General Bounce Part 1

General Bounce.

by G. J. Whyte-Melville.

PREFACE

Where the rose blushes in the garden, there will the bee and the b.u.t.terfly be found, humming and fluttering around. So is it in the world; the fair girl, whose sweetness is enhanced by the fict.i.tious advantages of wealth and position, will ever have lovers and admirers enough and to spare.

Burns was no bad judge of human nature; and he has a stanza on this subject, combining the reflection of the philosopher with the _canny_ discrimination of the Scot.

"Away with your follies of beauty's alarms, The _slender_ bit beauty you clasp in your arms; But gi'e me the la.s.s that has acres of charms, Oh, gi'e me the la.s.s with the _weel-plenished_ farms."

Should the following pages afford such attractive young ladies matter for a few moments' reflection, the author will not have written in vain.

May he hope they will choose well and wisely; and that the withered rose, when she has lost her fragrance, may be fondly prized and gently tended by the hand that plucked her in her dewy morning prime.

CHAPTER I

MY COUSIN

AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOLIDAY--ST. SWITHIN'S IN A CALM--THE MERCHANT'S AMBITION--"MON BEAU COUSIN"--CASTLES IN THE AIR--A LIVELY CRAFT--"HAIRBLOWER" AND HIS COLD BATH

Much as we think of ourselves, and with all our boasted civilisation, we Anglo-Saxons are but a half-barbarian race after all. Nomadic, decidedly nomadic in our tastes, feelings, and pursuits, it is but the moisture of our climate that keeps us in our own houses at all, and like our Scandinavian ancestors (for in turf parlance we have several crosses of the old Norse blood in our veins), we delight periodically--that is, whenever we have a fortnight's dry weather--to migrate from our dwellings, and peopling the whole of our own sea-board, push our invading hordes over the greater part of Europe, nor refrain from thrusting our outposts even into the heart of Asia, till the astonished Mussulman, aghast at our vagaries, strokes his placid beard, and with a blessing on his Prophet that he is not as we are, soothes his disgust with a sentiment, so often repeated that in the East it has become a proverb--viz. that "There is one devil, and there are many devils; but there is _no_ devil like a Frank in a round hat!"

It was but last autumn that, stepping painfully into our tailor's shop--for, alas! a course of London dinners cannot be persisted in, season after season, without producing a decided tendency to gout in the extremities--hobbling, then, into our tailor's warehouse, as he calls it, we were measured by an unfledged jackanapes, whose voice we had previously heard warning his brother fractions that "an old gent was a waitin' inside," instead of that spruce foreman who, for more years than it is necessary to specify, has known our girth to an inch, and our weight to a pound. Fearful that in place of the grave habit of broadcloth which we affect as most suitable to our age and manner, we might find ourselves equipped in one of the many grotesque disguises in which young gentlemen now-a-days deem it becoming to hide themselves, and described by the jackanapes, aforesaid, who stepped round us in ill-concealed admiration of our corpulence, as "a walking coat, a riding coat, a smoking coat, or a coat _to go to the stable in_!" we ventured to inquire for "the person we usually saw," and were informed that "the gent as waited on us last year had gone for a few months' holiday to the Heast." Heavens and earth, Mr. Bobst.i.tch was even then in Syria! What a Scandinavian! rather degenerate to be sure in size and ferocity--though Bobst.i.tch, being a little man, is probably very terrible when roused--but yet no slight contrast to one of those gaunt, grim, russet-bearded giants that made the despot of the Lower Empire quake upon his throne. And yet Bobst.i.tch was but obeying the instinct which he inherits from the sea-kings his ancestors, an instinct which in less adventurous souls than a tailor's fills our watering-places to overflowing, and pours the wealth, while it introduces the manners, of the capital into every bight and bay that indents the sh.o.r.es of Britain.

Doubtless the citizens are right. Let us, while we are in Scandinavian vein, make use of an old Norse metaphor, and pressing into our service the two Ravens of Odin, named Mind and Will, with these annihilate time and s.p.a.ce, so as to be, like the Irish orator's bird, "in two places at once." Let us first of all take a retrospective glance at Mrs. Kettering's house in Grosvenor Square, one of the best houses, by the way, to be had in London for love or money. We recollect it well, not so many years ago, lit up for one of those great solemnities which novelists call "a rout," but which people in real life, equally martially as well as metaphorically, designate "a drum." To us creeping home along the pavement outside the _fete_, it seemed the realisation of fairyland. Row upon row, glaring carriage-lamps, like the fabulous monsters keeping watch, illuminated the square and adjoining streets, even to the public-house round the corner, that night driving a highly remunerative trade; whilst on a nearer inspection magnificent horses (horses, like ladies, look most beautiful by candle-light), gorgeous carriages--none of your Broughams and Clarences, but large, roomy, well-hung family coaches, with cartoons of heraldry on the panels--gigantic footmen, and fat coachmen, struck the beholder with admiration not totally unmixed with awe. Then the awning that was to admit the privileged to the inner realms of this earthly paradise, of which the uninitiated might know but the exterior; what a gauzy, gaudy transparency it was, no unfitting portal to that upper storey, from which the golden light was hardly veiled by jalousies and window-blinds. Ever and anon, much las.h.i.+ng of bay, brown, or chestnut sufferers, and the interference of a tall policeman, with a hat made on purpose to be a.s.saulted by bludgeons, betokened the arrival of a fresh party, and angelic beings in white robes, with glossy hair, tripped daintily up the steps over a cloth, not of gold exactly, but of horse-hair, amongst a phalanx of unwashed faces, gazing half enviously at such loveliness in full dress. How beautiful we used to think these apparitions as we plodded home to our quiet chambers! but young Bareface, our connecting link with the great world, who goes to all the _best_ places, through the influence of his aunt, Lady Champfront, a.s.sures us they don't look half so beautiful inside, and that he sees quite as pretty faces, and hair quite as nicely done, at the little gatherings in Russell Square and Bloomsbury, to which even we might go if we liked. A radical dog!

we don't believe a word of it. Never mind, let us look at that house in the dead time of year. Without and within, from attics to bas.e.m.e.nt, from the balcony facing the square to the empty bird-cage overlooking a precipice of offices at the back, Repose and Ennui reign supreme.

Were it not for the knocking of the workmen next door, we might as well be in the Great Desert. There _is_, we presume, a woman in possession, but she has gone to "get the beer," and if you have ever sighed for a town-house, now is the time to be satisfied with your rustic lot, and to hug yourself that you are not paying ground-rent and taxes, church-rate, poor's-rate, and water-rate, drainage, lighting, and paving, for that ghastly palace of soot and cobwebs, dust, dreariness, and decay. There is a scaffolding up in every third house in the square; and workmen in paper caps, with foot-rules sticking out of their fustian trousers, and complexions ingrained with lime-dust, and guiltless of fresh water, seem to be the only inhabitants of this deserted region, and even they are "between earth and heaven." Brown and parched are the unfortunate shrubs in those gardens of which discontented householders "round the corner" covet so to possess a key; and the very birds, sparrows, every feather of 'em, hop about in dirty suits of plumage that can only be described as of that colour unknown to naturalists, which other people call "grimy."

Who would be in London in the autumn? Not Mrs. Kettering, certainly, if she might be elsewhere; and although she had possessed this excellent and commodious family mansion, with all its boudoirs, retreats, and appurtenances, so well described in the advertis.e.m.e.nt, but a short time, and was not the giver of that "reunion of fas.h.i.+onables" we have depicted above (indeed, the hostess of that evening has since been economising up two pair of stairs at Antwerp); yet Mrs. Kettering having plenty of money, and being able to do what she liked, had wisely moved herself, her fancies, her imperials, and her family to the coast, where, obeying the instinct for freedom that has driven Bobst.i.tch to the desert, she was idly inhaling the salt breezes of the Channel, and dazzling her eyes with the sun-glint that sparkled over its dancing waves.

Some few years have elapsed since the events took place which we shall endeavour to describe; but the white cliffs of our island change little with the lapse of time, though the sea does make its encroachments ever and anon when the wind has been blowing pretty steady from the south-west for a fortnight or so, and the same scene may be witnessed any fine day towards the middle of August as that which we are about to contrast with the dulness, closeness, and confinement of the great town-house in Grosvenor Square.

First, we must imagine a real summer's day, such a day as in our island we seldom enjoy till summer has well-nigh given place to autumn, but which, when it does come, is worth waiting for. Talk of climate! a real fine day in England, like a really handsome Englishwoman, beats creation. Well, we must imagine one of these bright, hot, hay-making days, almost too warm and dusty ash.o.r.e, but enjoyable beyond conception on the calm and oily waves, unruffled by the breeze, and literally as smooth as gla.s.s. A sea-bird occasionally dips her wing on the surface, and then flaps lazily away, as if she too was as much inclined to go to sleep as yonder moveless fleet of lugger, brig, bark, and schooner, with their empty sails, and their heads all round the compa.s.s. There is a warm haze towards the land, and the white houses of St. Swithin's seem to glow and sparkle in the heat, whilst to seaward a modified sort of mirage would make one fancy one could plainly distinguish the distant coast of France.

Ash.o.r.e, in those great houses, people are panting, and gasping, and creating thorough draughts that fill their rooms with a small white dust of a destructive tendency to all personal property. The children up-stairs are running about in linen under-garments, somewhat more troublesome than usual, with a settled flush on their little peach-like cheeks, and the s.h.i.+ning streets are deserted, save by the perspiring pot-boy, and the fly-men drinking beer in their s.h.i.+rt sleeves. Only afloat is there a chance of being cool; and sailing-boat, gig, dinghy, and cobble, all are in requisition for the throng of amateur mariners, rus.h.i.+ng like ducklings to the refres.h.i.+ng element.

It was on just such a day as this that Mrs. Kettering found it extremely difficult to "trim the boat." A mile or so from the sh.o.r.e, that boat was slowly progressing, impelled by the unequal strength of her nephew Charles, commonly called "Cousin Charlie," and its worthy proprietor, a fine specimen of the genus "seaman," who certainly had a Christian name, and probably a patronymic, but had sunk both distinctions under the sobriquet of "Hairblower," by which appellation alone he was acknowledged by gentle and simple, bold and timid, delicate ladies and bluff fishermen, along many a mile of sea-board, up and down from St. Swithin's.

"The least thing further, Master Charles," said Hairblower, ever and anon pulling the stripling's efforts round with one hand. "Don't ye disturb, madam--don't ye move, Miss Blanche; it's not _your_ weight that makes her roll." And again he moistened the large, strong hand, and turned to look out ahead.

In vain Mrs. Kettering shut up her parasol, and s.h.i.+fted her seat; in vain she disposed her ample figure, first in one uncomfortable position, then in another; she could _not_ "trim the boat," and the reason was simple enough. Mrs. Kettering's weight was that of a lady who had all her life been "a fine woman," and was now somewhat past maturity; whilst her daughter and only child, "Blanche," the occupant of the same bench, had but just arrived at that period when the girl begins to lengthen out into the woman, and the slight, lanky figure, not without a grace peculiar to itself, is nevertheless as delicate as a gossamer, and as thin as its own gauzy French bonnet.

Mother and daughter were but little alike, save in their sweet and rather languid tone of voice--no trifling charm in that s.e.x which is somewhat p.r.o.ne, especially under excitement, to pitch its organ in too high a key. Mrs. Kettering was dark and brown of complexion, with sparkling black eyes, and a rich colour, much heightened by the heat.

Not very tall in stature, but large and square of frame, well-filled out besides by a good appet.i.te, a good digestion, and, though nervous and excitable, a good temper. Blanche, on the contrary, with her long violet eyes, her curving dark eyelashes, and golden-brown hair, was so slight of frame and delicate of tint as to warrant her mother's constant alarm for her health; not that there was any real cause for anxiety, but mamma loved to fidget, if not about "dear Blanche," about something belonging to her; and failing these, had a constant fund of worry in the exploits and escapades of graceless "Cousin Charlie."

"Now, Charlie, my own dear boy" (Mrs. K. was very fond of Charlie), "I know you must be over-heating yourself--nothing so bad for growing lads. Mr. Hairblower, _pray_ don't let him row so hard."

"Gammon, aunt," was Charlie's irreverent reply. "Wait till we get her head round with the flood; we'll make her speak to it, won't we, Hairblower?"

"Well, Master Charles," said the jolly tar, "I think as you and me could pull her head under, pretty nigh,--howsoever, we be fairish off for time, and the day's young yet."

"Blanche, Blanche!" suddenly exclaimed Mrs. Kettering, "look at the weed just beyond that buoy--the alga, what's its name, we were reading about yesterday. Charlie, of course _you_ have forgotten. I shall soon be obliged to get a finis.h.i.+ng governess for you, Blanche."

"Oh no, dearest mamma," said the young girl, in her soft, sweet voice, which always drew Hairblower's eyes, in speechless admiration, to her gentle countenance. "I could never learn with any one but you; and then she might be cross, mamma, and I should hate her so after you!"

And Blanche took her mother's plump, tightly-gloved hand between her own, and looked up in her face with such a fond, bewitching expression, that it was no wonder mamma doted on her, and Hairblower and "Cousin Charlie" too.

Mrs. Kettering was one of those people whose superabundant energy must have a certain number of objects whereon to expend itself. Though a pleasant, cheerful woman, she was decidedly _blue_--that is to say, besides being a good musician, linguist, draughtswoman, and worsted worker, she had a few ideas, not very correct, upon ancient history, a superficial knowledge of modern literature, thought Shakespeare _vulgar_ and Milton _dry_, with a smattering of the 'ologies, and certain theories concerning chemistry, which, if reduced to practice, would have made her a most unsafe occupant for a ground-floor. With these advantages, and her sunny, pleasant temper, she taught Blanche _everything_ herself; and if the young lady was not quite so learned as some of her a.s.sociates, she had at least the advantage of a mother's companions.h.i.+p and tuition, and was as far removed as possible from that most amusing specimen of affectation, an English girl who has formed her manner on that of a French governess.

Mrs. Kettering had gone through her share of troubles in her youth, and being of a disposition by no means despondent, was rather happy under difficulties than otherwise. We do not suppose she married her first love: we doubt if women often do, except in novels; and the late Mr. K. was a gentleman of an exterior certainly more respectable than romantic. His manners were abrupt and commercial, but his name at the back of a bill was undeniable. The lady whom he wooed and won was old enough to know her own mind; nor have we reason to suppose but that in pleasing him she pleased herself. Many a long year they toiled and ama.s.sed, and old Kettering attended closely to business, though he never showed his books to his wife; and Mrs. Kettering exercised her diplomacy in migrating once every five years further and further towards "the West End." Their last house but one was in Tyburnia, and then old Kettering put a finis.h.i.+ng stroke to his business, made a shot at indigo which landed him more thousands than our modest ideas can take in, and enabling him to occupy that mansion in Grosvenor Square which looked so dull in the autumn, placed Mrs. Kettering at once on the pedestal she had all her life been sighing to attain;--perhaps she was disappointed when she got there. However that may be, the enterprising merchant himself obtained little by his new residence, save a commodious vault belonging to it in a neighbouring church, in which his remains were soon after deposited, and a tablet, pure and unblemished as his own commercial fame, erected to his memory by his disconsolate widow. How disconsolate she was, poor woman! for a time, with her affectionate nature: but then her greatest treasure, Blanche, was left; and her late husband, as the most appropriate mark of his confidence and esteem, bequeathed the whole of his property, personal and otherwise, to his well-beloved wife, so the blow was to a certain degree softened, and Mrs. Kettering looked uncommonly radiant and prosperous even in her weeds.

Now, it is very pleasant and convenient to have a large property left you at your own disposal, more especially when you are blessed with a child on whom you dote, to succeed you when you have no further occasion for earthly treasure; and, in the eyes of the world, this was Mrs. Kettering's agreeable lot. The eyes of the world, as usual, could not look into the cupboard where the skeleton was; but our poor widow, or rather our rich widow, was much hampered by the shape which no one else knew to exist.

The fact is, old Mr. Kettering had a crotchet. Being a rich man, he had a right to a dozen; but he was a sensible, quiet old fellow, and he contented himself with one. Now, this crotchet was the invincible belief that he, John Kettering, was the lineal male representative of one of the oldest families in England. How he came to have lost the old Norman features and appearance, or how it happened that such a lofty descent should have merged in his own person as junior clerk to a large City counting-house, he never troubled himself to inquire; he was satisfied that the oldest blood in Europe coursed through his veins, and with the pedigree he supposed himself to possess (though its traces were unfortunately extinct), he might marry whom he pleased. As we have seen, he did marry a very personable lady; but, alas! she gave him no male heir. Under a female succession, all his toil, all his astuteness, all his money, would not raise the family name to the proud position he believed its due. He could not bear the idea of it; and he never really loved poor Blanche half so much as that engaging child deserved. When all chance of a son was hopeless, he resolved to bring up and educate his only brother's orphan child, a handsome little boy, whose open brow and aristocratic lineaments won the old man's favour from the first.

"Cousin Charlie," in consequence, became an inmate of the Kettering family, and was usually supposed by strangers to be the elder brother of pretty little Blanche.

These intentions, however, were kept a dead secret; and the children knew as little as children generally do of their future prospects, or the path chalked out for them through life. With all his fancied importance, old Kettering was a good, right-feeling man; and although it is our belief that he revoked and destroyed several testamentary doc.u.ments, he ended by leaving everything to his wife, in her own power, as he worded it, "in testimony of his esteem for her character, and confidence in her affection,"--previously exacting from her a solemn promise that she would eventually bequeath the bulk of her wealth to his nephew, should the lad continue to behave well, and _like a gentleman_--making a provision for Blanche at her own discretion, but not exceeding one-eighth of the whole available property.

The testator did not long survive his final arrangements. And though her promise cost his widow many a sleepless night, she never dreamed of breaking it, nor of enriching her darling child at the expense of her nephew.

Mrs. Kettering was a woman all over, and we will not say the idea of uniting the two cousins had not entered her mind; on the contrary, brought up together as they were, she constantly antic.i.p.ated this consummation as a delightful release from her conflicts between duty and inclination. She was, besides, very fond of "Cousin Charlie," and looked eagerly forward to the day when she might see this "charming couple," as she called them, fairly married and settled. With all these distractions, it is no wonder that Mrs. Kettering, who, though a bustling, was an undecided woman, could never quite make up her mind to complete her will. It was a matter of the greatest importance; so first she made it, and then tore it up, and then constructed a fresh one, which she omitted to sign until things were more certain, and eventually mislaid; while, in the meantime, Blanche and "Cousin Charlie" were growing up to that age at which young people, more especially in matters of love-making, are pretty resolutely determined to have a will of their own.

The bridegroom presumptive, however, was one of those young gentlemen in whose heads or hearts the idea of marriage is only contemplated as a remote possibility, and a dreaded termination to a life of enjoyment--in much the same light as that in which the pickpocket views transportation beyond the seas. He believes it to be the common lot of mankind, but that it may be indefinitely postponed with a little circ.u.mspection, and in some cases of rare good fortune even eluded altogether.

It is curious to observe at what an early age the different instincts of the s.e.xes develop themselves in children. Little Miss can scarcely waddle before she shoulders a doll, which she calls her baby, and on which she lavishes much maternal care, not without certain wholesome correction. From her earliest youth, the abstract idea of wife and motherhood is familiar to her mind; and to be married, though she knows not what it is, as natural and inevitable a destiny as to learn music and have a governess. Young Master, on the contrary, has no idea of being a "pater familias." His notion of being grown up is totally unconnected with housekeeping. When "he is a man, he means to be a soldier, or a sailor, or a pastry-cook--he will have a gun and hunters, and go all day to the stable, and eat as much as he chooses, and drink port wine like papa;" but to bring up children of his own, and live in one place, is the very last thing he dreams of. "Cousin Charlie" entertained the usual notions of his kind. Although an orphan, he had never known the want of a parent--uncle and aunt Kettering supplying him with as kind and indulgent a father and mother as a spoilt little boy could desire. And although he had his childish sorrows, such as parting from Blanche, going to school, being whipped according to his deserts when there, and thus smuggled through that amusing work, the Latin Grammar; yet, altogether, his life was as happy as any other child's of his own age, on whom health, and love, and plenty had shone from the day of its birth.

Of course, old John Kettering sent him to Eton, that most aristocratic of schools, where Charlie learnt to swim--no mean accomplishment; arrived at much perfection in his "wicket-keeping" and "hitting to the leg," as, indeed, he deserved, for the powers of application he evinced in the study of cricket; was taught to "feather an oar" in a method which the London watermen p.r.o.nounced extremely inefficient; and acquired a knack of construing Horace into moderately bad English, with a total disregard for the ideas, habits, prejudices, and intentions of that courtly bard. Of course, too, he was destined for the army. With _his_ prospects, in what other profession could he get through his allowance, and acquire gentlemanlike habits of extravagance in what is termed good society? Old Kettering wanted to make his nephew a gentleman--that was it. When asked how Charlie was getting on at Eton, and what he learnt there, the uncle invariably replied, "Learn, sir! why, he'll learn to be a gentleman."

It is a matter for conjecture whether the worthy merchant was capable of forming an opinion as to the boy's progress in this particular study, or whether he was himself a very good judge of the variety he so much admired. Our own idea is, that neither birth, nor riches, nor education, nor manner, suffice to const.i.tute a gentleman; and that specimens are to be found at the plough, the loom, and the forge, in the ranks, and before the mast, as well as in the officers' mess-room, the learned professions, and the Upper House itself. To our fancy, a gentleman is courteous, kindly, brave, and high-principled--considerate towards the weak, and self-possessed amongst the strong. High-minded and unselfish, "he does to others as he would they should do unto him," and shrinks from the meanness of taking advantage of his neighbour, man or woman, friend or foe, as he would from the contamination of cowardice, duplicity, tyranny, or any other blackguardism. "_Sans peur et sans reproche_"--he has a "lion's courage with a woman's heart"; and such a one, be he in a peer's robes or a ploughman's smock--backing before his sovereign or delving for his bread--we deem a very Bayard for chivalry--a very Chesterfield for good breeding and good sense. We are old-fas.h.i.+oned though in our ideas, and doubtless our sentiments may be dubbed slow by the young, and vulgar by the great. Still, even these dissentients would, we think, have been satisfied with "Cousin Charlie's" claims to be considered a "gentleman."

Nature had been beforehand with old Kettering, and had made him one of her own mould. Not all the schools in Europe could have spoiled or improved him in that particular. And his private tutor's lady discovered this quality, with all a woman's intuitive tact, the very first evening he spent at the vicarage of that reverend Crichton, who prepared young gentlemen of fifteen years and upwards for _both_ the universities and _all_ the professions.

"What do you think of the new pupil, my dear?" said Mr. n.o.bottle to his wife--a dean's daughter, no less!--as he drew up the connubial counterpane to meet the edge of his night-cap. "He was a wild lad, I hear, at Eton. I am afraid we shall have some trouble with him."

"Not a bit of it," was the reply; "he is a gentleman every inch of him. I saw it at once by the way he helped Tim in with his portmanteau. Binks, of course, was out of the way,--and that reminds me, Mr. n.o.bottle, you never _will_ speak to that man,--what's the use of having a butler? And then, he's such a remarkably good-looking boy--but I daresay you're half asleep already."

And, sure enough, patient Joseph n.o.bottle was executing a prolonged and marital snore.

Mrs. n.o.bottle found no occasion to recant her predictions; and Charlie was now spending his summer vacation with Mrs. Kettering at St.

Swithin's.

We have left the party so long in their boat, that they have had ample time to "trim" or sink her. Neither of these events, however, took place; and after pulling round a Swedish brig, an enormous tub, very _wholesome_-looking, as Hairblower said, and holding a polyglot conversation with an individual in a red night-cap, who grinned at the ladies, and offered them "schnapps," they turned the little craft's head towards the sh.o.r.e, and taking "the flood," as Charlie had previously threatened, bent themselves to their work, and laid out upon their oars in a style that satisfied even the seaman, and enraptured the lad.