The Semi-detached House/Chapter 1
THE
SEMI-DETACHED HOUSE.
CHAPTER I.
"The only fault of the house is, that it is semi-detached."
"Oh, Aunt Sarah! you don't mean that you expect me to live in a semi-detached house?"
"Why not, my dear, if it suits you in other respects?
"Why, because I should hate my semi-detachment, or whatever the occupants of the other half of the house may call themselves."
"They call themselves Hopkinson," continued Aunt Sarah, coolly.
"I knew it," said Blanche triumphantly. "I felt certain their name would be either Tomkinson or Hopkinson–I was not sure which–but I thought the chances were in favour of Hop rather than Tom."
Aunt Sarah did not smile, but drew the mesh out of her netting and began a fresh row.
"Go on, Aunt Sarah," said Blanche demurely.
"I am going on, thank you, my dear, very nicely; I expect to finish this net this week."
Blanche looked at her aunt to ascertain if she looked angry, or piqued, or affronted; but Aunt Sarah's countenance was totally incapable of any expression but that of imperturbable stolid sense and good-humour. She did not care for Blanche's little vivacities.
"Do you know the Hopkinsons, Aunt Sarah?"
"No, my dear."
"Nor their history, nor their number, nor their habits? Recollect, Aunt Sarah, they will be under the same roof with your own pet Blanche."
"I have several pets, my dear—Tray, and Poll, and your sister, and—"
"Well, but she will be there, too, for I suppose the Lees will let Aileen come to me, now that I am to be deserted by Arthur," and Blanche's voice quivered, but she determined to brave it through. "Did you see any of the Hopkinsons when you went to look at the house?"
"Yes, they went in at their door just as I went in at yours. The mother, as I suppose, and two daughters, and a little boy."
"Oh dear me! a little boy, who will always be throwing stones at the palings and making me jump; daughters who will always be playing 'Partant pour la Syrie;' and the mother—"
"Well, what will she do to offend your Highness?"
"She will be immensely fat, wear mittens—thick, heavy mittens, and contrive to know what I have for dinner every day."
There was a silence, another row of netting and a turn of the mesh, and then Aunt Sarah said in her most composed tone:
"I often think, my dear, that it is a great pity you are so imaginative, and a still greater pity that you are so fastidious. You would be happier if you were as dull and as matter-of-fact as I am."
"Dear Aunt Sarah, don't say you are dull. There is nobody I like so much to talk to. You bring out such original remarks, such convincing truths, and in a quiet way, so that they do not make the black bruises which 'les vérités dures' generally produce. But am I fastidious and imaginative?"
"Yes, my dear, very painfully so. Now, just consider, Blanche; you began this week by throwing yourself into a fever because Arthur was to leave you, on a mission that may be of great future advantage to him. He is to be away only three months, and is as much grieved as you are at the separation it involves. You immediately assert that he is going for a year, at least, that he is to forget you instantly, and fall in love with any and every other woman he sees."
"No, only with that woman with the unpronounceable name that he used to dance with; a very dangerous woman, Aunt Sarah."
"That he is to be smashed in the railroad to Folkestone, drowned off Antwerp, and finally die of a fever at Berlin; and that in the meanwhile you are to have a dead child immediately, twins soon after, a very bad confinement, besides dying of consumption, and various other maladies," pursued Aunt Sarah in her steadiest tone. "Now, if those things are not vain imaginings, Blanche, I do not know what are."
"They sound plausible, though; and, I assure you, Aunt, I did not imagine them; they suggested themselves, and they look very like the ordinary facts of life. However, I grant it is a bad habit to look forward to evils that may not occur; but then, you know, I am ill. I never had these grey thoughts when I was strong, and Arthur's going away has turned them all black—and now as to my fastidiousness."
"You always were fastidious, my child, easily jarred by the slightest want of tact and refinement, and I am not much surprised," added Aunt Sarah, as she looked fondly at her niece. There was something startling in the mobility of Blanche's beautiful features; every thought that passed through her mind might be read in her kindling eyes and expressive lips; she looked too ethereal for contact with the vulgar ills of life.
"I will allow you have some right to be fastidious, darling; and it is only because it interferes with your comfort that I object to it. But you say you cannot go and stay with Lord Chesterton, because he calls you "Blanket," and thinks it a good joke; nor with your sister-in-law, Lady Elinor, because Sir William is fond of money, and you foresee he will say that you cost him at least seventeen shillings and four-pence a day; nor with your Aunt Carey, because the doctor who would attend you wears creaking boots, and calls you my Lady; and now you object to a house that all your friends and your doctor recommend, because it is possible that your next door neighbour may play on the piano-forte and wear black mittens. Dear Blanche, this is what I call over-fastidiousness; and now I have finished my ten rows, and said all the disagreeable things I could think of, so I will go, and leave you to think how officious and particular old Aunt Sarah is."
"You know I shall think no such thing," said Blanche, half crying and half laughing, "but you must own, Aunt Sarah, that when you string all my fancies together, they are rather amusing—wrong, if you please, but amusing. However, I will try to reform, and if Arthur likes Pleasance, which he is gone to see, and if Dr. Ayscough persists in driving me out of London, I will establish myself in my semi-detached villa, and try to get into the Hopkinson set."
It may be inferred from the above conversation, that Blanche was slightly spoiled, but she was charming, nevertheless— sweet-tempered and playful, and with high spirits, now subdued by the approaching separation from her husband, to whom she had been married only six months. They were as foolishly in love as all young couples are or ought to be, and Lord Chester would willingly have declined the offer to join a special mission to Berlin, which had been made to him. Blanche could not conceive it possible that he should leave her in her very interesting state of health. Dr. Ayscough treated the notion of her being able to accompany her husband with the politest and most magnificent contempt; and it seemed likely that the great national interests of Great Britain and Prussia would actually lose all the light, which Arthur might throw upon them in the capacity of Secretary to a special mission. But old fathers see these matters in a different point of view from young sons. Lord Chesterton came fussing up to town full of admiration for her Majesty's Government in general, and for the Foreign Office in particular; he must own he thought Clarendon very judicious in his diplomatic appointments, he might say very discriminative. And he was so profuse in his felicitations to Arthur on his appointment, and in his compliments to dear little Blanche, on her wisdom of letting her husband go without her—that neither of them had courage to say that they meant to decline the offer. And so it came to pass that Arthur was to go to Berlin, and Blanche to Pleasance. Dr. Ayscough wished her to leave London, but still to be within reach of his surveillance; and Blanche, who had been under his care from the day of her birth, and who was delicate at all times, never supposed for a moment that his advice was not to be followed implicitly.
He went down with Arthur to look at Pleasance, they both approved of it, and when, soon after Aunt Sarah's departure, Arthur bounded upstairs, and declared that he had actually taken the prettiest villa in the world for his little Blanche, she warmed up to the idea. She made one faint inquiry as to whether he had seen her next-door neighbours. At first he denied their existence, but finally owned that there was a small house at the back of hers. "But that does not signify; yours is a good large house, and such drawing-rooms, and such a conservatory, and a splendid lawn down to the river; and there is a wall and a laurel hedge, and all sorts of conundrums to shut out these neighbours who seem to alarm you."
"Their name is Hopkinson, Arthur."
"And a very good name, too. Hopkinson was the name of the Captain of the 'Alert,' who took me out to the Cape, and an excellent fellow he was; perhaps you would have thought him vulgar, but he helped me through a bad fever, which made rare havoc on board; and Florence Nightingale herself could not have made a better nurse. I like the name of Hopkinson."
"Oh, well!" said Blanche, "then it will all do very well, and I must write to Aunt Sarah, and tell her we have taken her Semi-Detached House. It is quite within reach of her daily drive."