The Semi-detached House/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
"Well, Aunt," said Blanche, "if you will candidly own that Mrs. Hopkinson is fat, and does wear mittens, and does know what passes in my kitchen, I will handsomely concede that she is a most hospitable neighbour, and that her dry room is very comfortable after our wet arbour."
"And you may add, my dear, that a semi-detached house has its merits; if one half catches fire, you can take refuge in the other. And now, Blanche, you had better keep quiet where you are, and Aileen and I will go to our friends below, and thank them, Just bring my netting, Aileen."
"But I should like to thank them, too, for it was very kind of the old lady to come swimming out to the rescue, and as I see 'hot tea' expressed in every line of her benevolent countenance, I feel confident she will propose to bring me some; so, if she does, will you encourage the idea?"
Blanche was right. The tea-urn was on the table, brown-bread and butter prepared, and a curious foreign china tea-service laid out, which excited the envy of Aileen, and the admiration of Aunt Sarah, who was learned in porcelain.
"Well, I believe it is reckoned curious, my husband brought it me when he came back from his third trip to China; no, it was his fourth, and he set so much store by it, that, of course, I could not say I thought it ugly; but I like the old willow pattern best, and we only use this on great occasions. And, now, I should like to take Lady Chester a nice cup of hot tea, but perhaps I should disturb her."
"Oh, no," said Aileen, "my sister was wishing for some tea, and if you do not mind the trouble, I am sure she would be very glad to see you, and thank you for your very great kindness."
"Kindness—bless you, Miss Grenville! why where's the kindness in taking you three ladies out of the smoke and rain, I should like to know? If you have not all caught cold it's next to a miracle," and Mrs. Hopkinson walked off with her tea and bread and butter. She was inclined, thanks to the 'Weekly Lyre,' to be rather more formal with Lady Chester than she had been with the aunt and sister, she wished to shew her strong disapprobation of a young wife separating herself voluntarily from her husband. She almost grudged her the Japan tea-cup and saucer, and thought the willow pattern would have done, but somehow she could not keep up her sternness, Blanche received her so courteously, was so earnest in her gratitude for the hospitality she had met with and looked so fragile and pretty, that Mrs. Hopkinson subsided with a sigh into her usual motherly manner, and her conviction that it was all Lord Chester's fault.
"Well, you do not look much fit for any troubles in this world, and I hope you will have none worse than to-day's."
"Oh! it has been a very happy day really," said Blanche, smiling, "I had been very uneasy about some letters that had been missent, and they came just before we were driven out of the house, so I did not mind that at all. Indeed, I think it was very good fun, now it is over, and it has given me the pleasure of making your acquaintance."
"You are very good," said Mrs. Hopkinson, "and I hope your letters were satisfactory."
"Oh, that they always are when they come! Arthur writes such excellent letters! but the post-office has been very ill-managed lately—in fact, ever since he went abroad, and I foolishly fancied he must be ill, and I was on the point of setting off for Berlin."
"Law! my dear lady, the idea of your going off to Berlin, and in your situation, too! Why, I believe it is thousands of miles off, and the sea to cross and all! And Arthur is?"—
"Lord Chester, of course," said Blanche, laughing, "I ought to have called him so, I suppose. You see, Mrs. Hopkinson, he was sent off quite suddenly on that tiresome mission to Berlin, and we had never been parted for an hour, and I thought I should die while he was away, or that he would die while I was away. In short, my aunt says I am full of fancies; but you don't know how dreadfully lonely I feel without Arthur!"
"Don't I, my dear?" said Mrs. Hopkinson, quite warming up to the subject, and forgetting what she called her company manners, "why John has been away the best part of every year since we married, I am sure I might have been a widow twenty times over for all the good I have of his company! I have got used to it now; but the first time that he went, just after I was confined of Janet, I thought he would be lost at sea every time the wind blew, and the wind did nothing but blow that year, though when John came back he said it was all my fancy, and that he had made a remarkably smooth passage."
"And John is?" asked Blanche.
"My husband, Captain Hopkinson."
"Captain Hopkinson!" exclaimed Blanche, jumping up from the sofa, "and did he ever command the 'Alert?'"
"To be sure he did, and a regular tub she was!"
"Well, this is curious!" and Blanche seized Mrs. Hopkinson's fat hands, and pressed them warmly, mittens and all. "Captain Hopkinson saved Arthur's life, by his care and kindness when Arthur caught that bad fever on his passage to the Cape."
"Not Lord Chester surely! I always make John tell me the history of all his passengers. I don't half like those ladies from India, who are always coming home to their children, or going back to their husbands; all I can say is, they don't fret on the voyage. I can trust John, but I always like to know who is on board, and I am sure I should have remembered Lord Chester's name!"
"But his elder brother was alive then, he was only Captain Templeton."
"Captain Templeton!" exclaimed Mrs, Hopkinson, jumping up in her turn, "you don't mean to say, Lady Chester, that your husband is that Captain Templeton who was the life and soul of the 'Alert' till he caught that bad fever which carried off so many of John's best hands. Goodness me! why John talked of nothing else when he came home from that voyage! I thought I should have dropped off my chair sometimes with laughing at some of Captain Templeton's jokes: and he came to see John when we were at Southsea—found him out though John was at home only for three weeks—and was so friendly, and shook hands with me, and said John was a capital fellow, which to be sure he is. And to think that he should be Lord Chester—and that you should be Lady Chester, and sitting in that wet arbour! That is a curious coincidence!"
Mrs. Hopkinson's ideas on the subject of coincidences were rather vague and ungrammatical, but Blanche was not disposed to be critical; and when Aileen came up to say that Baxter had announced that the kitchen chimney had come to its senses, and that my Lady might come home—she found the two ladies both talking at once about the voyage of the 'Alert,' and Blanche half sorry to go, till she had heard more particulars of Arthur's cabin and his illness.