Chapter Eight.
Old Scenes.
By March the Derwents felt quite at home in their new abode; in one sense, almost too much so. The excitement of settling had sobered down; the housekeeping arrangements were completed, and promising to work smoothly. For Mrs Derwent had profited by her twenty years of French life in becoming a most capable and practical housewife, and being naturally quick and able to adapt herself, she soon mastered the little difficulties consequent on the very different ideas as to material questions of her own and her adopted country.
So that, in point of fact, time was in danger of hanging rather heavily on their hands; there was really so little to do!
Their peculiar position cut them off from many of the occupations with which most of us nowadays are only too heavily burdened. They had few letters to write, for Frenchwomen are not great correspondents—in the provinces, at least—and when the Derwents left Bordeaux, their old friends there extracted no promises of “writing very often—very, very often.”
“Notes,” of course, which in London seem to use up hours of each day, there was never any occasion for. They had no calls to pay, beyond a rare one at the vicarage; no visitors to receive. For the Pinnerton Green folk had not followed suit, as the Derwents had feared, after Mrs Burgess’s invasion. Nothing had been heard of Mrs Wandle, and—probably through some breath of the great Lady Harriot Dunstan’s visit, and Mrs Enneslie’s introduction of the new-comers to her relations at Pinnerton Vicarage—the immediate neighbours had held back: the “butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers” had left them in peace. Mrs Burgess having been called away to a sick sister or niece early in the winter, and not yet having returned, even the excitement of watching her tactics had been wanting.
In short, the Derwents, socially speaking, were very distinctly in the position, to use a homely old saying, of “falling between two stools.”
And though Stasy was the least to be pitied, for her lessons kept her pretty fairly busy, and she managed to find food for amusement and material for mimicry among her class companions—some of whom, too, she really liked—at Mrs Maxton’s school, she was the readiest to grumble.
“What is the use of making the house pretty when there is no one to see it?” she said to her sister one afternoon, when the two had been employing themselves in hunting for early violets and primroses in the woods, with which to adorn the library, their favourite sitting-room. There were not many of these spring treasures as yet, for the season was a late one, but they were laden with other spoil, as lovely in its way—great trails of ivy and bunches of withered or half-withered leaves of every shade, from golden brown to crimson, which in sheltered nooks were still to be found arrested in their beautiful decay.
“What is the use of making the house pretty when there is never any one to see it?” Stasy repeated, as she flicked away an unsightly twig from the quaint posy she was carrying, for Blanche had not at once replied.
“There is always use in making one’s home as pretty as possible. There are ourselves to see it, and the—the thing itself,” replied Blanche a little vaguely.
“What do you mean by the thing itself?” Stasy demanded.
“The being pretty, or the trying to be—the aiming at beauty, I suppose, I mean,” said Blanche. “Can’t you imagine a painter giving years to a beautiful picture, even though he knew no one would ever see it but himself? or a musician composing music no one would ever hear?”
“No,” said Stasy, “I can’t. That sort of thing is flights above me, Blanchie. I like human beings about me—lots of them; they generally interest me, and often amuse me. I like a good many, and I am quite ready to love some. I want sympathy and life, and—and—well, perhaps, a little admiration. And I do think it’s too horribly dull here; at least, I’m afraid it’s going to be. I would rather leave off being at all grand, and get some fun out of the Wandles, and the Beltons, and all the rest of them.”
“Mamma is still looking forward to Sir Adam’s return in the spring—well, soon, it should be now. It is spring already,” said Blanche, rather at a loss, as she often was, how to reply to Stasy’s outburst.
“I don’t believe he’ll come to see us; or if he does, I don’t suppose it would do us much good. He has been away so long, and is no use to the neighbourhood; and I believe that’s all that most people care about,” said Stasy cynically. “These families round about here live their own lives and have their own circles. They’ll all be going up to London directly, I suppose, for the season. They don’t want us, or care about quiet, not very rich, people like us. England isn’t a bit like what I thought it would be.”
“We can’t quite judge yet,” said Blanche. “And—I am sure you are too sweeping, Stasy. Mamma may have been too sanguine, and have seen things too much through rose-coloured spectacles, but she cannot be altogether mistaken in her pleasant remembrances of her old friends—the ‘best’ people—among whom she lived.”
“Would you give Lady Harriot Dunstan as a specimen?” said Stasy snappishly.
“No; she would be a common-minded, inferior woman in any class,” said Blanche. “I believe that is the truth of it all: there are refined and charming natures to be found in every class, and there are the opposite.”
“Well, then, let us hunt up a few among the Blissmore bourgeoisie, and content ourselves with them,” said Stasy.
“No,” said Blanche again. “It is one’s duty to live in one’s own class unless one is plainly shown it is necessary to leave it. And that reminds me, speaking of Lady Harriot, I really think mamma should call there, now we are settled. She did not mean to be impertinent, we must remember.”
“I don’t need to go, as I’m not out,” said Stasy. “Besides, one of us would be enough in any case. I would have liked to see Alderwood, though, but I won’t go the way those Blissmore girls go, on a ‘show’ day—‘open to the public’—faugh!” with great disgust.
Blanche could not help laughing.
“How consistent you are,” she said.—“Well, Herty,” as at that moment her little brother came flying out of their own gate to meet them, “why didn’t you come with us to the woods to gather leaves and hunt for violets?”
“I meant to come,” said Herty regretfully, “but when I’d finished my lessons for Monday, you were gone, and I couldn’t see you, though I ran as far down the road as I could. Oh, Blanchie,” he went on, “I met such a nice lady riding. She saw I was looking up and down, and she stopped her horse and spoke to me. I asked her if she’d seen two girls like you and Stasy, and she said no, but if she did, she’d tell you I was looking for you. She said she knew you by sight, and she hoped we liked living at Pinnerton.”
“Was it a young lady?” asked Blanche.
“Yes,” said the boy, “and she came out of those big gates, nearly opposite the lane, you know. She had a nice face, not as pretty as yours, Blanchie, but about as pretty as—” And he glanced at his younger sister dubiously. “No, she wasn’t like Stasy. She had a more shiny face.”
“Thank you,” said Stasy. “Perhaps she uses Pears’s soap, which I don’t.”
Herty looked puzzled.
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “It was a pretty, shiny way—out of her eyes, too. Not soapy. You are silly, Stasy.”
“I know,” said Blanche with interest, and not sorry to divert the quarrel, which she saw impending between the two—“I know who it was. It must have been the girl with the happy face—Lady Hebe. That was what Herty was trying to describe. You might say ‘sunshiny,’ instead of ‘shiny,’ Herty.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant,” he said. “Her face smiled all over.”
“And did you say we did like Pinnerton?” inquired Stasy with some eagerness.
“I said I did, except when I’d too many lessons; and I said Blanchie did, but Stasy said it was very dull.”
Stasy looked uncertain whether to be pleased or vexed.
“What did she say?” she asked.
“She said it wasn’t so bright here as in France, and she’d been there all this time since Christmas, and then she nodded and trotted away,” was Herty’s reply.
“I thought she must be away,” said Blanche.
“Why—because she has not called upon us?” said Stasy, with what was meant for extreme irony.
“No,” said Blanche quietly. “She could not call unless her friends did, of course, and I don’t think the Marths are old acquaintances of mamma’s. But I had a feeling that she was away. We should have met her, riding or walking about.”
“I don’t suppose she ever walks,” said Stasy.
“Nonsense, Stasy! English girls are not like that. And don’t you remember Mrs Harrowby, the vicar’s wife, saying the other day that some of the girls in the neighbourhood were very good about the poor people, but that, unluckily, the most influential were seldom here. It was when she was telling us about the classes she wants to get up for some of the older girls.”
“No,” said Stasy, “I didn’t pay attention. I suppose I thought she was speaking of the Miss Wandles and the Miss Beltons, and all the other Miss Somebodies or Nobodies. I don’t care about poor people: it’s not my line—excepting making a quête. I used to like doing that when I was a little girl.”
Blanche said nothing. She had considerable experience of Stasy’s contrariness.
But a certain pleasurable though vague sense of anticipation had made its way into her mind since hearing of Herty’s meeting with Lady Hebe.
“I do feel so sure she is good and unselfish and thoughtful for others,” she said to herself. “She may not have much in her power, but I feel as if she would like to be kind to us. I don’t care so much for myself, of course, though it would be nice to know her; but it is for Stasy. I am so afraid of the friends she may make if she has not nice ones.”
And Blanche’s face looked anxious and perturbed as they re-entered their own little domain, laden with their pretty spoils.
Two things happened in the course of the next few days, which somewhat broke the monotony of the Derwents’ daily life. The first was a drive to Alderwood, to return Lady Harriot’s call. Blanche impressed upon her mother that whether the visit was expected of them or not, it was due to their own dignity to make it, notwithstanding the unfavourable impression that Mrs Lilford’s tenant had left with them.
“If we don’t call, she will think us fair game for patronising and condescending to. Of course we must, and we should have done so before.”
“I have kept hoping to hear again from Sir Adam or Mrs Lilford,” said Mrs Derwent. “I should much have preferred not to meet Lady Harriot till she understood better about us.”
“She will probably ring the bell and tell the housekeeper to show us the pictures,” said Stasy. “You, not ‘us,’ I should say, for, of course, I needn’t go.”
“You can go with us for the drive and wait in the fly outside,” said Blanche.
For though they had been talking of a pony-carriage “in the spring,” they had not yet heard of a suitable steed; and on the whole, perhaps Mrs Derwent was not sorry to defer for a little any avoidable expense, the installation at Pinnerton Lodge having cost, as is always the case in such matters, much more than she had anticipated.
Stasy received her sister’s proposal with a laugh. “All right,” she said. “Anything for a spree. I’ll come.”
Something in her tone slightly grated on Blanche.
“Stasy,” she said, “I do hope even the little you see of those girls at Mrs Maxton’s is not doing you any harm. You—you seem to be catching up their expressions.”
“What b— nonsense!” said Stasy, quickly substituting the second word, though she could not help reddening a little. “Mamma, you know better than Blanche. Is there anything unladylike in ‘all right,’ or ‘a spree?’”
“I can scarcely say, my dear,” said her mother. “But I know what your sister means. It is the tone we—”
Stasy ran across the room and stopped her mother saying more, by a kiss.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I’m not going to get vulgar and horrid. And some of those girls are really quite nice, mamma. I’ll tell you what—I wish you’d let me invite one or two here one afternoon to tea. Oh, might I? It would be so nice. I’d like them to see you and Blanchie, and then you can judge for yourselves if the ones I bring aren’t quite ladylike. It is so dull sometimes, mamma. Do say I may.”
“I will think about it, dear,” said Mrs Derwent. “It is not that I have any prejudice against the girls. I daresay there are among them truly refined and charming natures, but I do not want to open a visiting acquaintance in Blissmore. I did not bring you to live in England to fall into a lower social position than is naturally ours. It was not for that we left our dear old home at Bordeaux.”
There was a slight catch in the mother’s voice as she said the last words, that made both her daughters look at her anxiously.
“Mamma dear,” whispered Stasy, “do you sometimes wish we hadn’t left it?”
“I can’t say, dear. I did it for the best, and we must be patient still,” she replied.
But when the sisters were alone, Stasy confided to Blanche that she thought “mamma” just a trifle prejudiced and narrow-minded.
“Si on n’a pas ce qu’on aime,” she said in her half-laughing, half-grumbling way, “il faut aimer ce qu’on a. If we can’t have grand friends, much better content ourselves with common ones. We are not put into the world to live alone: anything is better than dullness.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Blanche.
The next day they went to call at Alderwood.
It was a real spring afternoon, and though the air had still a touch of keenness in it, it was full of the exhilaration which is the essential charm of the childhood of Nature’s year. In spite of some anticipatory shivers, Stasy persuaded her mother and Blanche to have the carriage open, filling it with shawls and rugs, “in case they should be cold,” though as regarded herself, she felt sure that would be impossible.
The first part of the road was familiar to them, as they had to go some considerable part of the way to Blissmore before reaching the cross-country route to Alderwood, which lay on the other side of the town. But once they had turned in the Alderwood direction, a lovely view was before them, and the girls burst into expressions of pleasure; while to their mother, every cottage, every milestone almost, recalled her happy youth.
“I am so glad to find I remember it all so well,” she said. “It makes me feel more at home than I have done yet. Is it not really a charming country? I wish we could have found a house near Alderwood.”
“I don’t,” whispered Stasy, with a private grimace for Blanche’s benefit.
When they reached the lodge gates and were driving slowly up the avenue, Mrs Derwent became perfectly silent, and her daughters respected her mingled feelings. For Alderwood in the old days, as they knew, had been almost as much “home” to her as the pretty Fotherley vicarage.
The anticipation of an interview with Lady Harriot Dunstan was a safe tonic against emotion or overmuch sentiment. And on the servant’s reply that her ladyship was at home, it was with a perfectly calm and dignified demeanour that Mrs Derwent, followed by Blanche, got out of the fly and made her way up the stone steps and across the tiled hall to the inner vestibule, whence opened the drawing-rooms and morning-room, all of which she knew so well. She felt as if in a dream: every footfall seemed to carry her back a quarter of a century. But for a glance at the grave face of the fair, beautiful girl beside her, she could have fancied all the events of the intervening years to have been imaginary, and herself again “Stasy Fenning,” running in with some message from “papa” to her kindly godfather!