Belles and Ringers Part 1

Belles and Ringers.

by Hawley Smart.

CHAPTER I.

TODBOROUGH GRANGE.

Todborough Grange, the seat of Cedric Bloxam, Justice of the Peace, and whilom High Sheriff for East Fernshire, lies low. The original Bloxam, like the majority of our ancestors, had apparently a great dislike to an exposed situation; and either a supreme contempt for the science of sanitation, or a confused idea that water could be induced to run uphill, and so, not bothering his head on the subject of drainage, as indeed no one did in those days, he built his house in a hole, holding, I presume, that the hills were as good to look up at as the valleys to look down upon. It was an irregular pile of gabled red brick, of what could be only described as the composite order, having been added to by successive Bloxams at their own convenience, and without any regard to architectural design. It was surrounded by thick shrubberies, in which the laurels were broken by dense ma.s.ses of rhododendrons. Beyond these again were several plantations, and up the hill on the east side of the house stretched a wood of some eighty acres or so in extent.

As a race, the Bloxams possessed some of the leading Anglo-Saxon characteristics; to wit, courage, obstinacy, and density--or perhaps I should rather say slowness--of understanding. The present proprietor had been married--I use the term advisedly--to Lady Mary Ditchin, a daughter of the Earl of Turfington, a family whose hereditary devotion to sport in all its branches had somewhat impoverished their estates.

The ladies could all ride; and some twenty odd years ago, when Cedric Bloxam was hunting in the Vale of White Horse country, Lord Turfington and his family chanced to be doing the same. Lady Mary rode; Cedric Bloxam saw; and Lady Mary conquered. She had made him a very good wife, although as she grew older she unfortunately, as some of us do, grew considerably heavier; and when no longer able to expend her superfluous energies in the hunting-field, she developed into a somewhat ambitious and pushing woman. In this latter _role_ I do not think she pleased Cedric Bloxam quite so well. She insisted upon his standing for the county. Bloxam demurred at first, and, as usual, in the end Lady Mary had her own way. He threw himself into the fight with all the pugnacity of his disposition, and, while his blood was up, revelled in the fray. He could speak to the farmers in a blunt homely way, which suited them; and they brought him in as one of the Conservative Members for East Fernshire. But on penetrating the perfidy of the wife of his bosom, Cedric Bloxam mused sadly over the honours that he had won. When Lady Mary had alternately coaxed and goaded him into contesting the eastern division of his county, she was seeking only the means to an end. They had previously contented themselves with about six weeks of London in May and June; but his wife now pointed out to him that, as a Member of Parliament, it was essential that he should have a house for the season. It was the thin end of the wedge, and though Cedric Bloxam lost his seat at the next general election, that "house for the season" remained as a memento of his entrance into public life.

"You see," said Lady Mary to her intimates, while talking the thing over, "it was absolutely necessary that something should be done.

After he has done the Derby, Ascot, and the University Match, Cedric is always bored with London. The girls are growing up, and how are they ever to get properly married if they don't get their season in town, poor things! I began by suggesting masters; but that had no effect on Cedric--he only retorted, 'Send them to school;' so it was absolutely necessary to approach him in another manner, and I flatter myself I was equal to the occasion."

All this took place some six or seven years before the commencement of our story; and the result had fully warranted Lady Mary's machinations, as she had successfully married off her two elder daughters, and, as she had occasionally told her intimates, her chief object in life now was to see Blanche, the younger, suitably provided for. Lady Mary was in her way a stanch and devoted mother. Her duty towards her daughters, she considered, terminated when she had once seen them properly married. She had two sons--one in a dragoon regiment, and the younger in the Foreign Office--and she never neglected to cajole or flatter any one who, she thought, might in any way be capable of advancing their interests.

The Bloxams had come down from town to entertain a few friends during the Easter holidays at Todborough, and Lady Mary was now sitting in the oriel window of the morning-room engaged in an animated _tete-a-tete_ with one of her most intimate friends, Mr. Pansey Cottrell. Mr. Pansey Cottrell had been a man about town for the last thirty years, mixing freely everywhere in the very best society. It must have been a pure matter of whim if Pansey Cottrell ever paid for his own dinner during a London season--or, for the matter of that, even out of it--as he had only to name the week that suited him to be a welcome guest at scores of country houses. Nothing would have been more difficult than to explain why it was that Pansey Cottrell should be as essential to a fashionable dinner party as the epergne. Nothing more puzzling to account for than why his volunteering his presence in a country house should be always deemed a source of gratulation to the hostess. He was a man of no particular birth and no particular conversational powers; and unless due to his being thoroughly _au courant_ with all the very latest gossip of the London world, his success can only be put down as past understanding. Neophytes who did not know Pansey Cottrell, when they met him in a country house, would gaze with awe-struck curiosity at the sheaf of correspondence awaiting him on the side-table, and wondered what news he would unfold to them that morning. But the more experienced knew better. Pansey Cottrell always came down late, and never talked at breakfast. He kept his budget of scandal invariably for the dinner-table and smoking-room. Such was Pansey Cottrell, as he appeared to the general public, though he possessed an unsuspected attribute, known only to some few of the initiated, and of which as yet Lady Mary had only an inkling.

A portly well-preserved gentleman, with iron-grey hair, and nothing particularly striking about him but a pair of keen dark eyes, he sits in the window, listening with a half-incredulous smile to the voluble speech of his buxom hostess.

"Well," exclaimed Lady Mary, in reply to some observation of her companion's, "I tell you, Pansey" (she had known him from her childhood, and always called him Pansey, as indeed did many other middle-aged matrons)--"I tell you, Pansey," she repeated, "it is all a mistake; the majority of young men in our world do _not_ marry whom they please: they may think so, but in the majority of cases they marry whom _we_ please. The bell responds to the clapper; but who is it that makes the clapper to speak? The ringer. Do you see the force of my ill.u.s.tration?"

"If I fail to see its force," he replied, "I, of course, perfectly understand your ill.u.s.tration; and in this case Miss Blanche is of course the belle, you the ringer, and Mr. Beauchamp the clapper."

"Just so," replied Lady Mary, laughing. "Look at Diana, my eldest.

She thinks she married Mannington; he thinks he married her; and _I know I married them_. People are always talking of Shakespeare's 'knowledge of human nature,' more especially those who never read him.

Why don't they take a leaf out of his book? Do you suppose Beatrice nowadays, when she is told Bened.i.c.k is dying for love of her, don't believe it, and that Bened.i.c.k cannot be fooled in like manner? Go to--as they said in those times."

"And you would fain play Leonato to this Bened.i.c.k," replied Pansey Cottrell. "Is this Beauchamp of whom you speak one of the Suffolk Beauchamps?"

"Yes; his father has a large property in the south of the county; and this Lionel Beauchamp is the eldest son, a good-looking young fellow, with a healthy taste for country life; just the man to suit dear Blanche admirably."

"And when do you expect him?"

"Oh, he ought to be here this evening in time for dinner," replied Lady Mary. "He seemed rather struck with Blanche in London, so I asked him down here for the Easter holidays, thinking it a nice opportunity of throwing them more together."

"I see," replied Mr. Cottrell, laughing; "you think in these cases it is just as well to a.s.sist nature by a little judicious forcing."

"Exactly. You see, a good-looking girl has such a pull in a country house, and when she is the only good-looking one, has it all her own way; and I need scarcely say I have taken care of that."

"Ahem! Todborough lies dangerously near to that most popular of watering-places, Commonstone," observed Cottrell; "and there is always attractive mettle to be found there."

"But I don't intend we shall ever go near it," replied her ladyship quickly. "We'll make up riding parties, plan excursions to Trotbury, and so on. Just the people in the house, you know, and the rector's daughters, nice pleasant unaffected girls, who, though not plain----"

"Cannot be counted dangerous," interposed Cottrell. "I understand. I congratulate you on your diplomacy, Lady Mary. By the way, who is your rector?"

"The Rev. Austin Chipchase. A good orthodox old-fashioned parson, thank goodness, with no High Church fads or Low Church proclivities."

"Chipchase? Ahem! I met an uncommon pretty girl of that name down in Suffolk last autumn, when I was staying at Hogden's place."

At this juncture the door opened, and the object of all this maternal solicitude entered the room. Her mother did Blanche Bloxam scant justice when she called her a good-looking girl. She was more than that; she might most certainly have been called a very good-looking girl of the thoroughly Saxon type--tall and well made, with a profusion of fair sunny hair, and deep blue eyes. Blanche was a girl no man would ever overlook, wherever he might come across her.

"What state secrets are you two talking," she exclaimed, "that you pay no attention to the bell? Come to lunch, mamma, please; for we have been playing lawn tennis all the morning, and are well-nigh distraught with hunger."

Lady Mary rose and followed her daughter to the dining-room, where the whole of the house party were a.s.sembled round the luncheon-table. It consisted, besides the family and Mr. Cottrell, of a Mr. and Mrs.

Evesham and their two daughters--"such amiable girls, you know," as Lady Mary always said of them; a Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris, a young married couple; Jim Bloxam, the dragoon; and a Captain Braybrooke, a brother officer of his.

"Come along, mother," exclaimed Jim. "Mrs. Sartoris has given me such a dusting at lawn tennis this morning that no amount of brown sherry and pigeon-pie will support me under the ignominy of my defeat."

"Thank you, Mrs. Sartoris," said Lady Mary, laughing. "I am very glad indeed, Jim, that somebody has been good enough to take the conceit out of you. But what do all you good people propose doing with yourselves this afternoon? There are a certain number of riding-horses; and of course there's the carriage, Mrs. Evesham."

"Don't you trouble, mother," exclaimed Jim Bloxam; "we are going upon an expedition of discovery. Mrs. Sartoris has got a brother in the army. She don't quite recollect his regiment; and beyond that it is in England, she does not know precisely where he is quartered. But he is in the something-somethieth, and we are going to see if we can find him in Rockcliffe Camp."

"Don't be so absurd, Captain Bloxam," rejoined Mrs. Sartoris. "But I am told, Lady Mary, it is a pretty walk to the camp, and that there is a grand view over the Channel on the south side of it."

"It is the very thing, mamma," observed Blanche. "It is our duty to absorb as much ozone as possible while we are down here, in order to fit us for the fatigues of the season which, I trust, are in store for us."

"Getting perilously near Commonstone," whispered Pansey Cottrell, who happened to be sitting next to his hostess.

Although the arrangement did not exactly meet with her approbation, yet Lady Mary could make no objection, any more than she could avoid smiling at Cottrell's remark; but it would seem as if some malignant genie had devoted his whole attention to thwarting her schemes, the malignant genie in this case taking the form of her eldest son. Upon an adjournment, Jim Bloxam strongly urged that those of the party who were not for a tramp to Rockcliffe should drive into Commonstone, and ascertain if there was anything going on that was likely to be worth their attention. In the middle of this discussion came a ring at the front door bell, immediately followed by the announcement of the Misses Chipchase; and the rector's two daughters entered the room, accompanied, to Lady Mary's horror, by one of the most piquant and brilliant brunettes she had ever set eyes on.

"So glad to see you down again, dear Lady Mary," said Miss Chipchase, "and with a house full too! that's so nice of you; just in time to a.s.sist at all our Easter revelries. Let me introduce you to my cousin, Sylla Chipchase, just come down to spend a month with us." And then the rector's daughters proceeded to shake hands with Blanche and Captain Bloxam, and be by them presented to the remainder of the party.

Pansey Cottrell could scarce refrain from laughing outright as he advanced to shake hands with Sylla Chipchase, the identical young lady whom he had met last autumn in Suffolk, and who had now turned up at Todborough, looking more provokingly pretty than ever. He had caught one glance of his hostess's face; and, behind the scenes as he was, that had been so nearly too much for his risible faculties that he dared not hazard another. As he advanced to shake hands with Miss Sylla, he felt that the Fates had been even more unkind to Lady Mary than she could as yet be possibly aware of; for he remembered at Hogden's that Miss Sylla had not only been voted the belle of a party containing two or three very pretty women, but had also enchanted the men by her fun, vivacity, and singing. Poor Lady Mary! it was hard, in spite of all her efforts to secure a clear field, to find her daughter suddenly confronted by such a formidable rival.

"We meet again, you see, Miss Sylla," said Cottrell, as they shook hands. "I told you in Suffolk, if you remember, that in my ubiquity I was a person very difficult to see the last of."

"And who that had ever met Mr. Cottrell would wish to have seen the last of him?" replied the young lady gaily. "We had great fun together in Suffolk, and I hope we are going to have great fun together in Fernshire. My cousins tell me there are no end of b.a.l.l.s and dances to come off in the course of the next ten days."

"Dear me!" replied Mr. Cottrell, his eyes twinkling with the fun of the situation. "This is all very well for you country people, Miss Sylla; but we poor Londoners have come down for rest after a spell of hot rooms and late hours, preparatory to encountering fresh dissipations.

Is it not so, Lady Mary? Did you not promise me quiet and country air, with a dash of the salt water in it?"

"Of course," was the reply; "we have come down here to recruit."

"Oh, but, Lady Mary, you will never shut yourself up and turn recluse,"

returned the elder Miss Chipchase. "You must come to the Commonstone ball on Easter Monday; you will all come, of course. I quite count upon you, Captain Bloxam."

"Perfectly right, Miss Chipchase," replied the dragoon, with a glance of unmistakable admiration at the new importation. "Did you ever know me fail you in valsing? and are not the soldiers of to-day every bit as much 'all there' as the sailors of yore, whenever England generally, or Commonstone in particular, expects that every man this night will do his duty?"

"Ah, yes," replied Miss Chipchase, "I recollect our trying to valse to 'G.o.d save the Queen;' but we could make nothing out of it. And you, Mr. Bloxam,--you are bound to be there. Remember you engaged me for 'Sir Roger de Coverley,' for the next dance we met at, last Christmas Eve."

"I don't forget, Laura," laughed the Squire; "only you really must moderate the pace down the middle this time."

"And then," continued the voluble young lady, "they have got a big lunch at the camp, with athletic sports afterwards, on Tuesday, for which you will, of course, receive cards."

"There is nothing like rural retirement for rest and quietness,"

observed Pansey Cottrell, dryly.