Miss Blunt

“ Blunt and I made atrocious puns. I believe, indeed, that Miss Blunt herself made one little punkin, as I called it. If there had been any superfluous representative of humanity present, to register the fact, I should say that we made fools of ourselves. But as there was no fool on hand, I need say nothing about it. I am conscious myself of having said several witty things, which Miss Blunt understood: in vino veritas. The dear old Captain twanged the long bow indefatigably. The bright high sun lingered above us the livelong day, and drowned the prospect with light and warmth. ”

“ I wonder whether Miss Blunt, in days to come, referring to the tables of her memory for some trivial matter-of-fact, some prosaic date or half-buried landmark, will also encounter this little secret of ours, as I may call it,—will decipher an old faint note to this effect, overlaid with the memoranda of intervening years. Of course she will. Sentiment aside, she is a woman of an excellent memory. Whether she forgives or not I know not; but she certainly doesn't forget. Doubtless, virtue is its own reward; but there is a double satisfaction in being polite to a person on whom it tells. ”

“ For God's sake, Miss Blunt, be serious, or I shall call it something else. Yes, I love you. Don't you believe it?"
"I am open to conviction."
"Thank God!" said I.
And I attempted to take her hand.
"No, no, Mr. Locksley," said she,—"not just yet; if you please."
"Action speaks louder than words," said I.
"There is no need of speaking loud. I hear you perfectly."
"I certainly sha'n't whisper," said I; "although it is the custom, I believe, for lovers to do so. Will you be my wife?" ”

“ I suppressed a groan and said to myself that I must really get away from there.
Mrs. Blunt was fairly launched now.
“For all his superiority he is a man of the world and shares to a certain extent its current opinions. He has no power over her. She intimidates him. He wishes he had never set eyes on her. Once or twice this morning he looked at me as if he could find it in his heart to hate his old mother. There is no doubt about it—he loves her, Monsieur George. He loves her, this poor, luckless, perfect homme du monde.” ”

“ But Blunt fortunately owns his house, and his needs and habits are of the simplest kind. What does he or his daughter know of the great worldly theory of necessities, the great worldly scale of pleasures? Miss Blunt's only luxuries are a subscription to the circulating library, and an occasional walk on the beach, which, like one of Miss Bronté's heroines, she paces in company with an old Newfoundland dog. I am afraid she is sadly ignorant. She reads nothing but novels. ”

“ His daughter smiled and questioned very graciously, and called everything beautiful and delightful; which rather disappointed me, as I had taken her to be a woman of some originality. She is rather a puzzle;—or is she, indeed, a very commonplace person, and the fault in me, who am forever taking women to mean a great deal more than their Maker intended? Regarding Miss Blunt I have collected a few facts. She is not twenty-four, but twenty-seven years old. She has taught music ever since she was twenty, in a large boarding-school just out of the town, where she originally got her education. ”

“ I tell you what it is, Blunt. I don't know where Vickers picked her up, but I'd rather trust my life with the worst of those ruffians 'tween decks, than in her keeping, if I'd done her an injury.”
Blunt laughed.
“I don't believe she'd think much of sticking a man, either!” he said, rising. “But I must go on deck, doctor.” Pine followed him more slowly. “I don't pretend to know much about women,” he said to himself, “but that girl's got a story of her own, or I'm much mistaken. What brings her on board this ship as lady's-maid is more than I can fathom.” ”

“ She is, in short, a woman of character. There you are, Miss Blunt, at full length,—emphatically the portrait of a lady. After tea, she gave us some music in the parlor. I confess that I was more taken with the picture of the dusky little room, lighted by the single candle on the piano, and by the effect of Miss Blunt's performance, than with its meaning. She appears to possess a very brilliant touch.
June 18th.—I have now been here almost a week. I occupy two very pleasant rooms. My painting-room is a vast and rather bare apartment, with a very good southern light. ”

“ Mr. Blunt remarked indifferently. “At that sort of thing women are best. They have less scruples.”
“More audacity,” interjected Mr. Mills almost in a whisper.
Mr. Blunt kept quiet for a moment, then: “You see,” he addressed me in a most refined tone, “a mere man may suddenly find himself being kicked down the stairs.” ”

“ Locksley. Suppose you go away and let me read my Bible."
"Meanwhile," I asked, "what shall I do?"
"Go and read yours, if you have one."
"I haven't."
I was, nevertheless, compelled to retire, with the promise of a second audience in half an hour. Poor Miss Blunt owes it to her conscience to read a certain number of chapters. What a pure and upright soul she is! And what an edifying spectacle is much of our feminine piety! Women find a place for everything in their commodious little minds, just as they do in their wonderfully subdivided trunks, when they go on a journey. ”

“ Gracious goodness, girl, you’re never going to tell him?”
“Yes, I shall. Grandpapa’s had a lot of experience: he says so.”
“I should think he had!” whispered Mrs. Blunt with uplifted hands.
“Good-by, Mrs. Blunt. You don’t know how unhappy I am. Thanks, yes, a hansom, please. Mrs. Blunt, are you going to ask Mr. Merceron here again?”
Mrs. Blunt’s toleration was exhausted.
“Be off with you!” she said sternly, pointing a forefinger at the door.
By great good fortune Agatha found Lord Thrapston at home. Drawing a footstool beside his chair, she sat down. ”

“ Ernestine Blunt is about twenty-four, but looks younger. She is very downright, not to say pugnacious—the something amusing and attractive about her is there, as it were, against her will, and the more fetching for that. She has no conventional gestures, and none of any sort at first. As she warms to her work she uses her slim hands to enforce her emphasis, but as though unconsciously. Her manner of speech is less monotonous than that of the average woman-speaker, but she, too, has a fashion of leaning all her weight on the end of the sentence. ”

“ At that moment we all changed our attitude slightly. Mills’ staring eyes moved for a glance towards Blunt, I, who was occupying the divan, raised myself on the cushions a little and Mr. Blunt, with half a turn, put his elbow on the table.
“I asked her what it was. I don’t see,” went on Mr. Blunt, with a perfectly horrible gentleness, “why I should have shown particular consideration to the heiress of Mr. Allègre. I don’t mean to that particular mood of hers. It was the mood of weariness. And so she told me. It’s fear. I will say it once again: Fear. . . .” ”

“ But even then I felt that at the very last moment her being had recoiled before some shadow of a suspicion. And it occurred to me, too, to wonder what sort of business Mr. Blunt could have had to transact with our odious visitor, of a nature so urgent as to make him run out after him into the hall? Unless to beat him a little with one of the sticks that were to be found there? White hair so much like an expensive wig could not be considered a serious protection. ”

“ It seemed to condemn all those that were not born in the Blunt connection. It was the perfect pride of Republican aristocracy, which has no gradations and knows no limit, and, as if created by the grace of God, thinks it ennobles everything it touches: people, ideas, even passing tastes!
“How many of them,” pursued Mrs. Blunt, “have had the good fortune, the leisure to develop their intelligence and their beauty in aesthetic conditions as this charming woman had? Not one in a million. Perhaps not one in an age.”
“The heiress of Henry Allègre,” I murmured. ”

“ Johnson is a man of excellent intentions, but no taste. Two or three times I looked at Miss Blunt to see what impression his sallies were making upon her. They seemed to produce none whatever. But I know better, moi. Not one of them escaped her. But I suppose she said to herself that her impressions on this point were no business of mine. Perhaps she was right. It is a disagreeable word to use of a woman you admire ”

“ She listened to me unreadable, unmoved, narrowed eyes, closed lips, slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand years ago in order to fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all women. Not the gross immobility of a Sphinx proposing roadside riddles but the finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful figure seated at the very source of the passions that have moved men from the dawn of ages.
Captain Blunt, with his elbow on the high mantelpiece, had turned away a little from us and his attitude expressed excellently the detachment of a man who does not want to hear. ”

“ What has it brought my poor Lady Anne Blunt to? She is the talk of all the footmen and boys in the street, and will be company for them shortly, and yet is so blinded by her passion as not at all to perceive the misery she has brought herself to; and this fond love of hers has so rooted all sense of nature out of her heart, that, they say, she is no more moved than a statue with the affliction of a father and mother that doted on her, and had placed the comfort of their lives in her preferment. ”

“ Jacob Blunt unclosed his salt-junk mouth, and roared out in a peal of laughter that would have shivered his old brig’s spanker, and caused, perhaps, Martha Blunt, sposa, to have spanked him, Jacob, had she heard and seen that mariner wagging his old bronzed face at the lovely woman facing him.
Mr. Tiny Mouse, who could not touch bottom on his high chair, with his little heels dangling about, forgetful of discipline, fairly kicked the broad pennant on the shins of his white ducks, screaming joyously; the three women made the piazza vibrate with their musical trills; Stingo and Stewart choked ”

“ What I wanted was to remain in my company and break an inexplicable feeling of constraint of which I was aware. Mills looked at me steadily with a faint, kind smile.
“No,” said Blunt. “Why should we go there? They will be only turning us out in the small hours, to go home and face insomnia. Can you imagine anything more disgusting?” ”

“ I had met Americans before. And the Blunts were Americans. But so little! That was the trouble. Captain Blunt might have been a Frenchman as far as languages, tones, and manners went. But you could not have mistaken him for one. . . . Why? You couldn't tell. It was something indefinite. It occurred to me while I was towelling hard my hair, face, and the back of my neck, that I could not meet J. K. Blunt on equal terms in any relation of life except perhaps arms in hand, and in preference with pistols, which are less intimate, acting at a distance--but arms of some sort. ”

“ As a matter of fact, on that evening of Carnival, those two, Mills and Blunt, had been actually looking everywhere for our man. They had decided that he should be drawn into the affair if it could be done. Blunt naturally wanted to see him first. He must have estimated him a promising person, but, from another point of view, not dangerous. Thus lightly was the notorious (and at the same time mysterious) Monsieur George brought into the world; out of the contact of two minds which did not give a single thought to his flesh and blood. ”

“ Allègre had suddenly taken it into his head to paint his portrait. A sort of intimacy had sprung up. Mrs. Blunt's remark was that of the two striking horsemen Allègre looked the more kingly.
"The son of a confounded millionaire soap-boiler," commented Mr. Blunt through his clenched teeth. "A man absolutely without parentage. Without a single relation in the world. Just a freak."
"That explains why he could leave all his fortune to her," said Mills.
"The will, I believe," said Mr. Blunt moodily, "was written on a half sheet of paper, with his device of an Assyrian bull at the head. ”

“ This mild vow came from the lips of Jacob Blunt, and he honestly meant every word he said.
“Give us another jolly song, Stingo; it will keep your throat clear for the claret.”
“For the sake of my old timbers, sir, and as you vally my wife’s blessing, don’t sing! There, you infarnal beast, you’ve yawed sharp up into this ere bush, and put my starboard glim out forever! I say, Don Spanisher, don’t sing––I’m going fast enough!” shouted the poor skipper, as he passed his paws around the little brute’s neck, with his hat over his eyes. ”

“ Blunt’s drawing-room voice was heard with playful familiarity.
“I have often asked myself whether you weren’t really a very ambitious person, Doña Rita.”
“And I ask myself whether you have any heart.” She was looking straight at him and he gratified her with the usual cold white flash of his even teeth before he answered.
“Asking yourself? That means that you are really asking me. But why do it so publicly? I mean it. One single, detached presence is enough to make a public. One alone. Why not wait till he returns to those regions of space and air—from which he came.” ”

“ You will have a fearful lot of attention paid to you. Nine out of ten men you meet will fall in love with you—"
"Oh! nonsense!" said Cilly feebly.
"But I know it," persisted Blunt. "I simply can't conceive any man being able to do anything else. Do you know"—the words stuck in his throat for a moment and then came with a rush—"do you know that you are the most adorable girl on God's earth? I love you! I love you! There—I've said it! I had meant to say a lot more first—work up to it by degrees, you know—but it has carried me away of its own accord. I love you—dear, dear Cilly!" ”