THE BLENCARROW HOUSEHOLD.
The house of Blencarrow, which, without being one of the great houses of
the county, was as comfortable and handsome as a country gentleman not
exactly of the highest importance could desire, stood in a pretty little
park of its own, by the side of a bright little mountain river, either
in Cumberland or Westmoreland or North Lancashire--for the boundaries
of these counties are to me somewhat confused, and I cannot aver where
one ends and another begins. It was built, as is not unusual in
North-country houses, on the slope of a hill, so that the principal
rooms, which were on a level with the great entrance, were on the other
side elevated by at least one lofty story from the flower-garden which
surrounded the house. The windows of the drawing-room commanded thus a
delightful view over a finely diversified country, ending in the far
distance in a glimpse of water with a range of blue hills behind, which
was one of the great lakes of that beautiful district. When sun or moon
caught this distant lake, which it did periodically at certain times of
the day and night, according to the season, it flashed suddenly into
life, like one of those new signals of science by which the sun himself
is made to interpret between man and man. In the foreground the trees of
the park clustered over the glimpses of the lively North-country river,
which, sometimes shallow and showing all its pebbles, some times
deepening into a pool, ran cheerfully by towards the lake. To the right,
scarcely visible save when the trees were bare in winter, the red roofs
of the little post-town, a mile and a half away, appeared in the
distance with a pleasant sense of neighbourhood. But the scenery, after
all, was not so interesting as the people inside.
They were, however, a very innocent, very simple, and unexciting group
of country people. Mrs. Blencarrow had been a widow for five or six
years, having lived there for some dozen years before, the most beloved
of wives. She was not a native of the district, but had come from the
South, a beautiful girl, to whom her husband, who was a plain gentleman
of simple character and manners, could never be sufficiently grateful
for having married him. The ladies of the district thought this
sentiment exaggerated, but everybody acknowledged that Mrs. Blencarrow
made him an excellent wife. When he died he had left everything in her
hands--the entire guardianship of the children, untrammelled by any
joint authority save that of her own brothers, whose names were put in
the will as a matter of form, and without any idea that they would ever
take upon them to interfere. There were five children, the eldest of
whom was a slim girl of sixteen, very gentle and quiet, and not very
strong; two boys of fourteen and twelve, at school; and two little
ones, aged eight and nine respectively. They lived a very pleasant,
well-cared-for, happy life. Mrs. Blencarrow’s means, if not very large,
were comfortable enough. The house was handsomely _montée_, the children
had everything they could desire; the gloom of her first widowhood had
been over for some time, and she ‘saw her friends’ like any other lady
in the county, giving very pleasant dinner-parties, and even dances when
the boys were at home for their holidays--dances, perhaps, all the more
gay and easy because the children had a large share in them, and a
gentle license prevailed--the freedom of innocence and extreme youth.
It is not to be supposed, when I say this, that anything which could in
the remotest degree be called ‘fast’ was in these assemblies. Indeed,
the very word had not been invented in those days, and Mrs. Blencarrow
was herself an impersonation of womanly dignity. The country-people were
even a little afraid of her, if truth must be told. Without being stiff
or prudish, there was a little air she had, at the faintest shade of
impropriety, which scared an offender more than denunciation. She had a
determined objection to scandal, even to gossip, and looked coldly upon
flirtation, which was not then a recognised pastime as it is now.
Nothing ever filled the neighbours with greater consternation than when
a passing visitor from London, seeing Mrs. Blencarrow for the first
time, declared that she was a woman who looked as if she had a history.
A history! When people say that, they do not mean anything noble or
saintly; what it means is scandal, something that has been talked about.
There was a general cry, which overwhelmed the unwary stranger. Mrs.
Blencarrow a history! Yes, the very best history a woman can have--the
record of a blameless life.
‘Nevertheless,’ said the unfortunate man, ‘there is something in her
eyes----’
‘Oh yes, there is everything that is good in her eyes,’ said Lady
Tremayne, who was young and enthusiastic, a sentiment in which most of
the others agreed. At a later period, however, Mrs. Bircham, of The
Leas, shook her head a little and said, ‘Now that one thinks of it,
there is something curious in Mrs. Blencarrow’s eyes.’
‘They are very fine eyes, if that is what you mean.’
‘No; that is not what I mean. She looks you too full in the face with
them, as if she were defying you to find out anything wrong about her.
Now, when there is nothing wrong to find out, a woman has no occasion to
defy you.’
‘It must be a strange kind of wrong that has not been found out in
eighteen years.’
‘Well, it might have happened before she was married--before she came
here at all; and when you know that there is something, however long the
time may be, you never can forget it, don’t you know,’ said Mrs.
Bircham, shaking her head.
‘You seem to speak from experience, my dear,’ said her husband.
‘No; I don’t speak from experience,’ cried the lady, growing red; ‘but I
have seen a great many things in my time. I have seen so many fine
reputations collapse, and so many people pulled down from their
pedestals.’
‘And helped to do it, perhaps,’ said Lady Tremayne. But she made the
observation in an aside, for no one liked to encounter Mrs. Bircham’s
enmity and power of speech. She was one of those people who can develop
a great matter from a small one, and smell out a piece of gossip at any
distance; and a seed of this description sown in her mind never died.
She was not, as it happened, particularly happy in her surroundings.
Though she was irreproachable herself, there was no lack of histories in
the Bircham family, and Kitty, her second daughter, was one of the
little flirts whose proceedings Mrs. Blencarrow so much disapproved.
Mrs. Bircham was often herself very angry with Kitty, but by a common
maternal instinct could not endure to hear from another any echo of the
same reproof which she administered freely.
Mrs. Blencarrow was, however, entirely unaware of this arrow shot into
the air. She was still, though approaching forty, as handsome as at any
period of her career, with all the additional charms of experience and
understanding added to the still unbroken perfection of her features and
figure. She was tall and pale, with large gray eyes, singularly clear
and lustrous, which met every gaze with a full look, sometimes very
imposing, and which always conveyed an impression of pride and reserve
in the midst of their full and brave response to every questioning eye.
Mrs. Bircham, who was not without discrimination, had indeed made a
very fair hit in her description of her neighbour’s look. Sometimes
those proud and steadfast eyes would be overbearing--haughty in their
putting down of every impertinent glance. She had little colour
habitually, but was subject to sudden flushes whenever her mind or
feelings were affected, which wonderfully changed the character of her
face, and came and went like the wind. She dressed always with a rich
sobriety, in black or subdued colours--tones of violet and gray--never
quite forgetting her widowhood, her friends thought, though always
cheerful, as a woman with a family of children is bound for their sakes
to be. She was an excellent woman of business, managing her estate with
the aid of a sort of half-steward, half-agent, a young man brought up
by her husband and specially commended to her by his dying lips. People
said, when they discussed Mrs. Blencarrow’s affairs, as the affairs of
women and widows are always discussed, that it would have been better
for her to have had a more experienced and better instructed man as
steward, who would have taken the work entirely off her hands--for young
Brown was not at all a person of education; but her devotion to her
husband’s recommendation was such that she would hear of no change. And
the young fellow on his side was so completely devoted to the family, so
grateful for all that had been done for him, so absolutely trustworthy,
that the wisest concluded on the whole that she was doing the best for
her son’s interests in keeping Brown, who lived in the house, but in
quite an humble way--one of the wisest points in Mrs. Blencarrow’s
treatment of him being that she never attempted to bring him out of his
own sphere.
Besides Brown, her household included a governess, Miss Trimmer, who
bore most appropriately that old-fashioned educational name; and an old
housekeeper, who had been there in the time of Mrs. Blencarrow’s
mother-in-law, and who had seen her late master born--an old lady always
in a brown silk dress, who conferred additional respectability on the
household, and who was immensely considered and believed in. She came
next to their mother in the affections of all the children. It was a
very harmonious, well-ordered house, ringing with pleasant noise and
nonsense when the boys came home, quiet at other times, though never
quite without the happy sound of children, save when the two little
ones, Minnie and Jimmy, were out of the way. As for Emmy, the eldest,
she was so quiet that scarcely any sound of her ever came into the
house.
Such was the house of Blencarrow on a certain Christmas when the boys
had come home as usual for their holidays. They came back in the highest
spirits, determined that this should be the jolliest Christmas that ever
was. The word ‘jolly,’ as applied to everything that is pleasant, had
just come into use at school--I doubt even whether it had progressed
into ‘awfully jolly.’ It sounded still very piquant in the ears of the
youngsters, and still was reproved (‘Don’t be always using that dreadful
word!’) by mothers; the girls were still shy of using it at all. It was
Reginald who declared it to be the jolliest Christmas that ever had
been. The weather was mild and open, good for hunting, and the boys had
some excellent runs; though all idea of frost and skating had to be
given up. They were pleased with their own prowess and with everybody
and everything round them, and prepared to act their part with grace and
_bonhomie_--Reginald as master of the house, Bertie as his lieutenant
and henchman--at the great ball which was to be given at Blencarrow on
Christmas Eve.
The house was quite full for this great ceremonial. At Christmas the
mixture of babes and grown-up young ladies and gentlemen is more easily
made than at any other time of the year. The children mustered very
strong. Those who were too far off to drive home that evening were with
their parents staying at Blencarrow, and every available corner was
filled. The house was illuminated all over; every passage and every
sitting-room open to the bands of invaders--the little ones who played
and the older ones who flirted--and the company was in the fullest tide
of enjoyment, when the little incident occurred which I am about to
record.
Mrs. Blencarrow had never looked better in her life. She wore a new gray
velvet dress, long and sweeping, without any of the furbelows of the
time, which would not have suited the heavy material nor her own
admirable figure. It was open a little at the throat, with beautiful
lace surrounding the fine warm whiteness. Her hair was worn higher than
was usual at the time, in a fashion of her own, and fastened with
diamond stars. The children were very proud of their mother. She was
like a lady out of a book, said Emmy, who was a romantic girl. Reginald
felt himself more grand than words can say when he stood up beside her
at the door to receive the guests. Her eyes were something like her
diamonds--full of light; and she met every glance more proudly than
ever, with that direct look which some people thought so candid and
open, and Mrs. Bircham believed to be a defiance to all the world to
find out something that was not right. There was nothing, certainly, to
find out in that open house, where every stranger might penetrate into
every corner and welcome. Mrs. Blencarrow was a little pale, but now and
then her countenance would be covered by one of those sudden flushes of
emotion which made her radiant. She put one hand on Reginald’s shoulder
with a proud gesture, as though he were supporting her as she stood at
the door welcoming everybody; and the boy drew himself up to his fullest
height, trying to look twenty. He shook hands with everyone in the most
anxious, hospitable way. Never was the part of master of the house more
thoroughly played; and thus, with every expectation of pleasure, the
ball began.