Mrs. Molesworth

“ 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.” ”

“ But, oh Blanchie, a school would be detestable! We should never feel free, morning, noon, or night; and just fancy mamma having to hear all sorts of horrid fault-findings from vulgar parents.”
“They needn’t be vulgar,” remarked Blanche; “at least not all of them.”
“They would be at Blissmore,” said Stasy.
“I should never dream of beginning a school at Blissmore,” said Blanche quickly. “The high school would spoil all chance of success.”
“Where would we go, then?” said Stasy. “We are such strangers in England; and, of course, it would be madness to think of returning to France. ”

“ Blanche looked at her sister doubtfully.
“Perhaps she has, but perhaps not,” she replied. “It isn’t always those lucky people who are the happiest. But, Stasy, I do wish you wouldn’t be so lugubrious: the air of London doesn’t seem to suit you.”
“I am not lugubri— what a dreadful word!—I am quite cheerful to-day. It is so interesting to be going to choose our new house. Mamma, shall we have to buy a lot of furniture, or will there be enough of what we had at home?”
“My dear Stasy—of course not. What a baby you are! ”

“ Archie laughed a hearty unconstrained laugh. “Archie’s taste is not peculiar; every one loves a tête-à-tête with Rosy, when they have a chance of it,” said Hebe, with apparently uncalled-for warmth.
“Of course they do,” said Sir Adam, speaking for the first time.—“And now, my dear Blanche, if you’ve had a cup of tea, I think we must be off—I have to get back to Alderwood in time for dinner, too, Master Archie. By-the-bye, we’ve got the large brougham—will you come with us viâ Blissmore, though it is rather a round?” ”

“ The only thing I really care about is a little good companionship for Stasy.”
“She must not make friends with any girls beneath her—as to that I am determined,” said Mrs Derwent.
“Far better have none. Not that anything could make her common, but it would be bad for her to feel herself the superior; and I can picture her queening it over others, and then making fun of them and their homes and ways. She has such a sense of the ridiculous. No; Stasy needs to be with those she can look up to. I am sure, Blanche, it is better not to think of her going to that day-school at Blissmore.” ”

“ Blanche laughed.
“We should have to frank her over to Paris also once or twice a year. Fancy Miss Halliday in Paris!” she said. “However beautiful her bonnets were, no one could believe in her unless she went to Paris. Yes, it would be very nice to be able to do things like that. But, on the other hand—” She stopped, and seemed to be thinking.
“What were you going to say?” asked Stasy.
“I was only thinking,” Blanche replied, “how little we can realise what it must be to be poor. To feel that one’s actual daily bread—food and clothes and common necessaries—depend on one’s work. ”

“ I don’t know how we should have got on without your fun and mischief, and I know I’ve grown horrid lately.”
“Are you not well, perhaps?” said Stasy. “I don’t think you have been quite yourself for a long time. I remember noticing it first, that Christmas week at Alderwood, when I did so enjoy myself. Even Lady Marth couldn’t freeze me up.”
“On the contrary, I think you’re rather a favourite of hers,” remarked Blanche.
“Oh, I don’t mind her,” said Stasy. “She’s not bad, after all; only she wants to manage every one’s affairs for them. I wonder if she’ll ever succeed in her match-making?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The spoiling would go deeper with Stasy than in the common sense of the word, for immediately people began to make less of her, she would be exaggeratedly embittered and cynical.”
“We must save her from that,” said Blanche eagerly; “and it is just what would happen. Still, mamma, I think we should let her have all the change and recreation possible, for she does work so hard—harder than she needs. She throws herself so intensely into whatever she is doing. She gets as flushed and nervous over a hat as if her life depended upon it.” ”

“ Lady Hebe listened with great interest. “And as it is,” she repeated, “do you not like it?”
“It is so very dull,” said Stasy lugubriously. “At least, I shouldn’t find it dull if I might amuse myself in ways mamma and Blanche would not like.”
Hebe looked rather startled, but Stasy was too engrossed with her own woes to notice it. “I mean,” she continued, “that there are some girls at the school I go to for classes, who are really nice, and there are lots who are very amusing. But mamma and Blanchie don’t want me to make friends with them, because, you see—well, they are not exactly refined.” ”

“ Mrs Derwent, always sanguine, began to feel more cheerful as to things in general brightening by degrees.
But when Lady Hebe had left, and Mr Dunstan had no longer any excuse for lingering—Alderwood also being shut up—life seemed to return much to what it had been.
“I really don’t know what I shall do with myself,” said Stasy one day, “when the time comes for me to give up my regular lessons. I almost wish you were not so contented, Blanche; it is really rather irritating. If you would grumble too, things wouldn’t seem so bad.” ”

“ See what you have done by telling Mr Burgess we felt dull, and so on.”
“I don’t mind her having called,” said Stasy, determined to keep up a brave front. “I think she is most amusing; and what possible harm can she do us?”
“Every harm of the kind; though, of course, I suppose one should try to be above those things,” said Blanche doubtfully. “But still, we didn’t come to live in England to have as our only friends and companions people we cannot feel in sympathy with. It is not wrong not to want to live among coarse-natured, vulgar-minded people, if it isn’t one’s duty to do so.” ”

“ The usual invigoration seemed to have followed the present performance; her colour had returned, and her eyes were sparkling.
“Blanchie, Blanchie,” said Herty, wavering for moment in his intention, “is it true? Will poor mamma have to pay a great lot of money if I eat much bread-and-butter?”
“No, no; of course not. Can’t you see when Stasy’s teasing you, you silly boy?” said Blanche caressingly. “Why, you are eight years old now! You should laugh at her. Mamma has plenty of money to pay for everything we need, though of course you mustn’t be greedy.” ”

“ Mrs Derwent was sorry and distressed. But, on the whole, Blanche took it more seriously. For her mother was still to some extent under the glamour of her old associations, and “After all,” thought the elder girl to herself, “she must know better than we can. Perhaps it will come right in the end.”
So she said nothing, resolutely crushing back the strong inclination she felt to join in the cry, “Oh, do, mamma, do let us go home,” while she listened to her mother’s expostulations with poor Stasy.
“There are vulgar-minded and disagreeable people everywhere, my dear child. ”

“ And it is very difficult to keep a pushing woman like this Mrs Burgess at a distance, without being really disagreeable to her.”
“We could stand her even,” said Blanche, regretfully. “There would be a sort of excuse for it, as she is the doctor’s wife; but it is all these other awful people she is going to bring down upon us, ‘butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers,’ like the nursery rhyme you used to say, mamma! And if other people—refined people—hear we are in the midst of such society as that, they won’t want to know us. I wish we hadn’t come to Blissmore.” ”

“ His words startled Hebe still more. She looked very grave.
“I didn’t blame you, Archie,” she said. “I only wanted you to be careful. You have always treated some things so lightly, it makes it difficult to believe you could be in earnest. And in this case—under the circumstances”—She did not like to say what was in her mind—that serious attentions on the part of the rich and much-made-of Archie Dunstan to Blanche Derwent, however charming personally, would appear in the eyes of the world highly improbable. ”

“ I wish we had never gone to that horrid tea-meeting.”
Blanche looked distressed.
“And yet, Stasy,” she said, “you were the one to want to make friends out of school, so to say, with some of the Blissmore girls—the very same class as those here, some of them actually relations.”
“Not all of the same class,” said Stasy; “some of them are much more ladies, only poor. And, besides, that would have been quite different, don’t you see, Blanchie? It would have been me, or us, being kind to them—not us being put on a level with them, as that Mrs Harrowby wanted to do. ”

“ She was utterly exhausted for the moment.
“Mamma dear,” said Stasy, “it is impossible to take it all in at once; we must get used to it gradually. The first thing to attend to just now is you. You mustn’t make yourself ill about it, mamma.”
Blanche glanced at Stasy admiringly.
“Yes,” she said, “that is the first thing to care about. I am going down-stairs to see if tea is ready. Will you come down, mamma, or shall I bring you a cup up here?”
“I will come down,” said Mrs Derwent, adding to herself, in a voice which she tried to make firm: “I must begin to get used to it at once.” ”

“ I am sure she has some fun in her too. I don’t think I could have been so attracted by her if she had not had fun in her; I am so fond of it myself,” she added naïvely.
“Oh yes,” said Stasy, “Blanchie is very quick, and very ready for fun too. But she never grumbles. If things we want don’t come, she is just content without I’m not like that. Next to fun, I like grumbling. I couldn’t live without it.”
Hebe smiled, but in her heart she was thinking that there were some grounds for complaint in the present life of these pretty and attractive girls. ”

“ It was not often that Blanche was so discomposed. Her mother tried to soften matters.
“It will only call for a little tact, my dear,” she said. “I am sure we shall be able to make them understand. It is not as if we were going to live in the town.”
“But Pinnerton Green is a nest of them,” said Blanche.
“That won’t matter so much. Once we are in our own house we can draw our own lines. And when other people—better people—come to see us, these good folk will keep out of the way,” said Mrs Derwent.
“Well, I wish you would look up some of them, mamma,” said Stasy. ”

“ She glanced across the room to where Miss Adela Bracy, a small, capable-looking, dark girl, was at the moment saying something in a low voice to the rosebud-faced Florry Wandle. Lady Hebe’s eyes followed hers.
“They are very good, so far as they go,” she replied, “but they are not quite capable of taking the lead. And they have really as much to do as they can manage. It is some one to replace myself when I am away that I want to find. And I could explain it all to you so well, and get advice from you too, I have no doubt.”
“I am very ignorant about such things,” said Blanche. ”

“ Do look, Blanche. Did you ever see anything so exactly like?”
But “Jump up, Stasy,” was all the reply she got, and as the door slowly opened, a repeated whispered warning—“Mrs Wandle.”
The name was not clearly audible which Deborah announced, but she announced something, and to the prepossessed ears of her audience it sounded as like “Mrs Wandle” as anything else. And in trotted, with as much dignity as a stout, short person can achieve, a lady enveloped in furs and wraps, who, after glancing round her with a sort of “nonchalant” curiosity, held out a somewhat limp hand to Mrs Derwent. ”

“ The neglect and indifference and stupid exclusiveness shown to them during their first few lonely months in England had been a lesson not lost upon her, all the more that she had in no way exaggerated its causes.
“There are lots of kind people in the world, I suppose,” she said to Stasy, whose head was much more in danger of being turned than her own. “But there are not many who go out of their way to make others happier, like dear Lady Hebe, or to help them practically, like kind Mrs Bracy; and the sort of attention that comes from ones being in any way prominent is really worth very little.” ”