Read the book: «Blanche: A Story for Girls»

Chapter One
The Sunny South

About a quarter of a century ago, a young English girl – Anastasia Fenning by name – went to pay a visit of a few weeks to friends of her family, whose home was a comfortable old house in the pleasantest part of France. She had been somewhat delicate, and it was thought that the milder climate during a part of the winter might be advantageous to her. It proved so. A month or two saw her completely restored to her usual health and beauty, for she was a very pretty girl; and, strange to say, the visit of a few weeks ended in a sojourn of fully twenty years in what came to be her adopted country, without any return during that long stretch of time to her own home, or indeed to England at all.

This was how it came about. The eldest son – or rather grandson of her hosts, for he was an orphan – Henry Derwent, fell in love with the pretty and attractive girl, and she returned his affection. There was no objection to the marriage, for the Derwents and Fennings were friends of more than a generation’s standing. And Henry’s prospects were good, as he was already second in command to old Mr Derwent himself, the head of the large and well-established firm of Derwent and Paulmier, wine merchants and vine-growers; and Anastasia, the only daughter of a widowed country parson of fair private means, would have a “dot” which the Derwents, even taking into account their semi-French ideas on such subjects, thought satisfactory.

Mr Fenning gave his consent, more readily than his friends and his daughter had expected, for he was a devoted, almost an adoring father, and the separation from him was the one drawback in Anastasia’s eyes.

“I thought papa would have been broken-hearted at the thought of parting with me,” she said half poutingly, for she was a trifle spoilt, when the anxiously looked for letter had been received and read. “He takes it very philosophically.”

“Very unselfishly, let us say,” her fiancé replied, though in his secret heart the same thought had struck him.

But the enigma was only too speedily explained. Within a day or two of the arrival of her father’s almost perplexingly glad consent came a telegram to Mr Derwent, as speedily as possible followed by a letter written at his request by the friend and neighbour who had been with Mr Fenning at the last. For Anastasia’s father was dead – had died after but an hour or two’s acute illness, though he had known for long that in some such guise the end must come.

He was glad for his “little girl” to be spared the shock in its near appallingness, wrote Sir Adam Nigel; he was thankful to know that her future was secured and safe. For he had no very near relations, and Sir Adam himself, though Anastasia’s godfather, was an old bachelor, living alone. The question of a home in England would have been a difficult one. And in his last moments Mr Fenning had decided that if the Derwents could without inconvenience keep the young girl with them till her marriage, which he earnestly begged might not be long deferred, such an arrangement would be the wisest and best.

His wishes were carried out. The tears were scarcely dried on the newly orphaned girl’s face, ere she realised that for her husband’s sake she must try again to meet life cheerfully. And in her case it was not difficult to do so, for her marriage proved a very happy one. Henry Derwent was an excellent and a charming man, an unselfish and considerate husband, a devoted though wise father. For twelve years Anastasia’s life was almost cloudless. Then, when her youngest child, a boy, was barely a year old, the blow fell. Again, for the second time in her life, a few hours’ sharp illness deprived her of her natural protector, and she was left alone. Much more alone than at the epoch of her father’s sudden death, for she had then Henry to turn to. Now, though old Mr Derwent was still living, the only close sympathy and affection she could count upon was that of her little girls, Blanche and Anastasia, eleven and nine years of age respectively, when this first and grievous sorrow overtook them.

For some months Mrs Derwent was almost totally crushed by her loss. Then by degrees her spirits revived. Her nature was not a very remarkable one, but it was eminently healthy and therefore elastic. And in her sorrow, severe as it was, there was nothing to sour or embitter, nothing to destroy her faith in her fellow-creatures or render her suspicious and distrustful. And her life, both as her father’s daughter and her husband’s wife, had been a peculiarly bright and sheltered one.

“Too bright to last,” she thought sometimes, and perhaps it was true.

For trouble must come. There are those indeed from whom, though in less conspicuous form than that of death, it seems never absent – their journey is “uphill all the way.” There are those again, more like Anastasia Derwent, whose path lies for long amid the flowers and pleasant places, till suddenly a thunderbolt from heaven devastates the whole. Yet these are not, to my mind, the most to be pitied. The happiness of the past is a possession even in the present, and an earnest for the future. In the years of sunshine the nature has had time to grow and develop, to gather strength against the coming of the storm. Not so with those who have known nothing but wintry weather, whose faith in aught else has but the scantiest nourishment to feed upon.

And the new phase of life to which her husband’s death introduced Mrs Derwent called for qualities hitherto little if at all required in her. Her father-in-law, already old and enfeebled, grew querulous and exacting. He had leant upon his son more than had been realised; his powers could not rally after so tremendous a shock. He turned to his daughter-in-law, in unconscious selfishness, demanding of her more than the poor woman found it possible to give him, though she rose to the occasion by honestly doing her best. And though this “best” was but little appreciated, and ungraciously enough received, she never complained or lost patience.

As the years went on and in some ways her task grew heavier, there were not wanting those who urged her to give it up.

“He is not your own father,” they said. “He is a tiresome, tyrannical old man. You should return to England with your children; there must still be many friends there who knew you as a girl. And this living in France, while not French, out of sympathy with your surroundings in many ways, is not the best school for your daughters. You don’t want them to marry Frenchmen?”

This advice, repeatedly volunteered by one friend in particular, the aged Marquise de Caillemont, herself an Englishwoman, whose own marriage had not disposed her to take a rose-coloured view of so-called “mixed alliances,” was only received by Mrs Derwent with a shake of the head. True, her eyes sparkled at the suggestion of a return to England, but the time for that had not come. Blanche and Stasy were too young for their future as yet to cause her any consideration. They were being well educated, and if the care of their grandfather fell rather heavily on them – on Blanche especially – “Well, after all,” she said, “we are not sent into this world merely to please ourselves. I had too little of such training myself, I fear; my children are far less selfish than I was. Still, I will not let it go too far, dear madame. I do not want their young lives to be clouded. I cannot see my way to leaving the grandfather, but time will show what is right to do.”

Time did show it. When Blanche, on whose strong and buoyant nature Mr Derwent learned more and more to rely, till by degrees she came almost to replace to him the son he missed so sorely, and whom she much resembled – when Blanche was seventeen, the old man died, peacefully and gently, blessing the girl with his last breath.

They missed him, after all, for he had grown less exacting with failing health. And while he was there, there was still the sense of protectorship, of a masculine head of the house. Blanche missed him most of all, naturally, because she had done the most for him, and she was one of those who love to give, of their best, of themselves.

But after a while happy youth reasserted itself. She turned with fresh zest and interest to the consideration of the plans for the future which the little family was now free to make.

“We shall go back to England, of course, shan’t we, mamma?” said Stasy eagerly, as if the England she had never seen were the land of all her associations.

“Of course,” Mrs Derwent agreed. “The thought of it has been the brightest spot in my mind all through these last years. How your father and I used to talk of the home we would have there one day! Though I now feel that anywhere would have been home with him,” and she sighed a little. “He was really more English than poor grandfather, for he had a regular public school education.”

“But grandfather only came to France as a grown-up man, and papa was born here,” said Blanche. “Of the two, one would have expected papa to be the more French, yet he certainly was not. Perhaps it was just that dear old gran was a more clinging nature, and took the colour of his surroundings more easily. We are just the opposite: neither Stasy nor I could be called at all French, could we, mamma?”

She said it with a certain satisfaction, and Mrs Derwent smiled as she looked at them. Blanche, though fair, gave one the impression of unusual strength and vigour. Stasy was slighter and somewhat darker. Both were pretty, and promising to grow still prettier. And from their adopted country they had unconsciously imbibed a certain “finish” in both bearing and appearance, which as a rule comes to Englishwomen, when it comes at all, somewhat later in life.

“We are not French-looking, mamma; now, are we?” chimed in the younger girl.

“Well, no, not in yourselves, certainly,” said Mrs Derwent. “But still, there cannot but be a little something, of tone and air, not quite English. How could it be otherwise, considering that your whole lives have been spent in France? But you need not distress yourselves about it. You will feel yourselves quite English once we are in England.”

“We do that already,” said Blanche. “You know, mamma, how constantly our friends here reproach us with being so English. One thing, I must say I am glad of – we have no French accent in speaking English.”

“No, I really do not think you have,” Mrs Derwent replied. “It is one of the things I have been the most anxious about. For it always sets one a little at a disadvantage to speak the language of any country with a foreign accent, if one’s home is to be in the place. How delightful it is to think of really settling in England! I wonder if I shall find Blissmore much changed. How I wish I could describe my old home, Fotherley, better to you – how I wish I could make you see it! I can fancy I feel the breeze on the top of the knoll just behind the vicarage garden; I can hear the church bells sometimes – the dear, dear old home that it was.”

“I think you describe it beautifully, mamma,” said Stasy. “I often lie awake at night making pictures of it to myself.”

“And we shall see it for ourselves soon,” added Blanche; “that is to say, mamma,” she went on with a little hesitation, “if you quite decide that – ”

“What, my dear?” said her mother.

“Oh – that Blissmore will be the best place for us to settle at,” said Blanche, rather abruptly, as if she had been anxious to get the words said, and yet half fearful of their effect.

Mrs Derwent’s face clouded over a little.

“What an odd thing for you to say, my dear?” she replied. “You cannot have any prejudice against my dear old home, and where else could we go which would be so sure to be home, where we should at once be known and welcomed? Besides, the place itself is charming – so very pretty, and a delightful neighbourhood, and not very far from London either. We could at any time run up for a day or two.”

“Ye-es,” said Blanche; “the only thing is, dear mamma, I have heard so much of English society being stiff and exclusive – ”

“It’s not as stiff and exclusive as French,” Mrs Derwent interrupted; “only you cannot judge of that, having lived here all your life, and knowing every one there was to know within a good large radius, just as I knew everybody round about Blissmore when I was a girl.”

“But all these years! Will they not have brought immense changes?” still objected Blanche. “And it is not as if we were very rich or important people. If we were going to buy some fine château in England and entertain a great deal, it would be different. But, judged by English ideas, we shall not be rich or important. Not that I should wish to be either. I should like to live modestly, and have our own poor people to look after, and just a few friends – the life one reads about in some of our charming English tales, mamma.”

“And why should we not have it, my dear? We shall be able to have a very pretty house, I hope. I only wish one of those I remember were likely to be vacant; and why, therefore, should you be afraid of Blissmore? Surely my old home is the most natural place for us to go to: I cannot be quite forgotten there.” Blanche said no more, and indeed it would have been difficult to put into more definite form her vague misgivings about Blissmore. Her knowledge of English social life was of course principally derived from books, and from her mother’s reminiscences, which it was easy to see were coloured by the glamour of the past, and drawn from a short and youthful experience under the happiest auspices. And Blanche was by no means inclined to prejudice; there was no doubt, even by Mrs Derwent’s own account, that her old home had been in a peculiarly “exclusive” part of the country.

“I should not mind so much for ourselves,” she said to Stasy, that same afternoon, as they were walking up and down the stiff gravelled terrace in the garden at the back of their house – their “town house,” in Bordeaux itself, where eight months of the year had been spent by the Derwent family for three generations. “But I do feel so afraid of poor mamma’s being disappointed.”

Stasy was inclined to take the other view of it.

“Why should we get on less well at Blissmore than anywhere else?” she said. “Of course, wherever we go, it will be strange at first, but surely there is more likelihood of our feeling at home there than at a totally new place. I cannot understand you quite, Blanchie.”

“I don’t know that I quite understand myself,” Blanche replied. “It is more an instinct. I suppose I dread mamma’s old home, because she would go there with more expectation. It will be curious, Stasy, very curious, to find ourselves really in England. There cannot be many English girls who have reached our age without having even seen their own country.”

“And to have been so near it all these years,” said Stasy, “Oh, it is too delightful to think we are really going to live in England – dear, dear England! Of course I shall always love France; we have been very happy in many ways, except for our great sorrows,” and her bright, sparkling face sobered, as, at April-like sixteen, a face can sober, to beam all the more sunnily the next moment – “we have been very happy, but we are going to be still happier, aren’t we, Blanchie?”

“I hope so, darling. But you will have to go on working for a good while once we are settled again, you know. And I too. We are both very ignorant of much English literature, though, thanks to papa’s library and grandfather’s advice, I think we know some of the older authors better than some English girls do. I wonder what sort of teaching we can get at Blissmore; we are rather too old for a governess.”

“Oh dear, yes. Of course we can’t have a governess,” said Stasy. “We must go to cours– ‘classes,’ or whatever they are called. I suppose there is something of the kind at Blissmore.”

“I don’t know that there is. I don’t know what will be done about Herty,” said Blanche. “I’m afraid he may have to go to school, and we should miss him so, shouldn’t we?”

“There may be a school near enough for him to come home every evening,” said Stasy, who was incapable of seeing anything to do with their new projects in other than the brightest colours. “There he is – coming to call us in. – Well, Herty, what is it?” as a pretty, fair-haired boy came racing along the straight paths to meet them.

“The post has come, and mamma has a letter from England, and dinner will be ready directly, and – and – my guinea-pigs’ salad is all done, and there is no more of the right kind in the garden,” said the little boy. “What shall I do?”

“After dinner you shall go with Aline to the vegetable shop near the market place and buy some lettuce – that is the proper word – not ‘salad,’ when it is a guinea-pig’s affair,” said Stasy.

For it was early summer-time, and the evenings were long and light.

Blanche smiled.

“My dear Stasy, your English is a little open to correction as well as Herty,” she said. “You must not speak of a vegetable shop – ‘greengrocers’ is the right name, and – there was something rather odd about the last sentence, ‘a guinea-pig’s affair.’”

“Well, you can’t say ‘a guinea-pig’s business,’ can you?” said Stasy. “Let us ask mamma. I am, above all, anxious to speak perfect English. Let us be most particular for the next few weeks; let us pray mamma to correct us if we make the slightest mistake.”

“I wonder what the letter is that has come,” said Blanche. “I think we had better go in now. Mamma may want us. After dinner, perhaps, she will come out with us a little. How difficult it is to picture this dear old house inhabited by strangers! I think it is charming here in summer; we have never been in the town so late before. I like it ever so much better than Les Rosiers – that is so modern. I wish we were going to stay here till we leave.”

She stood still and gazed on the long, narrow house – irregular and picturesque from age, though with no architectural pretensions at all – which for seventeen years had been her home. The greyish-white walls stood out in the sunshine, one end almost covered with creepers, contrasting vividly with the deep blue sky of the south. Some pigeons flew overhead on their way to their home high up in the stable-yard, the old coachman’s voice talking to his horses sounded in the distance, and the soft drip of the sleepy fountain mingled with the faint noises in the street outside.

“I shall often picture all this to myself,” thought Blanche. “I shall never forget it. Even when I am very old I shall be able to imagine myself walking up and down, up and down this path, with grandpapa holding my arm. And over there, near the fountain, how well I remember running to meet dear papa the last time he came back from one of his journeys to Paris! I suppose it is best to go to what is really our own country, but partings, even with things and places that cannot feel, are sad, very sad.”

Chapter Two
Fogs

The old house in Bordeaux was not to be sold, but let for a long term of years. An unexpectedly good offer was made for it, and a very short time after the evening in which in her heart Blanche had bidden it a farewell, the Derwents gave up possession to their tenants. For the few months during which Mrs Derwent’s presence was required in France on account of the many and troublesome legal formalities consequent upon her father-in-law’s death and the winding-up of his affairs, the family moved to Les Rosiers, the little country-house where they had been accustomed to spend the greater part of the summer months.

They would have preferred less haste. It would in many ways have been more convenient to have returned to Bordeaux in the autumn, and thence made the final start, selecting at leisure such of the furniture and other household goods as they wished to take to their new home. But the late Mr Derwent’s partner, Monsieur Paulmier, and his legal adviser, Monsieur Bergeret, were somewhat peremptory. The offer for the house was a good one; it might not be repeated. It was important for Madame, in the interests of her children, to neglect no permanent source of income.

Their tone roused some slight misgiving in Mrs Derwent, and she questioned them more closely. Were things not turning out as well as had been expected? Was there any cause for anxiety?

Monsieur Paulmier smiled reassuringly, but looked to Monsieur Bergeret to reply. Monsieur Bergeret rubbed his hands and smiled still more benignly.

“Cause for uneasiness?” Oh dear, no. Still, Madame was so intelligent, so full of good sense, it was perhaps best to tell her frankly that things were not turning out quite so well as had been hoped. There had been some bad years, as she knew – phylloxera and other troubles; and Monsieur, the late head of the firm, had been reluctant to make any changes to meet the times, too conservative, perhaps, as was often the case with elderly folk. Now, if Madame’s little son had been of an age to go into the business – no doubt he would inherit the excellent qualities of his progenitors —that would have been the thing, for then the family capital might have remained there indefinitely. As it was, by the terms of Monsieur’s will, all was to be paid out as soon as possible. It would take some years at best, for there was not the readiness to come forward among eligible moneyed partners that had been expected. The business wanted working up, there was no doubt, and rumour exaggerated things. Still – oh no, there was no cause for alarm; but still, even a small certainty like the rent of the house was not to be neglected.

So “Madame” of course gave in – the offer was accepted; a somewhat hurried selection of the things to be taken to England made, the rest sold. And the next two months were spent at Les Rosiers, a place of no special interest or association, though there were country neighbours to be said good-bye to with regret on both sides.

The “letter from England” which little Hertford Derwent had told of the evening he ran out to his sisters in the garden, had been a disappointment to their mother, for it contained, returned from the dead-letter office, one of her own, addressed by her some weeks previously to her old friend, Sir Adam Nigel, at the house near Blissmore, which she had believed was still his home.

“Not known at Alderwood,” was the curt comment scored across the envelope.

“I cannot understand it,” she said to her daughters. “Alderwood was his own place. Even if he were dead – and I feel sure I should have heard of his death – some of his family must have succeeded him there.”

“I thought he was an old bachelor,” said Blanche.

“Yes, but the place – a family place – would have gone to some one belonging to him, a nephew or a cousin. He was not a nobody, to be forgotten.”

“The place may have been sold,” Blanche said again. “I suppose even old family places are sometimes sold in England.”

But still Mrs Derwent repeated that she could scarcely think so; at least she felt an instinctive conviction that she would have heard of it.

“It may possibly be let to strangers, and some careless servant may have sent back the letter without troubling to inquire,” she said. “Of course I can easily find out about it once we are there, but I feel disappointed. I had counted on Sir Adam’s helping me to find a suitable house.”

“How long is it since you last heard from him?” said Stasy.

“Oh, a good while. Let me see. I doubt if I have written to him since – since I wrote to thank him for writing to me when – soon after your father’s death,” replied Mrs Derwent.

“That is several years ago,” said Blanche gently. “I fear, dear mamma, your old friend must be dead.”

“I hope not,” said her mother; “but for the present it is much the same as if he were. Let me see. No, I cannot think of any one it would be much use to write to at Blissmore. We must depend on ourselves.”

“Who is the vicar at Fotherley now – at least, who came after our grandfather?” asked Blanche.

Mrs Derwent looked up.

“That is not a bad idea. I might write to him. Fleming was his name. I remember him vaguely; he was curate for a time. But that is now twenty years ago: it is by no means certain he is still there, and I don’t care to write letters only to have them returned from the post-office. Besides, I have not an altogether pleasant remembrance of that Mr Fleming. His wife and daughter were noisy, pushing women, and it was said the living was given to him greatly out of pity for their poverty. Sir Adam told me about it in one of his letters: he regretted it. Dear Sir Adam! He used to write often in those days.”

“I daresay it will not make much difference in the end,” said Blanche. “No one can really choose a house for other people. Nothing could have been decided without our seeing it.”

“No; still it would have been nice to know that there were any promising ones vacant. However, we have to be in London for a short time, in any case. We must travel down to Blissmore from there, and look about for ourselves.”

The Derwents’ first experience of their own, though unknown country was a rather unfortunate one. Why, of all months in the year, the Fates should have conspired to send them to London in November, it is not for me to explain. No doubt, had Mrs Derwent’s memories and knowledge of the peculiarities of the English climate been as accurate as she liked to believe they were of everything relating to her beloved country, she would have set the Fates, or fate, at defiance, if such a thing be possible, by avoiding this mysteriously doleful month as the date of her return thither. But long residence in France, where, though often without any spite or malice prepense, people are very fond of taunting British foreigners with the weak points in their national perfection, had developed a curious, contradictory scepticism in her, as to the existence of any such weak points at all.

“People do talk such nonsense about England,” she would say to her daughters, “as if it were always raining there when it is not foggy. I believe they think we never see the sun at all. Dear me! when I look back on my childhood and youth, I cannot remember anything but sunshiny days. It seems to have been always summer, even when we were skating on the lake at Alderwood.”

She smiled, and her daughters smiled. They understood, and believed her – believed, Stasy especially, almost too unquestioningly. For when the train drew up in Victoria Station that mid-November afternoon, the poor girl turned to her mother with dismay.

“Mamma,” she exclaimed, “it isn’t three o’clock, and it is quite dark. And such a queer kind of darkness! It came all of a sudden, just when the houses got into rows and streets. I thought at first it was smoke from some great fire. But it can’t be, for nobody seems to notice it – at least as far as I can see anybody. And the porters are all going about with lanterns. Oh mamma, can it be – surely it isn’t always like this?”

And Stasy seemed on the point of tears.

Poor Mrs Derwent had had her unacknowledged suspicions. But she looked out of the window as if for the first time she had noticed anything amiss.

“Why, yes,” she replied, “it is rather unlucky; but, after all, it will be an amusing experience. We have made our début in the thick of a real London fog!”

Herty, who had been asleep, here woke up and began coughing and choking and grumbling at what he called “the fire-taste” in his mouth; and even the cheerful-minded Aline, the maid, looked rather blank.

Blanche said nothing, but from that moment a vague idea that, if no suitable house offered itself at Blissmore, she would use her influence in favour of London itself as their permanent headquarters, was irrevocably dismissed from her mind.

“We should die!” she said to herself; “at least mamma and Stasy, who are not as strong as I, would. Oh dear, I hope we are not going to regret our great step!”

For they had left Bordeaux in the full glow of sunshine – the exquisite “autumn summer” of the more genial south, where, though the winter may not infrequently be bitingly cold, at least it is restricted to its own orthodox three months.

“And this is only November,” proceeded Blanche in her unspoken misgivings. “Everybody says an English spring never really sets in till May, if then. Fancy fully five months of cold like this, and not improbable fog. No, no; we cannot stay in London: the cold must be faced, but not the fog.”

Yet she could scarcely help laughing at the doleful expression of her sister’s face, when the little party had disentangled themselves and their belongings from the railway carriage, and were standing, bewildered and forlorn, trying to look about them in the murky air.

“Mustn’t we see about our luggage, mamma?” said Blanche, feeling herself considerably at a disadvantage in this strange and all but invisible world. “It is managed the same way as in France, I suppose. We must find the – what do they call the room where we wait to claim it?”

“I – I really don’t know,” said Mrs Derwent. “It will be all right, I suppose, if we follow the others.”

But there were no “others” with any very definite goal, apparently. There were two or three little crowds dimly to be seen at different parts of the train, whence boxes seemed to be disgorging.

“It is much more puzzling than in France,” said Blanche, her own spirits flagging. “I do hope we shall not have long to wait. This air is really choking.”

She had Herty’s hand in hers, and moved forward towards a lamp, with some vague idea that its light would lessen her perplexity. Suddenly a face flashed upon her, and a sense of something bright and invigorating came over her almost before she had time to associate the two together.

The face was that of a person standing just under the lamp – a girl, a tall young girl with brilliant but kindly eyes, and a general look of extreme, overflowing youthful happiness. She smiled at Blanche, overhearing her last words.

“You should call a porter,” she said. “They are rather scarce to-night, the train was so full, and the fog is so confusing. Stay – there is one. – Porter! – He will see to your luggage. You won’t have as long to wait as in Paris.”