobottle, you would marry for love, you would sacrifice your profession and your commission, your prospects and your all, for the red-nosed lady, then, to do her justice, a very pretty girl, who now occupies the top of your table. Like Antony, you were “all for love and the world well lost,” and, after a time, you found that the exchange was against you: what you took for gold turned out to be dross,—that which was honey in the mouth became bitter as gall in the digestion; in short, you discovered Mrs. N. was a failure, and that you did not care two pins for each other. Then came poverty and recrimination and the gnawing remorse of chances thrown away, that could not possibly recur again. Fortunately for you, a classical education and Church interest enabled you to take orders and get a living, so you work on, contentedly enough, now that your sensations are deadened and yourself half torpid; and although, when your better feelings obtain the mastery, you cannot but acknowledge the superiority of the present warfare in which you are engaged over that in which you spent your gaudy youth, yet, ever and anon, that foolish old heart still pines for the marshalling of men and the tramp of steeds, “the plumed troop and the big wars, that make ambition virtue.”

Hardingstone breakfasted at the rectory on the morning of Charlie’s departure; he was to drive him to the station, and our young friend must indubitably have been late for the train, had he not been rescued, by a man of decision, from the prolonged farewells of the inconsolables he left behind. Binks, the butler, was overwhelmed by sorrow and strong beer; Tim, the tea-boy, who had never before seen a half-sovereign, sobbed aloud; the maids, on whom Charlie’s good looks had made an impression proportionable to the softness of each damsel’s heart, laughed and wept by turns; whilst Mrs. Nobottle, generally a lady of austere and inflexible disposition, weakened the very tea which she was pouring out for breakfast with her tears, and, finally, embraced Charlie with hysterical affection, and a nose redder than ever. The good rector took him aside into his study, and blessed him as a father blesses a son. “You have never given me a moment’s uneasiness, my dear boy, since you came here,” said the old man, with a trembling voice; “you have been a credit to me as a pupil, and a comfort as a friend; and now, perhaps, I shall never see you again. But you won’t forget your old pedagogue, and if ever you are in difficulties, if ever you are in distress, remember there is a home here to which you may always apply for advice and assistance. God be with you, my boy, in the temptations of a barrack, as, if it should be your lot, in the perilous excitement of a battle. Do your duty wherever you are, and think, sometimes, of old Nobottle.”

Why was it Charlie’s cigar would not light, as he was borne away on the wheels of Frank Hardingstone’s dog-cart? The tinder was quite wet, though there was not a drop of rain in the sky, and he turned away his head from his companion, and bent sedulously over the refractory tobacco. Could it be that Charlie was crying? ’Tis not improbable. Despite his recently-acquired manhood, he had a soft, affectionate heart, and if it now gave way, and came unbidden to his eyes, Frank liked him all the better for it.

And as he was whirled along on the London and North-Western, how the young soldier’s thoughts ran riot in the future. Would he have changed places with any dignitary in the world, monarch, prince, or peer, or even with the heretofore much-admired Frank Hardingstone? Not he. None of these held a commission in the 20th Lancers; and were to be pitied, if not despised, accordingly. What a lot was his! Two months’ leave at least, and at his time of life two months is an age, to be spent in the gaieties of Newton-Hollows, and the attenuation of Haphazard, Hyacinth, and Mayfly, the mettle of which very excellent steeds Master Charlie had fully resolved to prove. All the delights of Bubbleton and the county gaieties, with the companionship of Blanche, that more than sister, without whom, from his earliest boyhood, no enjoyment could be half enjoyed. And then the flattering pride she would feel in her officer-cousin (Charlie felt for his moustaches so perseveringly, that a short-sighted fellow-traveller thought he had a sore lip), and the request he should be in amongst the young ladies of the neighbourhood, with a romantic conviction that love was not for him, that “the sword was the soldier’s bride,” etc. Then the dreamer looked forward into the vistas of the future; the parade, the bivouac, and the charge; night-watches in a savage country—for the 20th were even then in Kaffirland—the trumpet alarum, the pawing troop-horses, the death-shock and the glittering blade; a certain cornet hurraing in the van, the admiration of brother officers, and the veteran colonel’s applause; a Gazette promotion and honourable mention in dispatches; Uncle Baldwin’s uproarious glee at home; and Blanche’s quiet smile. Who would not be a boy again? Yet not with the stipulation we hear so often urged, of knowing as much as we do now. That knowledge would destroy it all. No, let us have boyhood once more, with its vigorous credulity and its impossible romance, with that glorious ignorance which turns everything to gold, that sanguine temperament which sheds its rosy hues even over the bleak landscape of future old age. “Poor lad! how green he is,” says worldly experience, with a sneer of affected pity at those raptures it would give its very existence to feel again. “Happy fellow; he’s a boy still!” says good-natured philosophy with a smile, half saddened at the thoughts of the coming clouds, which shall too surely darken that sunny horizon. But each has been through the crucible, each recognises that sparkle of the virgin gold which shall never again appear on the dead surface of the metal, beaten and stamped and fabricated into a mere conventional coin. The train whizzes on, the early evening sets in, tired post-horses grope their way up the dark avenue, wheels are heard grinding round the gravel sweep before the house, and the expected guest arrives at Newton-Hallows.

“Goodness! Charlie, how you have been smoking,” exclaims Blanche, after their first affectionate greeting, while she shrinks a little from the cousinly embrace somewhat redolent of tobacco; “and how you’re grown, dear—I suppose you don’t like to be told you are grown now—and moustaches, I declare,” she adds, bursting out laughing, as she catches Charlie’s budding honours en profil; “’pon my word they’re a great improvement.” Charlie winced a little. There is always a degree of awkwardness even amongst the nearest and dearest, when people meet after a long absence, and the less artificial the character, the more it betrays itself; but Blanche was in great spirits and rattled on, till the General made his appearance, bustling in perfectly radiant with hospitality.

“Glad to see ye, my lad—glad to see ye; have been expecting ye this half-hour—trains always late—and always will be till they hang a director—I’ve hanged many a man for less, myself, ‘up the country.’ Fact, Blanche, I assure you. You’ll have lots of time to dress,” he observed, glancing at the clock’s white face shining in the fire-light—and adding, with a playful dig of his fingers into Charlie’s lean ribs, “We dine in half-an-hour, temps militaire, you dog! We must teach you that punctuality and good commissariat are the two first essentials for a soldier.” So the General rang a peal for hand candles that might have brought a house down.

And Charlie was well acquainted with all the inmates of Newton-Hollows save Mrs. Delaval. Of her he had often heard Blanche speak as the most delightful of companions, and indulgent of governesses, but he had never set eyes on her in person; so as he effected his tie before the glass, and drew his fingers over those precious moustaches to discover if change of air had already influenced their growth, he began to speculate on the character and appearance of the lady who was to complete their family party. “A middle-aged woman,” thought Charlie—for Blanche, on whom some ten years of seniority made a great impression, had always described her as such—“forty, or thereabouts—stout, jolly-looking and good-humoured, I’ll be bound—I know I shall like her—wears a cap, I’ve no doubt, and a front, too, most probably—sits very upright, and talks like a book, till one knows her well—spectacles, I shouldn’t wonder (it’s no use making much of a tie for her)—pats Blanche on the shoulder when she gives her precedence, and keeps her hands in black lace mittens, I’ll bet a hundred!” With which mental wager Master Charlie blew his candles out, and swaggered down-stairs, feeling in his light evening costume, as indeed he looked, well-made, well-dressed, and extremely like a gentleman.

Mischievous Blanche was enchanted at the obvious start of astonishment with which her introduction was received by her cousin—“Mr. Kettering, Mrs. Delaval.” Charlie looked positively dismayed. Was this the comfortable, round-about, good-humoured body he had expected to see?—was that tall, stately figure, dressed in the most perfect taste, with an air of more than high-breeding, almost of command, such as duchesses may be much admired without possessing—was that the dowdy middle-aged governess?—were those long, deep-set eyes, the orbs that should have glared at him through spectacles, and would black lace mittens have been an improvement on those white taper hands, beautiful in their perfect symmetry without a single ornament? Charlie bowed low to conceal the blush that overspread his countenance. The boy was completely taken aback, and, when he led her in to dinner, and heard those thrilling tones murmuring in his ear, the spell, we may be sure, lost none of its power. “She is beautiful,” thought Charlie, “and nearly as tall as I am;” and he was pleased to recollect that Blanche had thought him grown. Ladies, we opine, are not so impressionable as men—at least they do not allow themselves to appear so. Either they are more cautious in their judgments, which we have heard denied by those who plume themselves on knowledge of the sex, or their hypocrisy is more perfect; certainly a young lady’s education is based upon principles of the most frigid reserve, and her decorous bearing, we believe, is never laid aside, even in tea-rooms, conservatories, shaded walks, and other such resorts, fatal to the equanimity of masculine understanding; therefore Mary Delaval did by no means lose her presence of mind on being introduced to the young gentleman, of whose deeds and sentiments she had heard so much. Woman as she was, she could not but be gratified at the evident admiration her appearance created in this new acquaintance, and truth to speak, “Cousin Charlie” was a youth whose allegiance few female hearts would have entirely scorned to possess; yet there was no occasion to tell the young gentleman as much to his face.

A very good-looking face it was too, with its wide, intellectual brow, round which the brown silky hair waved in such becoming clusters—its perfect oval and delicate high-bred features, if they had a fault, too girlish in their soft, winning expression—in fact, he was as like Blanche as possible; and had his moustaches been shaved, could he indeed have submitted to the sacrifice, his stature lowered, and a bonnet and shawl put on, he might well have passed for his pretty cousin. There was nothing effeminate though about Charlie, save his countenance and his smile. That slender, graceful figure was lithe and wiry as the panther’s—those symmetrical limbs could toil, those little feet could walk and run, after a Hercules would have been blown and overpowered; and when standing up to his wicket, rousing a horse, or putting him at a fence, there was a game sparkle in his eye that, to use Frank Hardingstone’s expression, “meant mischief.” Some of these good-looking young gentlemen are “ugly customers” enough when their blood is up, and Cousin Charlie, like the rest, had quite as much “devil” in his composition as was good for him. The “pretty page” only wanted a few years over his head, a little more beard upon his lip, to be a perfect Paladin.

But the spell went on working the whole of dinner-time; in vain the General told his most wondrous anecdotes, scolded his servants at intervals, and pressed his good cheer on the little party—Charlie could not get over his astonishment. Mrs. Delaval sat by him, looking like a queen, and talked in her own peculiarly winning voice and impressive manner, just enough to make him wish for more. She was one of those women who, speaking but little, seem always to mean more than they say, and on whom conscious mental superiority, and the calm subdued air worn by those who have known affliction, confer a certain mysterious charm, which makes fearful havoc in a young gentleman’s heart. There is nothing enslaves a boy so completely as a spice of romance. An elderly Strephon will go on his knees to a romping schoolgirl, and the more hoydenish and unsophisticated the object, the more will the old reprobate adore her; but beardless youth loves to own superiority where it worships, loves to invest its idol with the fabulous attributes that compose its own ideal; and of all the liaisons, honourable and otherwise, that have bound their votaries in silken fetters, those have been the most fatal, and the most invincible, which have dated their existence from an earnest boyish heart’s first devotion to a woman some years his senior, of whom the good-natured world says, “To be sure she is handsome, but Lor’! she’s old enough to be his mother!”

Not that Charlie was as far gone as this: on the contrary, his was an imaginative poetical disposition, easily scorched enough, but almost incapable of being thoroughly done brown. Of such men, ladies, we would warn you to beware; the very temperament that clothes you in all the winning attributes of its own ideal can the most easily transfer those fancied attractions to a rival, inasmuch as the charm is not so much yours as his, exists not in your sweet face, but in his heated and inconstant brain. No, the real prize, depend upon it, is a sensible, phlegmatic, matter-of-fact gentleman, anything but “wax to receive,” yet if you can succeed in making an impression, most assuredly “marble to retain.” Such a captive clings to his affections as to his prejudices, and is properly subjected into a tame and willing Benedict in half the time it takes to guess at the intentions of the faithless rover, offering on a dozen shrines an adoration that, however brilliant, is

“Like light straw on fire,

A fierce but fading flame.”

Again was Charlie struck, as he swaggered off to open the door for the ladies, by the graceful movements of Mary’s majestic figure. Again the half-bow with which, as she passed out, she acknowledged his courtesy, made a pleasing impression on the boy’s fancy; and as he lingered for a moment, ere he shut out the rustle of their dresses and the pleasant tones of the women’s voices, and returned to the arm-chair and the claret decanter, he could not help hoping “Uncle Baldwin” would be a little less profuse than usual in his hospitality, and a little less prolix in his narrative.

“The young ones drink no wine at all now-a-days,” remarked the General, as Charlie a second time passed the bottle untouched, and his host filled his glass to the brim. “Fault on the right side, my lad; we used to drink too hard formerly—why, bless you, when I encountered Tortoise, of the Queen’s, at the mess of the Kedjeree Irregulars, we sat for seven hours and a half to see one another out, and the two black fellows fainted who were ‘told off’ to bring in claret and pale ale as they were wanted. Tortoise recovered himself wonderfully about the eighth bottle; and if he hadn’t been obliged to be careful on account of a wound in his head, we should have been there now. Drunk! how d’ye mean? Not the least—fact, I assure you.”

Charlie got up and fidgeted about, with his back to the fire, but the General would not let him off so easily.

“Show you the farm to-morrow, my boy, you’ll be delighted with my pigs—Neapolitans every hair of ’em. What? no man alive shall presume to tell me they’re not the best breed! And I’ll tell you what, Charlie, I’ve secured the handsomest short-horned bull in this country. Two hundred, you dog!—dirt cheap—and if you’re fond of stock you’ll be charmed with him. Poultry too—real Cochin Chinese—got three prizes at the last show; average height two feet seven inches—rare beauties. Hens and chickens in knee-breeches, and a cock in trunk-hose!” With which conclusion the chuckling old warrior permitted Charlie to wheedle him off into the drawing-room, whither they entered to find the ladies, as usual, absorbed in worsted work and sunk in solemn silence.

Pleasantly the evenings always passed at Newton-Hollows even with a small party like the present. Music, cards, cockamaroo, and the eternal racing game, of course, which gives gentle woman an insight into the two fiercest pleasures of the other sex—horse-racing and gambling—and introduces into the drawing-room the slang and confusion of the betting-ring and the hazard-table, served to while away the time. And though the General was even more diffuse than was his wont in personal recollections and autobiography, Blanche scarcely listened, so absorbed was she in her delight at having got Cousin Charlie back again, whilst that young gentleman and Mary Delaval were progressing rapidly in each other’s good opinion, and exclaiming, in their respective minds, “What an agreeable person! and so different from what I expected!”

Blanche’s birthday was always kept as a period of great rejoicing at Newton-Hollows, and a very short time after Charlie’s arrival that auspicious anniversary was ushered in, as usual, by the General’s appearance at the breakfast-table bearing a cotton-stuffed white and green card-box, highly suggestive of Storr and Mortimer. This was quietly placed by the side of Blanche’s plate, and when the young lady made her appearance, and exclaimed, “Dear, kind Uncle Baldwin, what a love of a bracelet!” though we might have envied, we could not have grudged the General the grateful kiss bestowed on him by his affectionate niece. Uncle Baldwin’s mind, however, was intent upon weightier matters than jewels and “happy returns.” He was to celebrate the festival with a dinner-party; and whilst he had invited several of the élite of Bubbleton to celebrate his niece’s birthday, he was anxious so to dispose and welcome his guests as that none should have reason to consider himself especially favoured or encouraged in the advances which all were too eager to make towards the good graces of the heiress; therefore the General held a solemn conclave, as was his wont, consisting of himself and Mrs. Delaval, who on such occasions was requested, with great pomp, to accompany him to his study, an apartment adorned with every description of weapon used in civilised or savage warfare, and to take her seat in his own huge arm-chair, while he walked up and down the room, and held forth in his usual abrupt and discursive manner.

“I have such confidence in your sound sense, Mrs. Delaval,” said he, looking very insinuating, and pausing for an instant in his short, quick strides, “that I always consult you in my difficulties.” This was said piano, but the forte addition immediately succeeded. “Reserving to myself the option of acting, for dictation I cannot submit to, even from you, my dear Mrs. Delaval. You are aware, I believe, of my intentions regarding Blanche. Are you aware of my intentions?” he interrupted himself to demand in a voice of thunder.

Mary, who was used to his manner, answered calmly, “that she was not;” and the General proceeded, in a gentle and confidential tone—

“The fact is, my dear madam, I have set my heart on a family arrangement, which I mention to you as a personal friend, and a lady for whom I entertain the greatest regard.”

Mary bowed again, and could hardly suppress a smile at the manner in which the old gentleman assured her of his consideration.

“Well, though an unmarried man as yet, I am keenly alive to the advantages of the married state. I never told you, I think, Mrs. Delaval, of an adventure that befell me at Cheltenham—never mind now—but, believe me, I am no stranger to those tender feelings, Mrs. Delaval, to which we men of the sword—ah, ah—are infernally addicted. What? Well, ma’am, there’s my niece now, they all want to marry her. Every scoundrel within fifty miles wants to lead Blanche to the altar. Zounds, I’ll weather ’em, the villains—excuse me, Mrs. Delaval, but to proceed—I am extremely anxious to confide my intentions to you, as I hope I may calculate on your assistance. My nephew, Charlie, to be explicit, is the——Holloa! you woman, come back—come back, I say; you’re carrying off the wrong coop. The dolt has mistaken my orders about the Cochin Chinas. In the afternoon, if you please, Mrs. Delaval, we’ll discuss the point more at leisure.”

And the General bolted through the study window, and was presently heard in violent altercation with the lady who presided over his poultry yard.

Though not very explicit, Mary had gathered enough from the General’s confidences to conclude he was anxious to arrange a marriage eventually between the two cousins. Well! what was that to her? He certainly was a very taking boy, handsome, gentle, and high-spirited; nothing could be nicer for Blanche. And she was so fond of him; what a charming couple they would make. “I am so glad,” thought Mary, wondering when she might congratulate the bride-elect; “so very glad; dear, how glad I am.” Why should Mary have taken such pains to assure herself how glad she was? Why did she watch the charming couple with an interest she had never felt before, as she joined them on their return from their morning walk? A walk, the object of which (tell it not in Bubbleton) had been to pursue the sport of rat-hunting in a certain barn, with a favourite terrier of Charlie’s, a sport that Blanche was persuaded to patronise, notwithstanding her horror both of the game and the mode of its destruction, by her affection for Charlie, and her childish habit of joining him in all his pastimes and amusements. How alike they were, with their delicate skin, their deep blue eyes sparkling with exercise and excitement, and their waving brown hair clustering round each flushed and smiling face. How alike they were, and what a nice couple they certainly did make. And Mary sighed, as again she thought how very glad she was!

No further interview took place that day with the General, whose many avocations scarcely permitted him time for the elaborate toilette which, partly out of respect for Blanche’s birthday, partly in consideration of his dinner-party, he thought it advisable to perform. He certainly did take more pains with himself than usual; and as he fixed an order or two in an unassuming place under the breast-lap of his coat, a ray of satisfaction shot through his heart that beat beneath those clasps and medals, while the old gentleman thought aloud as usual, “Not such a bad arrangement after all! She certainly did look very queer when I talked of Blanche’s marrying. No doubt she’s smitten—just like the one at Cheltenham. Bounce! Bounce! you’ve a deal to answer for. If ever I do, it’s time I thought of it; don’t improve by keeping. ’Pon my life, I might go farther and fare worse. Zounds! there’s the door-bell.”

“Lady Mount Helicon!” “Captain Lacquers!” “Sir Ascot Uppercrust!” and a whole host of second-rate grandees were successively announced and ushered into the brilliantly-lighted drawing-room, to be received by the General with the empressement of a bachelor, who is host and hostess all in one. Blanche was too young and shy to take much part in the proceedings. Charlie, of course, was late; but Bounce was in his glory, bowing to the ladies, joking with the gentlemen, and telling anecdotes to all, till the announcement of “dinner” started him across the hall, convoying stately Lady Mount Helicon, and well-nigh lost amidst the lappets and flounces of that magnificent dame, who would not have been here at all unless she had owned an unmarried son, and a jointure entirely out of proportion to the present lord’s finances. The rest of the party paired off after their illustrious leaders. Sir Ascot Uppercrust took Blanche, who was already lost in surprise at his taciturnity. Miss Deeper skilfully contrived to entangle young Cashley. Kate Carmine felt her heart beat happily against the arm of Captain Laurel, of the Bays. Mr. Gotobed made a dash at Mary Delaval, but “Cousin Charlie,” who that instant entered the room, quietly interposed and led her off to the dining-room, leaving a heterogeneous mass of unappropriated gentlemen to scramble in as they best might. Mary was grateful for the rescue; she was glad to be near somebody she knew. With a flush of shame and anger she had recognised Captain Lacquers, though that worthy dipped his moustaches into his soup in happy unconsciousness that the well-dressed aristocratic woman opposite him was the same indignant damsel who would once have knocked him down if she could. With all her self-possession, Mary was not blind to the fact that her position was anomalous and ill-defined. She had found that out already by the condescending manner in which Lady Mount Helicon had bowed to her in the drawing-room. With the men she was “that handsome lady-like Mrs. Delaval”; but with the women (your true aristocrats after all) she was only the governess.

Dinner progressed in the weary protracted manner that the meal does when it is one of state and ceremony. The guests did not know each other well, and were dreadfully afraid (as is too often the case in good society) of being over civil or attentive to those whose position they had not exactly ascertained. It argues ill for one’s stock of politeness when one cannot afford to part with ever so small a portion, save in expectation of a return. So Lady Mount Helicon was patronising and affable, and looked at everything, including the company, through her eye-glass, but was very distant notwithstanding; and the gentlemen hemmed and hawed, and voted the weather detestable—aw! and the sport with the hounds—aw—very moderate—aw (it was d—d bad after the ladies went away); and their fair companions lisped and simpered, and ate very little, and drank as much champagne as appearances would allow; and everybody felt it an unspeakable relief when Blanche, drawing on her gloves, and blushing crimson at the responsibility, made “the move” to Lady Mount Helicon; and the muslins all sailed away, with their gloves and fans and pocket-handkerchiefs rescued from under the table by their red-faced cavaliers.

When they met again over tea and coffee, things had thawed considerably. The most solemn high-breeding is not proof against an abundance of claret, and the General’s hospitality was worthy of his cellar. The men had found each other out to be “deuced good sort of fellows,” and had moreover discovered mutual tastes and mutual acquaintances, which much cemented their friendships. To be sure, there was at first a partial reaction consequent upon the difficulty of breaking through a formal circle of ladies; but this feat accomplished, and the gentlemen grouped about cup-in-hand in becoming attitudes, and disposed to look favourably on the world in general, even Sir Ascot Uppercrust laid aside his usual reserve, and asked Blanche whether she had seen anything of a round game called “turning the tables,” which the juvenile philosopher further confided to her he opined to be “infernal humbug.” In an instant every tongue was unloosed. Drop a subject like this amongst a well-dressed crowd and it is like a cracker—here and there it bounces, and fizzes, and explodes, amongst serious exclamations and hearty laughter. Lady Mount Helicon thought it wicked—Kate Carmine thought it “fun”—Miss Deeper voted it charming—Lacquers considered it “aw—deuced scientific—aw”—and the General in high glee exclaimed, “I vote we try.” No sooner said than done; a round mahogany table was deprived of its covering—a circle formed—hands joined with more energy than was absolutely indispensable—white arms laid in juxtaposition to dark coat sleeves—long ringlets bent over the polished mirror-like surface; and amidst laughing entreaties to be grave, and voluble injunctions to be silent, the incantation progressed, we are bound in truth to state, with no definite result. Perhaps the spell was broken by the bursts of laughter that greeted the pompous butler’s face of consternation, as, entering the room to remove cups, etc., he found the smartly-dressed party so strangely employed. Well-bred servants never betray the slightest marks of emotion or astonishment, though we fancy their self-command is sometimes severely put to the test. But “turning the tables” was too much for the major-domo, and he was obliged to make his exit in a paroxysm of unseemly mirth. Then came a round game of forfeits—then music—then dancing, the ladies playing by turns—then somebody found out the night was pouring with rain, and the General declared it would be sure to clear in an hour or so, and nobody must go away till after supper. So supper appeared and more champagne; and even Lady Mount Helicon was ready to do anything to oblige, so, being a fine musician, she volunteered to play “The Coquette.” A chair was placed in the middle of the room, and everybody danced, the General and all. Blanche laughed till she cried; and there was but one feeling of regret when the announcement of her ladyship’s carriage broke up the party, just at the moment when, in accordance with the rules of the dance, Charlie sank upon one knee before the Coquette’s chair, occupied by stately Mrs. Delaval. He looked like a young knight prostrate before the Queen of Beauty.

When Blanche laid her head upon her pillow, she thought over all her uncle’s guests in succession, and decided not one was to be compared to Cousin Charlie; and none was half so agreeable as Mr. Hardingstone. Mary Delaval, on the contrary, scarcely gave a thought to Captain Lacquers, Sir Ascot Uppercrust, Captain Laurel, or even Mr. Gotobed, who had paid her great attention. No, even as she closed her eyes she was haunted by a young upturned face, with fair open brow and a slight moustache—do what she would, she saw it still. She was, besides, a little distracted about the loss of one of her gloves—a white one, with velvet round the wrist—what could have become of it?

[CHAPTER VII]
BOOT AND SADDLE

“THE GRAND MILITARY”—SPORT, BUT NOT PLEASURE—WARLIKE ADVANCES—SOME OF ALL SORTS—AN EQUESTRIAN FEAT—THEY’RE OFF—RIDING TO WIN—FOLLOW-MY-LEADER—WELL OVER AND WELL IN—HOME IN A HURRY—A CLOSE RACE—THE HEIRESS WITH MANY FRIENDS—A DAY’S AMUSEMENT

“Card of the running ’orses—cor-rect card! Major, dear, you always take a card of me!” pleads a weather-worn, good-looking, smart-ribboned card-woman, standing up to her ankles in mud on Guyville race-course. Poor thing! hers is a strange, hard, vagabond sort of life. This very morning she has heard mass (being an Irish-woman) seventeen miles off, and she will be on her legs the whole of the livelong day, and have a good supper and a hard bed, and be up at dawn to-morrow, ready and willing for a forty-mile tramp wherever money is to be made; so, in the meantime, she hands up half-a-dozen damp cards to Gaston D’Orville, now Major in “The Loyals,” and this day principal acting-steward of “The Grand Military Steeple-Chase.”

The Major is but slightly altered since we saw him last at Bishops’-Baffler. His tall figure may, perhaps, be a trifle fuller, and the lines of dissipation round his eyes and mouth a little deeper, while here and there his large whiskers and clustering hair are just sprinkled with grey; but for all this, he is still about the finest-looking man on the course, and of this fact, as of every other advantage of his position, no one is better aware than himself. Yet is he not a vain man; cool and calculating, he looks upon such “pulls in his favour,” as he calls them, much as he would on “a point in the odds,”—mere chances in the game of life, to be made the most of when opportunity offers. He has just got upon a remarkably handsome white horse, to show the military equestrians “the line” over which they are to have an opportunity of breaking their necks, and is surrounded by a posse of great-coated, shawl-handkerchiefed, and goloshed individuals, mostly striplings, who are nervously ready to scan the obstacles they are destined to encounter.

There are nine starters for the great event, and professional speculators at “The Kingmakers’ Arms” are even now wagering that not above three ever reach “home,” so low an opinion do they entertain of “the soldiers’ riding,” or so ghastly do they deem the fences flagged out to prove the warriors’ metal. Four miles over a stiff country, with a large brook, and a finish in front of the grand-stand, will furnish work for the horses and excitement for the ladies, whilst the adventurous jocks are even now glancing at one another aghast at the unexpected strength and height of these impediments, which, to a man on foot, look positively awful.

“I object to this fence decidedly,” observes a weak, thin voice, which, under his multiplicity of wraps, we have some difficulty in identifying as the property of Sir Ascot Uppercrust. “I object in the name of all the riders—it is positively dangerous—don’t you agree with me?” he adds, pointing to a formidable “double post and rail,” with but little room between, and appealing to his fellow-sufferers, who all coincide with him but one.

“Nothing for a hunter,” says the dissentient, who, seeing that the exploit has to be performed in full view of the ladies in the stand, would have it worse if he could. “Nothing for any horse that is properly ridden;—what do you say, major?”

“I agree with Kettering,” replies the Major; for our friend “Charlie” it is, who is now surveying the country on foot, in a huge white great-coat, with a silver-mounted whip under his arm, and no gloves. He is quite the “gentleman-rider,” and has fully made up his mind to win the steeple-chase. For this has poor Haphazard been deprived of his usual sport in the field, and trained with such severity as Mr. Snaffles has thought advisable; for this has his young master been shortening his stirrups and riding daily gallops, and running miles up-hill to keep him in wind, till there is little left of his original self save his moustaches, which have grown visibly during the winter; and for this have the ladies of the family been stitching for days at the smartest silk jacket that ever was made (orange and blue, with gold tags), only pausing in their labours to visit Haphazard in the stable, and bring him such numerous offerings in the shape of bread, apples, and lump-sugar, that had Mr. Snaffles not laid an embargo on all “tit-bits,” the horse would ere this have been scarcely fit to run for a saddle!

Mrs. Delaval having been as severely bitten with the sporting mania as Blanche, they are even now sitting in the grand-stand perusing the list of the starters as if their lives depended on it—and each lady wears a blue and orange ribbon in her bonnet, the General, who escorts them, appearing in an alarming neckcloth of the same hues.

The stand is already nearly full, and Blanche, herself not the least attraction to many of the throng, has manœuvred into a capital place with Mary by her side, and is in a state of nervous delight, partly at the gaiety of the scene, partly at the coming contest in which “Cousin Charlie” is to engage, and partly at the anticipation of the Guyville ball, her first appearance in public, to take place this very night. Row upon row the benches have been gradually filling, till the assemblage looks like a variegated parterre of flowers to those in the arena below. In that enclosed space are gathered, besides the pride of the British army, swells and dandies of every different description and calibre. Do-nothing gentlemen from London, glad to get a little fresh air and excitement so cheap. Nimrods from “the shires” come to criticise the performances, and suggest, by implication, how much better they could ride themselves. Horse-dealers, and professional “legs,” of course, whose business it is to make the most of everything, and whose courteous demeanour is only equalled by the unblushing effrontery with which they offer “five points” less than the odds; nor, though last not least, must we omit to mention the élite of Bubbleton, who have one and all cast up from “the Spout,” as that salubrious town is sometimes denominated, as they always do cast up within reach of their favourite resort. Some of all sorts there are amongst them. Gentlemen of family, without incumbrances—gentlemen with incumbrances and no family; some with money and no brains—some with brains and no money; some that live on the fat of the land—others that live upon their wits, and pick up a subsistence therewith, bare as might be expected from the dearth of capital on which they trade. In the midst of them we recognise Frank Hardingstone, sufficiently conspicuous in his simple manly attire, amongst the chained and velveted and bedizened tigers by whom he is surrounded. He is talking to a remarkably good-looking and particularly well-dressed man, known to nearly every one on the course as Mr. Jason, the famous steeple-chase rider, who has come partly to sell Mr. Hardingstone a horse, partly to patronise the “soldiers’ performances,” and partly to enjoy the gay scene which he is even now criticising. He is good enough to express his approval of the ladies in the stand, taking them en masse, though his fastidious taste cannot but admit that there are “some weedy-looking ones among ’em.” All this, however, is lost upon Frank Hardingstone, who has ears only for a conversation going on at his elbow, in which he hears Blanche’s name mentioned, our friend Lacquers being the principal speaker.

“Three hundred thousand—I give you my honour, every penny of it!” says that calculating worthy to a speculative dandy with enormous red whiskers, “and a nice girl too—devilish well read, you know, and all that.”

“I suppose old Bounce keeps a bright look-out though, don’t he?” rejoins his friend, who has all the appearance of a man that can make up his mind in a minute.

“Yeees,” drawls Lacquers; “but it might be done by a fellow with some energy, you know; she is engaged to young Kettering, her cousin—‘family pot,’ you know—and she’s very spooney on him; still, I’ve half a mind to try.”

“Why, the cousin will probably break his neck in the course of the day; you can introduce me to-night at the ball. By the way, what are they betting about this young Kettering? Can he ride any?”

“Not a yard,” replies Lacquers, as he turns away to light a cigar, whilst Lord Mount Helicon—for the red-bearded dandy is no less a person than that literary peer—dives into the ring to turn an honest “pony,” as he calls it, on its fluctuations.

“Look here, Mr. Hardingstone,” exclaims the observant Jason, forcibly attracting Frank’s notice to a feat which, as he keeps his eyes fixed on the stand, is going on behind him. “That’s the way to put ’em at it, Major! well ridden, by the Lord Harry!” and Frank turns round in time to witness, with the shouting multitude and the half-frightened ladies, the gallant manner in which D’Orville’s white horse clears the double post and rails to which Sir Ascot had objected.

The Major, it is needless to say, is a dauntless horseman, and, on being remonstrated with by Sir A. and his party on the impracticable nature of the leap which he had selected for them, and the young Mohair of the Heavies suggesting that the stewards should always be compelled to ride over the ground themselves, made no more ado, but turned the white horse at the unwelcome barrier, and by dint of a fine hand and a perfectly-broken animal, went “in and out” without touching, to the uproarious delight of the mob, and the less loudly expressed admiration of the ladies.

“That’s what I call in-and-out-clever,” observes Mr. Jason, as the shouting subsides, thinking he could not have done it better himself; and he too elbows his way into the mass of noise, hustling, and confusion that constitutes the betting-ring.

“We ought to throw our ‘bouquets’ at the white horse!” says Mrs. Delaval’s next neighbour, a bold-looking lady of a certain age; and Mary recognises, with mingled feelings, her military adorer and his well-known grey charger, now showing the lapse of time only by his change of colour to pure white. “I’m afraid its all very dangerous,” thinks Blanche, to whom it occurs for the first time that “Cousin Charlie” may possibly break his neck; but the General at this instant touches her elbow to introduce “Major D’Orville,” who, having performed his official duties, has dismounted, and works his way into the stand to make the agreeable to the ladies, and “have a look at this Miss Kettering—the very thing, by Jove, if she is tolerably lady-like.”

How different is the Major’s manner to that of Lacquers, Uppercrust, and half the other unmeaning dandies whom Blanche is accustomed to see fluttering round her. He has the least thing of a military swagger, which most women certainly like, more particularly when in their own case that lordly demeanour is laid aside for a soft deferential air, highly captivating to the weaker sex; and nobody understands this better than D’Orville. The little he says to Blanche is quiet, amusing, and to the purpose. The heiress is agreeably surprised. The implied homage of such a man is, to say the least of it, flattering; and our cavalier has the good sense to take his leave as soon as he sees he has made a favourable impression, quite satisfied with the way in which he has “opened the trenches.” At the moment he did so, on turning round he encountered Mary Delaval. She looked unmoved as usual, and put out her hand to him, as if they had been in the habit of meeting every day. With a few incoherent words he bent over those long well-shaped fingers; and an observant bystander might have had the good luck to witness a somewhat unusual sight—a Major of Hussars blushing to the very tips of his moustaches. Yes; the hardened man of the world, the experienced roué, the dashing militaire, had a heart, if you could only get at it, like the veriest clown then ‘squiring his red-faced Dolly to “the races”—the natural for the moment overcame the artificial—and as Gaston edged his way down through nodding comrades and smiling ladies, the feeling uppermost in his heart was, “Heavens! how I love this woman still! and what a fool I am!” But sentiment must not be indulged to the exclusion of business, and the Major too forces his way into the betting-ring.

There they are, hard at it—Nobblers and noblemen—grooms and gentlemen—betting-house keepers and cavalry officers—all talking at once, all intent on having the best of it, and apparently all layers and no takers. “Eight to one agin Lady Lavender,” says a stout capitalist, who looks like a grazier in his best clothes. “Take ten,” lisps the owner, a young gentleman, apparently about sixteen. “I’ll back Sober John.” “I’ll take nine to two about the Fox.” “I’ll lay against the field bar three.” “I’ll lay five ponies to two agin Haphazard!” vociferates the capitalist. “Done!” cries Charlie, who is investing on his horse as if he owned the Bank of England. At this moment Frank Hardingstone pierces into the ring, and drawing Charlie towards the outskirts, begins to lecture him on the coming struggle, and to give him useful hints on the art of riding a steeple-chase; for Frank with his usual decision has resolved not to go into the stand to talk to Blanche till he has done all in his power to insure the success of her cousin. “Come and see the horse saddled, you conceited young jackanapes; don’t fool away any more money; how do you know you’ll win?” says Frank, taking the excited jockey by the arm and leading him away to where Haphazard, pawing and snorting, and very uneasy, is being stripped of his clothing, the centre of an admiring throng. “I know he can beat Lady Lavender,” replies Charlie, whose conversation for the last week had been strictly “Newmarket”; “and he’s five pounds better than the Fox; and Mohair is sure to make a mess of it with Bendigo—he owns he can’t ride him; and there’s nothing else has a chance except Sober John, a great half-bred brute!”

“Do you see that quiet-looking man talking to Jason there?” says Frank; “that’s the man who is to ride Sober John—about the best gentleman in England, and he’s getting a hint from the best professional. Do you think you can ride like Captain Rocket? Now, take my advice, Charlie, Haphazard is a nice-tempered horse, you wait on Sober John—keep close behind him—ride over him if he falls—but whatever you see Captain Rocket do, you do the same—don’t come till you’re safe over the last fence—and if you’re not first, you’ll be second!” Charlie promised faithfully to obey his friend’s directions, though in his own mind he did not think it possible an Infantry horse could win the great event—Sober John, if he belonged to any one in particular, being the property of Lieutenant Sharpes of the Old Hundredth, who stood to win a very comfortable sum upon the veteran steeple-chaser.

“They look nervous, Tim, most on ’em,” observes Captain Rocket, while with his own hands he adjusts “the tackle,” as he calls it, on his horse; and his friend “Tim” giving him a “leg up,” he canters Sober John past the stand, none of the ladies thinking that docile animal has the remotest chance of winning. “He seems much too quiet,” says Blanche, “and he’s dreadfully ugly.” “Beauty is not absolutely essential in horses, Miss Kettering,” replies a deep, quiet voice at her elbow. Major D’Orville has resumed his place by her side. Though he thinks he is paying attention to Blanche, he cannot, in reality, forbear hovering about Mrs. Delaval. That lady, meanwhile, with clasped hands, is hoping with all her heart that Captain Rocket may not win. If “wishes were horses,” we think this young gentleman now tearing down the course upon Haphazard, throwing the dirt round him like a patent turnip-cutter, would have a good many of hers to bear him on his victorious career. By the way, Mary has never found her glove; we wonder whether that foolish boy knows anything about it. And talking of gloves, look at that dazzling pair of white kids on a level with his chin, in which “Mohair, of the Heavies,” is endeavouring to control Bendigo. He has had two large glasses of sherry, yet does he still look very pale—another, and yet another, comes striding past like a whirlwind—Sir Ascot rides Lady Lavender, and Cornet Capon is to pilot the Fox. It is very difficult to know which is which amongst the variegated throng, and the ladies puzzle sadly over their cards, in which, as is usually the case at steeple-chases, the colours are all set down wrong. Each damsel, however, has one favourite at least whom she could recognise in any disguise, and we may be sure that “blue-and-orange” is not without his well-wishers in the grand-stand.

Major D’Orville is an admirable cicerone, inasmuch as besides being steward, he has a heavy book on the race, and knows the capabilities of each horse to a pound, whatever may be his uncertainty as regards the riders. “Your cousin has a very fair chance, Miss Kettering—he seems to ride uncommonly well for such a boy; Sir Ascot wants nerve, and Mohair can’t manage his horse.” “See, they’ve got ’em in line,” exclaims the General, who is in a state of frantic excitement altogether. “Silence, pray! he’s going to—ah, the blundering blockhead, it’s a false start!” Major D’Orville takes out his double-glasses, and proceeds quietly without noticing the interruption, “Then the Fox has been lame, and Capon is a sad performer; nevertheless, you shall have your choice, Miss Kettering, and I’ll bet you a pair of gloves on the——By Jove, they’re off,” and the Major puts his glasses up in scarcely veiled anxiety, whilst Mary Delaval’s heart beats thick and fast, as she strains her eyes towards the fleeting tulip-coloured throng, drawing gradually out from the dark mass of spectators that have gone to witness the start.

How easy it looks to go cantering along over a nice grass country, properly flagged out so as to insure the performers from making any mistakes; and how trifling the obstacles appear over which they are following each other like a string of wild geese, more particularly when you, the spectator, are quietly ensconced in a comfortable seat, sheltered from the wind, and viewing the sports at a respectful distance. Perhaps you might not think it quite such child’s play were you assisting in the pageant on the back of a headstrong, powerful horse, rendered irritable and violent by severe training (of which discipline this unfortunate class of animal gets more than enough), rasping your knuckles against his withers, and pulling your arms out of their sockets, because he, the machine, is all anxiety to get to the end, whilst you the controlling, or who ought to be the controlling power, have received strict injunctions “to wait.” If your whole energies were not directed to the one object of “doing your duty” and winning your race, you might possibly have leisure to reflect on your somewhat hazardous position. “Neck-or-nothing” has just disappeared, doubling up himself and Mr. Fearless in a complicated kind of fall, at the very place over which you must necessarily follow; and should your horse, who is shaking his head furiously, as you vainly endeavour to steady him, make the slightest mistake, you shudder to think of “Frantic” running away with her rider close behind you. Nevertheless, it is impossible to decline “eternal misery on this side and certain death on the other,” but go you must, and when safe into the next field there is nothing of any importance till you come to the brook. To be sure, the animal you are riding never would face water, still, your spurs are sharp, and you have a vague sort of trust that you may get over somehow. You really deserve to win, yet will we, albeit unused to computation of the odds, willingly bet you five to four that you are neither first nor second.

In the meantime, our friends in the stand make their running commentaries on the race. “How slow they are going,” says Blanche, who, like all ladies, has a most liberal idea of “pace.” “He’s over!” mutters Mary Delaval, as “blue-and-orange” skims lightly over the first fence, undistinguished, save by her, amidst the rest. “One down!” says a voice, and there is a slight scream from amongst the prettiest of the bonnets. “Red-and-white cap—who is it?” and what with the distraction of watching the others, and the confusion on the cards, Bendigo has been caught and remounted ere the hapless Lieutenant Mohair can be identified. Meanwhile the string is lengthening out. “Uppy is making frightful running,” says Major D’Orville, thinking how right he was to stand heavily against Lady Lavender; “however, the Fox is close upon him; and that’s Haphazard, Miss Kettering, just behind Sober John.” “Two—four—six—seven—nine—what a pretty sight!” says Blanche, but she turns away her head with a shudder as a party-coloured jacket goes down at the next fence, neither horse nor rider rising again. One always fancies the worst, and Mary turns pale as death, and clasps her hands tighter than ever. And now they arrive at the double post and rails, which have been erected purposely for the gratification of the ladies in the stand. The first three bound over it in their stride like so many deer. Captain Rocket pulls his horse into a trot, and Sober John goes in-and-out quite as clever as did the Major’s white charger. Mr. Jason is good enough to express his approval. Charlie follows the example of his leader, and though he hits it very hard, Haphazard’s fine shape saves him from a fall. Blanche thinks him the noblest hero in England, and nobody but D’Orville remarks how very pale Mrs. Delaval is getting. Mohair essays to follow the example thus set him, and succeeds in doing the first half of his task admirably, but no power on earth will induce Bendigo to jump out after jumping in, and eventually he is obliged to be ignominiously extricated by a couple of carpenters and a handsaw. His companions diverge, like a flight of wild-fowl, towards the brook. The Fox, who is now leading, refuses; and the charitable Nimrods, and dandies, and swells, and professionals, all vote that Capon’s heart failed him, and “he didn’t put in half enough powder.” The Major knows better. The horse was once his property, and he has not laid against it without reason. The brook creates much confusion; but Sober John singles himself out from the ruck, and flies it without an effort, closely followed by Haphazard and Lady Lavender. The rest splash and struggle, and get over as they best can, with but little chance now of coming up with the first three. They all turn towards home, and the pace is visibly increasing. Captain Rocket is leading, but Charlie’s horse is obviously full of running, and the boy is gradually drawing away from Lady Lavender, and nearer and nearer to the front. Already people begin to shout “Haphazard wins”; and the General is hoarse with excitement. “Charlie wins!” he exclaims, his lace purple, and the ends of his blue-and-orange handkerchief floating on the breeze. “Charlie wins! I tell you. Look how he’s coming up. Zounds! don’t contradict me, sir!” he roars out to the intense dismay of his next neighbour, a meek old gentleman, who has only come to the steeple-chase in order that he may write an account of it for a magazine, and who shrinks from the General as from a raving madman. “Now, Captain Rocket,” shouts the multitude, as if that unmoved man would attend to anything but the business in hand. They reach the last fence neck-and-neck, Haphazard landing slightly in advance. “Kettering wins!” “Blast him!” hisses D’Orville between his teeth, turning white as a sheet He stands to lose eighteen hundred by Haphazard alone, and we question whether, on reliable security, the Major could raise eighteen-pence. Nevertheless, he turns the next instant to Blanche, with a quiet, unmoved smile, to congratulate her on her cousin’s probable success. “If he can only ‘finish,’ Miss Kettering, he can’t lose,” says the speculator; but he still trusts that “if” may save him the price of his commission.

What a moment for Charlie! Hot, breathless, and nearly exhausted, his brain reeling with the shouts of the populace, and the wild excitement of the struggle, one idea is uppermost in his mind—if man and horse can do it, win he will. Steadily has he ridden four long miles, taking the greatest pains with his horse, and restraining his own eagerness to be in front, as well as that of the gallant animal. He has kept his eye fixed on Captain Rocket, and regulated his every movement by that celebrated performer. And now he is drawing slightly in advance of him, and one hundred yards more will complete his triumph. Yet, inexperienced as he is, he cannot but feel that Haphazard is no longer the elastic, eager goer whom he has been regulating so carefully, and the truth shoots across him that his horse is beat. Well, he ought to last another hundred yards. See, the double flags are waving before him, and the shouts of his own name fall dully upon his ear. He hears Captain Rocket’s whip at work, and is not aware how that judicious artist is merely plying it against his own boot to flurry the young one. Charlie begins to flog. “Sit still!” shouts Frank Hardingstone from the stand. Charlie works arms and legs like a windmill, upsets his horse, who would win if he were but let alone—Sober John shows his great ugly head alongside. Haphazard changes his leg—Major D’Orville draws a long breath of relief—Captain Rocket, with a grim smile, and one fierce stab with his spurs, glides slightly in advance—and Haphazard is beaten on the post by half a length, Lady Lavender a bad third, and the rest nowhere!

Blanche is dreadfully disappointed. The General thinks “the lad deserves great credit for being second in such good company;” but the tears stand in Mary Delaval’s eyes—tears, we believe, of gratitude at his not being brought home on a hurdle, instead of riding into the weighing enclosure with the drooping self-satisfied air, and the arms hanging powerless down his side, which distinguish the gentleman-jockey after his exertions. The boy is scarcely disappointed. To have been so near winning, and to have run second for such an event as the “Grand Military,” is a feather in his cap, of which he is in no slight degree proud; and he walks into the stand the hero of the day, for Captain Rocket is no lady’s man, and is engaged to risk his neck again to-morrow a hundred miles from here. So he has put on a long great-coat and disappeared. The General accounts for Charlie’s defeat on a theory peculiarly his own. “Virtually” says he, “my nephew won the race. How d’ye mean beat? It was twenty yards over the four miles. Twenty yards from home he was a length in front. If the stewards had been worth their salt, we should have won. Don’t tell me!”

There is more racing, but the great event has come off, and our friends in the stand occupy themselves only with luncheon. Frank Hardingstone comes up to speak to Blanche, but she is so surrounded and hemmed in, that beyond shaking hands with her he might as well be back at his own place on the south coast, for any enjoyment he can have in her society. Major D’Orville is rapidly gaining ground in the good graces of all the Newton-Hollows party. He has won a great stake, and is in brilliant spirits. Even Mary thinks “what an agreeable man he is,” and glances the while at a fair glowing face, eating, drinking, and laughing by turns, and discussing with Sir Ascot the different events of their exciting gallop. Lacquers, with his mouth full, is making the agreeable in his own way to the whole party. “Deuced good pie—aw—ruin me—aw—in gloves, Miss Kettering—aw—lose everything to you—aw;” and the dandy has a vague sort of notion that he might say something sweet here, but it will not shape itself into words very conveniently, so he has a large glass of sherry instead. Our friend Captain Lacquers is not so much “a man of parts,” as “a man of figure.” Charlie, somewhat excited, flourishes his knife and fork, and describes how he lost his race to the public in general. Gaston D’Orville, with his most deferential air, is winning golden opinions from Blanche, and thinking in his innermost soul what a traitor he is to his own heart the while; Mrs. Delaval looks very pale and subdued, and Bounce thinks she must be tired, but breaks off to something else before he has made the inquiry—still everybody seems outwardly to be enjoying him or herself to the utmost, and it is with a forced smile and an air of assumed gaiety that Frank Hardingstone takes his leave, and supposes “we shall all meet at the ball!”

Fancy Frank deliberately proposing to go to a ball! How bitterly he smiles as he walks away from the course faster and faster, as thought after thought goads him to personal exertion! Now he despises himself thoroughly for his weakness in allowing the smile of a silly girl thus to sink into a strong man’s heart—now he analyses his own feelings as he would probe a corporeal wound, with a stern scientific pleasure in the examination—and anon he speculates vaguely on the arrangements of Nature, which provide us with sentimental follies for a sauce piquante wherewith to flavour our daily bread. Nevertheless, our man of action is by no means satisfied with himself. He takes a fierce walk over the most unfrequented fields, and returns to his solitary lodgings, to read stiff chapters of old dogmatic writers, and to work out a tough equation or two, till he can “get this nonsense out of his head.” In vain, a fairy figure with long violet eyes and floating hair dances between him and his quarto, and the “unknown quantity” plus Blanche continually eludes his mental grasp.

We do not think Frank has enjoyed his day’s pleasure, any more than Mary Delaval. How few people do, could we but peep into their heart of hearts! Here are two at least of that gay throng in whom the shaft is rankling, and all this discomfort and anxiety exists because, forsooth, people never understand each other in time. We think it is in one of Rousseau’s novels that the catastrophe is continually being postponed because the heroine invariably becomes vivement émue, and unable to articulate, just at the critical moment when two words more would explain everything, and make her happy with her adorer. Were it not for this provoking weakness, she would be married and settled long before the end of the first volume: but then, to be sure, what would become of all the remaining pages of French sentimentality? If there were no uncertainty, there would be no romance—if we knew each other better, perhaps we should love each other less. Hopes and fears make up the game of life. Better be the germinating flower, blooming in the sunshine and cowering in the blast, than the withered branch, defiant indeed of winter’s cold and summer’s heat, but drinking in no dew of morning, putting forth no buds of spring, and in its dreary, barren isolation, unsusceptible of pleasure as of pain.

[CHAPTER VIII]
THE BALL

THE COUNTRY BALL—A POETICAL PEER—BLANCHE’S PARTNERS—SMILES AND SCOWLS—MAMMA’S ADVICE—THE GENERAL’S POLITICS—THE MAJOR’S STRATEGY—“HOME”—THE DREAMER—THE SLEEPER—AND THE WATCHER

Bustle and confusion reign paramount at “The Kingmakers’ Arms”—principal hotel and posting-house in the town of Guyville. Once a year is there a great lifting of carpets and shifting of furniture in all the rooms of that enterprising establishment. Chambermaids hurry to and fro in smart caps brought out for the occasion, and pale-faced waiters brandish their glass-cloths in despair at the variety of their duties. All the resources of the plate-basket are brought into use, and knives, forks, tumblers, wine-glasses, German silver and Britannia metal, are collected and borrowed, and furbished up, to grace the evening’s entertainment with a magnificence becoming the occasion. Dust pervades the passages, and there is a hot smell of cooking and closed windows, by which the frequenters of the house are made aware that to-night is the anniversary of the Guyville Ball, a solemnity to be spoken of with reverence by the very ostler’s assistant in the yard, who will tell you “We are very busy, sir, just now, sir, on account of the ball.” Tea-rooms, card-rooms, supper-rooms, dancing-rooms, and cloak-rooms, leave but few apartments to be devoted to the purposes of rest; and an unwary bagman, snoring quietly in No. 5, might chance to be smothered ere morning by the heap of cloaks, shawls, polka-jackets, and other lady-like wraps, ruthlessly heaped upon the unconscious victim in his dormitory. The combined attractions of steeple-chasing and dancing bring numerous young gentlemen and their valets to increase the confusion; and, were it not that the six o’clock train takes back the Londoners and “professionals” to the metropolis, it would be out of the power of mortal functionaries to attend to so many wants, and wait upon so many customers.

That tall, pale, interesting-looking man in chains and ringlets has already created much commotion below with his insatiable demands for foot-baths and hot water. As he waits carelessly in the passage at that closed door, receiving and returning the admiring glances of passing chambermaids, you would hardly suppose, from his unassuming demeanour, that he is no less a person than Lord Mount Helicon’s gentleman. To be sure, he is now what he calls “comparatively incog.” It is only at his club in Piccadilly, or “the room” at Wassailworth, where he and the Duke’s “own man” lay down the law upon racing, politics, wine, and women, that he is to be seen in his full glory. To give him his due, he is an admirable servant, as far as his own duties are concerned, and a clever fellow to boot, or he would not have picked up seven-and-thirty pounds to-day on the steeple-chase whilst he was looking after the luncheon and the carriage. We question, however, whether he could complete his toilet as expeditiously as his master, who is now stamping about his room reciting, in an audible voice, a thundering ode on which he has been some considerable time engaged, and elaborating the folds of his white neckcloth (old fifth-form tie) between the stanzas.

Lord Mount Helicon is a literary nobleman; not one of

“Your authors who’s all author, fellows

In foolscap uniforms turned up with ink;”