“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.