“Probably not, my dear,” grunted the General, “you never knew before he thought so highly of you. But, Blanche, as we are here, and—and it’s not very late—zounds! they’ve put that clock on again—well, dear, I too have got something to tell you; but mine, I am sorry to say, is bad news. Prepare yourself, my dear Blanche. I’m sure you will bear it well, my little pet, and as long as I have a roof over my head you will have a home; but, in short, it’s no use mincing the matter, Blanche, you’re not an heiress after all—you won’t have a sixpence beyond what I can leave you, and that’s little enough, heaven knows. They’ve found your mother’s will, my dear, and a most unfair and unreasonable will it is; but still, my pretty Blanche, it makes you a penniless young lady, after all!”
“Is that the worst?” answered Blanche, looking up with an air of immense relief, though she had turned deadly pale; “is that all, Uncle Baldwin? dear me, I’m not worse off than half the other girls I know. We shall leave this house, I suppose,” she added, looking round at the ample room and its stately furniture, jumping at once to conclusions, as young ladies will do, “and we shall live entirely at Newton-Hollows, and I shall be there all the time my garden looks most beautiful; but we shan’t have to send away Mrs. Delaval, shall we?” (The General winced.) “And when will it all be settled? and when shall we go?”
“Blanche, you’re a diamond,” said the General, his eyes filling with tears; “you’ve the pluck of ten women. You ought to have commanded the Kedjerees. Go to bed now, my dear, and to-morrow we’ll look things boldly in the face, and see what is best to be done.” So the General stumped off with his bed-candle, more than ever doating on his niece, more than ever persuaded that she inherited her sterling qualities from his side of the house, and not from that “poor, foolish old Kettering,” as he called him, and more than ever indignant with all the young men of his acquaintance, except Lacquers, for not being on their knees to Blanche. “They’ve no energy; they’ve no devotion; zounds! they’ve no chivalry amongst ’em—none whatever! If I was such a fellow as any one of these, ’gad, I’d go to bed and never get up again;” with which soliloquy the General proceeded to divest himself of his ball-going attire, and prepared for his refuge from all the ills of life.
To those who are conversant with the habits of ladies, it is needless to mention that Blanche did not, by any means, follow her uncle’s excellent advice and example, in betaking herself to immediate repose. The fair sex will easily comprehend how she sought Mrs. Delaval’s room, and how the two ladies sat up in “their wrappers” and consoled each other, and talked it all over, backwards and forwards, and came to no very logical conclusions; and, above all, how the proposal and its reception were quite as engrossing a topic, and were quite as much dwelt on as the loss of Blanche’s fine fortune; nor will it escape their observation that Mary’s greater worldly experience would clearly foresee the substitution of one cousin for another in this revolution amongst the Kettering possessions, and how a marriage between the two was the only plan to make everything right; and how the fair young face, with its kind eyes, that had haunted her so long, was farther from her now than ever. She knew, of course, long ago, that it was hopeless and impossible—that must surely have been a great consolation! When a child cries for the moon, and a cloud comes and covers up the coveted bauble, and hides it away, the urchin has small comfort in being told that it is just as near the object of its desires as when it could see it, and look, and long, and stretch its tiny hands. When the beggar-maiden sets her affections on King Cophetua, without a hope, in these days, of the famous fabulous mésalliance being perpetrated, the fact that it does not, in reality, remove him one iota farther than before from her humble self, helps but little to assuage the pang inflicted on her infatuated heart by his Majesty’s nuptials with one of his own degree. The impossible may be increased in love, if not in logic, and Mary was lying awake and desponding, long after Blanche had forgotten all the excitement and changes of the evening in happy, dreamless slumbers.
[CHAPTER XIX]
DISPATCHES
SOCIAL LIBERTY—DOMESTIC ECONOMY—A GAZETTE FROM THE CAPE—A MAN OF MANY IRONS—A TRUE FRIEND—A REAL HERO—COUPLES, NOT PAIRS—OH ME MISERUM!—GATHERED IN THE DEW
Mary Delaval, in London, was one of the many flowers born to “waste their sweetness on the desert air,” for London is, indeed, a desert to those who are in it and not of it, whose destiny seems to have been warped into a strange unfitness in the great, struggling, noisy, pompous town; whose proper place would seem to be in some quiet, secluded nook, the ornament and the joy of a peaceful home, instead of the ever-shifting surface of that seething tide which drifts them here and there in aimless restlessness. Verily, Fortune does sometimes shuffle the pack in most inexplicable confusion—Ludum insolentem, ludere pertinax—she seems to take a perverse pleasure in smuggling the court-cards into all sorts of incongruous places, and to carry out the Latin poet’s metaphor, trans-mutat incertos honores, or, in plain English, palms the trumps, with dexterous sleight-of-hand, where they seem utterly valueless to influence the result of the game. As society is constituted, such a woman as Mary, with her queenly dignity, her charming manner, her striking beauty, and, above all, her noble, well-cultivated mind, was just as thoroughly tabooed and excluded from the circle of her so-called superiors as if she had been a quadroon in the United States, whose very beauty owes its brilliance to that African stain which, in the Land of Freedom and Equality, makes a shade of colouring the badge that entitles man to lord it over his brother more despotically than over the beasts of the field. Thank God for it, we have no slavery in England; and the time cannot be very far distant when slavery shall be a word without a meaning in the dictionary of every language on the face of the globe. Already, from East to West, the trumpet-note has sounded, and those stir in their sleep who have drugged themselves into insensibility, and stopped their ears against the voice of the charmer, but cannot smother the still small whisper within. Scarcely has its last peal died away beneath the blushing Western wave, ere its echoes are caught up in the very heart of the Morning Land, and even now, while we write, a barbarian despot is quailing on his celestial throne, and the voice of Liberty—real Liberty, Civilisation, and Christianity—is thundering in the ears of millions and millions of immortal beings, hitherto held in thraldom, throughout that mysterious empire, which for ages has been a sealed book to all other nations upon earth. Shall not England still be in the van, as she has always been? Never yet has she failed in the good cause, and never will she. Has she not ever struck for Freedom and the Cross? inseparable watchwords, that the experience of the world has taught us must go hand in hand, or not at all; and where she strikes, good faith, she drives well home. Has she not ever been the first assailant in the breach? stood the outmost bulwark in the gap? and will she fail now? Believe it not. Her destiny would seem the brightest that Providence has yet ordained for any nation since the world began. Formidable and glorious without, she is setting her house in order within. Steadily and gradually the good cause—the universal brotherhood of the soul—is progressing everywhere; through wars and rumours of wars, through political clouds and private disappointments, there seems to be in all men’s minds a settled conviction that “the good time’s coming”; and if, as we firmly believe, England shall bear the glorious banner in the van, why, night and morning will we go down upon our knees and thank God that we are Englishmen! But what has all this to do with a penniless governess, sitting up two pair of stairs in Grosvenor Square? Thus much, as we think: our social system is yet a long way from perfection—there is yet much to be improved and much prejudice to be taken away—we have too much class-feeling and class-isolation, and, perhaps, on no people do these shortcomings in our charity fall so heavily as on those to whom we entrust the education of our children. What is it in which we are so superior to them that entitles us to hold ourselves thus aloof, and, for all the courtesy of our wayfaring salutation, virtually “to pass by on the other side”? What is it that constitutes the talismanic qualification for what we modestly term good society? Is it birth, that accident on which we so rationally plume ourselves? They generally possess even that negative advantage. Is it education, intellect, cultivation of mind? We do not entrust our darlings to their care because they are inferior to us in attainments, or we should teach the pupils ourselves. Is it manner? We do not quarrel with a peer for being gross, or a millionaire for being vulgar—and those of whom we are speaking generally show no want at least of decorum in their demeanour and conversation. Is it money? God forbid! Is it then mere frivolity and assumption in which we excel? For shame! No; the truth must out; there is a leaven still left in us of the very essence of vulgarity, the feeling that we are ill at ease with a so-called inferior, or the domineering spirit which every schoolboy knows too well, prompting us to exult in every chance advantage we may possess over a fellow-creature. Of these amiable causes we may take our choice; but one or other it is which leaves the governess to pine up-stairs in her school-room, while revelry and pleasure and good-fellowship are laughing below.
Now, Mary had, indeed, little of this sort of neglect to complain of; yet was she lonely and sad during the London season which Blanche enjoyed so much. She could not, of course, accompany her to all the balls and “At Homes” which were fast becoming the business of the girl’s life; if she had, we think the worshipful body of chaperons would have lost nothing in dignity, and gained a good deal in grace, beauty, and good-humour by her adhesion. So she felt she was too much separated from Blanche, whom she dearly loved; and it was with a sensation almost of satisfaction, for which she was, nevertheless, quite angry with herself, that she heard of the entire disturbance of all the family arrangements, and the loss of fortune sustained by the young heiress. “Ah,” thought Mary, “perhaps I may be of some use to her now in her distress; at any rate, I can give her good counsel and practical instruction how to bear—none better;” and had it not been for a certain marriage, which seemed more than ever indispensable, Mary would have been ashamed to confess to herself how glad she was.