The Disturbing Element, Or, Chronicles of the Blue-Bell Society

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Contents

CHAP. PACK

I. — True Blue, ..... 7

II. — The Bells, . . 21

Chapter I. True Blue

MS an invalid, I am always supposed to have more time than any one else, I am not sure that it is the fact, for languor makes work go slowly even at the best, and, besides, those who are supposed to do work for everyone sometimes end in doing work for no one. However, my friends are so kind to me that I am glad to be able to show my good-will in working for them, and fortunately my invalidism is not very severe of disabling, being chiefly a weakness of spine, which prevents my walking or driving for more than half-an-hour at a time, and — connected with that, as they say — an asthmatic affection which will not let me breathe anywhere f but at this little place of Poppleton St. Barbe, and not much there at night when the wind gets into the north-east.

My sister Susan and I stumbled into it by a sort of chance, when, on the break-up of an old home, we were trying all the world round for a place that would agree with me; and as my breath grew better here, and my bones rebelled at the notion of going up all the hills that fence it in, " we wintered and summered it," as our maid Rebekah says, and ended by setting up our staff, ^>., by taking a long lease of this house, which we did not name " Violet Villa." Indeed we did our best to alter the name, so much did it disgust Susan's love of common sense ; but custom has been too strong for her, and I see her dating her letters from V. V. without the slightest compunction.

Poppleton St. Barbe is an odd little town. It would fain be a watering-place, but fate is against it. The nearest station is twelve miles off, and between lie no less than three tremendous hills. Barbe Torr hill generally needs four horses to draw up a tolerably well-filled fly, and the leaders appear to be in a nearly perpendicular position above the head of the inmate. Ben Boldre, who shuts in the eastern side of our little bay, is not so severe, in spite of his name, but then he leads to

Tme Blue.

no particular place, and till the railroad shoots out the threatened branch, we are not likely to have incursions on that side.

There is another objection, namely, that our beach consists of nothing but pebbles, big pebbles and small, varying from the size of a pea to that of a bombshell, all rolling about un^er the feet of the walker, so that only practice can make perfect in the art of avoiding the getting the ankles and insteps crushed among them. Susan used to come home with her feet black and blue the first year we were here, and though there is a nice smooth walk and carriage-road along the top, where, alone, I can take my walks abroad, it is only half-a-mile long, and storms and spring tides are apt to make such havoc of it that we have to pay heavily to keep it in repair. Moreover, it is only a narrow shelf, deposited, as the learned tell us, by the Boldre, and a very little way out the sea becomes so extremely deep that bathing is very dangerous, except in one tiny cove behind Barbe Head, where an enterprising old woman keeps two machines and a-half.

So it was a failure when, some forty or fifty years ago, a bold speculator, the same who began the great reservoir on the moor, added to the original little town half-a-dozen lodging-houses atvd ^"v\Tv5iv^ villas with fine names. He ruined himself, poor man, but the buildings have their use. The few who know Poppleton are passionately fond of it, and we dread nothing so much as that it should get a general reputation for being a quiet and unsophisticated place, and all the world should rush down on it together and spoil it. There is one London family connected with the county, who always come here as regularly as the vacation comes round, and sometimes are met by other relations, and it is the established haunt of sundry old-fashioned friends who like to meet here in the winter, and escape the fall of the leaf at home. Other visitors we have, when holiday children want a little sea air, and the old boatmen and bathing women have plenty of custom from merry young folks. Everybody knows everybody ; we think ourselves extremely select, and glance at outsiders as if they were the skirmishers of an invading army.

The Boldre comes down from the moors, rising in a long ravine, or gully, between our two hills, with a beautiful course through woods and rocks, foaming, sparkling, and leaping, and causing his visitors to rave almost as much as he does on a stormy day, when he tears down, all yellow water and foam, roaring into the sea and overflowing all

Trtie Blue, ii his bed, spreading over the road, and bringing fresh instalments of stones to the shingle.

The stream divides into two branches, on either side of a sort of delta. I fancy this must once have been one of those rocks, with a gradual slope towards the land and a precipice towards the sea, which form islets, and that the river enlarged it gradually by the deposits it brought down, lengthening it in the rear, raising the ground below the precipice, and filling up the gorge, while the south side was raised by two successive elevations of coast, forming two shelves above the beach and under the cliff, so that the island, as our little nephew Edward used to delight in calling it, contained about fifty acres. On the summit, with a dark grey precipice coming nearly sheer down from the south-eastern buttress of its chancel, most picturesquely perched, is our church, with a magnificent high square tower, with one tall staircase turret pointing up like a finger, intended to serve as a landmark at sea, and certainly worthy to be St. Barbara's symbol. The churchgoers from the eastern side have to go up a grand flight of stone steps, most beautiful and picturesque, but the descent of which is formidable to skirts in wet weather. On the east side, below the churchyard, slopes the Rectory garden ; on IK^^n^'sX^X^^X.-^

Lodge, a very pretty and beautifully arranged house with a tiny farm, belonging to Captain Walton ; on the south, on the uppermost shelf beneath the precipice, and with two small terraces below to secure it from spring tides, our own Violet Villa. The Rectory lies behind in the fork of the stream, standing high, and its garden sloping down.

The main body of the river — not that it is much in summer time — goes to the east of this islet of ours, and there is a bridge, that generally looks ridiculously high and large, connecting the church steps with Brackenridge, Mr. Arrowsmith's house, and the hamlet beyond. The other branch is generally a mere thread of damp among stones and greener grass, though it too has a bridge in case of accidents, and to lessen the ascent of the hill. The side of Barbe Torr is beautiful park, golden with gorse, purple with heath, and here and there with glades of turf, studded with trees. The chief part of the town lies curving in rows, connected by steep lanes on the lower, south-western corner of Ben Boldre, looking very pretty from this distance, though within, I fancy it is very fishy. The gentry live in terraces above it. and there is a little iron chapel for the fishermen at the further end.

We think ours the most charming situation of all. The church is just above our heads, delightful

Trtie Blue. 13 creepers and ferns cover the clifiF behind the house, and we have the benefit of Captain Walton's precious pines. Our magnolias and myrtles never perish, and our terraces are lovely with all kinds of rarities. My window looks on the sea, and my music, as I sit alone or wake at night, is the plash of the ^Y^ves, and the rush and rattle of the pebbles on the beach.

Not that there is much sitting alone. Susan is in and out all day long about her various occupations concerning house, garden, and parish, where long habitation and usefulness have made her a kind of authority.

But this is all aside from the mark. My purpose is to write the history of the Blue-bell Society.

It was one hot June day, when the blinds were keeping out the glare of the sun, and I was sitting half-asleep over some idle reading, that I heard a rippling and a babbling, over and above the noise of the pebbles and the sea, coming up the garden walk, warning me to settle my hair, put away my book, and take up my knitting. I heard the bell, • and I also heard through the open window the fresh, and I must confess rather loud, young voice of Lettice Arrowsmith, declaring she knew Miss Webster was out, but was Miss Frances well enough to see her?

True Blue, 15

Morland, but her voice was lost in the general castigation that fell upon Penny for her precipitancy, which was supposed to have alarmed me, and she was suppressed, and ordered to leave Lettice free to explain the matter.

" The fact is, dear Miss Frances," said she, " that we all feel that we are wasting a great deal of time in a desultory manner, and we want to arrange some scheme for working together with a view to the local examinations "

It was a great way for one speaker to have gone on uninterrupted, and Winifred Walton plunged in, " So we thought of forming a society — a

"Because Winifred doesn't belong to societies enough already," broke forth Penny. " Let me see," counting on her fingers, " she gets up by the Early Rising Society, that's one ; she reads by the Half-hour Society, two ; she practises by the Classical Musical Society, three ; draws by another, four; walks by the Out-of-door one, five; works by the — is it two or three working ones, Winifred 1 — Sewing, Knitting, and Fancy Work, and an Essay Society besides "

" The Essay Society has broken up," said Winifred, in the unconcerned tone of one far too intent on her purpose to perceive a joke. " That's the thing "

" So you see," added Penny, " poor Winny having only eight societies is obliged to come begging for a ninth. I believe she will soon not be able to cut her nails without a society to tell her when."

" Perhaps some people's tongues need a society for their repression," I CQuld not help putting in. " Here is Lettice burning to go on with her speech, and myself on tenter-hooks to know what you want to do with me."

" To make you our critic," cried out the general voice, while particular ones explained, " To get you to look over our essays;" "To let us meet here once a week ;" " To direct our readings ;" " To look at our questions."

" For," explained Winifred, " that was the rock we split upon. One of our girls asked the history of the Reform Bill, and as some of them were tremendous Tories, and the critic an awful Liberal, there was such a row we could not go on together. We had been nearly as bad before about the character of John Knox, and then we made a rule to have no party questions, whereupon this girl declared that she didn't know that there were two opinions about the Reformation."

The injured way in which Winifred related all this, as something far too sad and serious for a

True Blue, 17 spark of fun to be visible in it, set all the others into screams of laughter, from the midst of which came Lettice's voice, entreating that the whole might not be turned intp nonsense, when Winifred's grave assurance that she had said nothing — ^it was not her fault— reduced Penelope to a choking state.

" I knew how it would be if she came," sighed Winifred; on which Penny started up with, " Ladies and gentlemen, I appeal — n

Here, however, Lettice got up a cry of " Order, order," in which Dora Morland and Marjorie Carstairs both joined, and we came to an understanding — for as all the voices impressed on me at once, " it was no joke." They did really wish to form a Mutual Improvement Society, and to study with some method and object. Several of them wished to go up for one of the local examinations for women, and all thought that it would be best to work together, " With some one to keep us in order," added Lettice.

Their present notion was to give out some subjects once a-week, work them up at home, and meet to correct and compare results, and they had unanimously fixed on Violet Villa as the best place of. meeting, and my stupid old self as the president, critic, or, as Penny called it, cricket^ wVvo

B was to chirp comments on my own hearth, and serve as a kind of centre.

Well, I was flattered — I was touched. I liked to have the young things about me. I am glad if I can help them. I think it will be fun. Only what will Susan say? However, that suggestion was overwhelmed by, " Oh ! she'll be all right !" "Never mind;" "I'll tackle Miss Webster" (this from Penny the undaunted) ; and then I was called a dear, delicious, darling Miss Frances, and my head was nearly hugged off — my apology for a cap quite so.

Then we subsided, and I was told of the other four members, and of a few more who would correspond. Then what were we to call ourselves?

"Z^ salon bleu** suggested Winifred, looking round at the room, which had lately come out in a summer garb of chintz with a running pattern of blue coral all over it, to agree with a blue brocade arm-chair and curtains to match, which were relics of an old home.

" No, no," I protested ; " Tm not going to set up for a Hotel Rambouillet. We should soon be known as the Pr^cieuses Ridicules.**

" I think we had better steer clear of blue,*' said Dora.

True Blue. 19

" And I think we had better take the bull by the horns, and call ourselves the Bos bleu at once," said Winifred.

I thought that would sound rather pretentious, but the girls had, it seemed, set their hearts on having each a little blue badge, and using the name of some blue flower as their nom de plume. Such fancies, half play, half poetry, must go along with girlhood's plans, and very merry all were over the cjioice of names. Ours was then to be the Blue-bell Society, and our first Bell was Canterburybell, i,e,y tall, bright, cheery Lettice Arrowsmith.

Winifred chose the Gentianella, and nearly relinquished it, because Dora was overheard muttering, " Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue;" and Penny exclaimed, " Really> Dora, you should be Viper's Bugloss, you have such a sting ! "

"I meant it, thank you," said Dora, with her accustomed sang-froid. "I particularly admire Bugloss."

Maisie Carstairs could of course be only the Harebell, or Blue-bell of Scotland, and Penny began by appropriating the Shamrock, and being reminded that it was not blue, proposed the Sapphire, because it was the next thing to aaj Emerald. " Oh, Penny, Penny ! you'd better tato care they don't drum you out of the &QCNftX>j

A altogether," cried Lettice, as she heard Winifred's indignant whisper of " How can you be so silly!"

" You had better be Forget-me-not, as a wholesome reminder," observed the Viper's Bugloss.

"Not I," rejoined Penny; "TU leave that for some one more sentimental. No, I mean to be the Blue-bottle, that is always buzzing in your ears."

There was another outcry, but Penny proved that Blue-bottle was really the popular name of the wild Hyacinth, and was left in peace therewith. After all, she was not nearly so Irish as her name appeared, and as she chose to affect to be. Her father's family had been settled for several generations in England, her mother was purely English, and she had never seen the Green Isle ; her brogue was studied out of books, and though inherited nature had done something in making her what she was, enthusiastic imitation of everything Irish had done more. Nothing made her so angry as to tell her so, and I was thankful that it did not occur to Dora to do so, before a message came in that Miss Dove had called for Miss Carstairs, and, silent member as she had been, this broke up the conclave, and I was left to face my sister Susan.

CHAPTER 11.

THE BELLS.

FOR. my sister Susan is seven years older than I am, and she is the head of the house, and of me too. We have never changed in that matter, since she was my little mamma in play, before in sad earnest, when my dear mother bade Susan take care of the little ones, and told us to look up to her and obey her. I am her last home-bird, and I don't like doing what she does not heartily approve — not only for afTection and duty's sake, but because she is really so much better and wiser than I am, and I always observe that nothing she really dislikes turns out well.

So it was with some trepidation that I awaited her return from her Mothers' Meeting, and ran( the bell at the first click of the latch of the gate,! sure that she would be thirsty after all her cxittvK?.

out and talking, though Jane Morland is reader. And I was prepared to hear on her entrance, ** Frances, what have you been doing ?"

"What have you been hearing?" I asked, and I found that she was in a bewildered state, Jane Morland, our Vicar's eldest daughter, having told her that Dora was going with half-a-dozen more girls to get me to consent to It Jane could not understand what It was — ^great nonsense, Dora said, and she thought so too. Then Miss Dove had met her in the street and told her that she did not half like Ity and would not have permitted It, if Miss Frances had not taken It up. Next, Penelope Ryan had danced round her on the Parade, beseeching her to be a dear, good, darling Miss Webster, It would be so jolly with Miss Frances at the head of It ; and lastly, Winifred Walton had, with a solemnity that alarmed her more than all, shaken hands with her, saying that they were infinitely obliged to Miss Frances, and considered Its future as secure. No wonder poor Susan came in startled, and desiring to know what I could have been undertaking.

" Suppose I had a Daughters' Meeting while you have a Mothers' .?" said I, trying to put a good face upon it; and then we came to an explanation as far as I understood the scheme, for many details had yet to be shaped, since tjie whole had been a good deal contingent on her consent. She was not much delighted.

" I don't see any sense in it," she said ; " you will have all these girls for ever rushing in upon you and talking you to death."

" It won't be for ever, only on Tuesday afternoons, and I mean to be a dragon of a chairwoman, and ring my bell at all extraneous chatter. It will be very entertaining, and, indeed, Susan," I humbly added, " I should like to be of some use."

"What use?" said Susan (she was very thirsty still, for the water did not boil, and we could not get any tea) — " what use but to make those girls more pretentious and noisy than they are already. I really was quite ashamed of the disturbance Penelope Ryan was making."

"Poor Penelope," said I (for Susan did not love " foolish names") — " I should like to give her a little ballast."

"Do you expect to do it in this way?" said Susan. " Much the same sort of ballast as the feather of a bit of thistledown !"

" I told them I could promise nothing without you, and if you think it would only do harm —

" That is going too fast. I never said anything.* Here the tea came in, in the dear old daisypatterned cups, whose very touch was soothing, and by the time Rebekah had drawn up the blind at the south window, and reported a message left at the door, Susan was in a much less disturbed frame of mind.

" All I wish," she said in a voice pitched much lower than before, *• is that you should not undertake too much, and let yourself be at the mercy of all the girls in the place ; but if you really have a fancy for it, and it amuses you, I can have no objection."

" Thank you. Miss Webster," and Lettice Arrowsmith's bright laughing face came dipping under the blind that still kept out the westering sun. " Indeed I haven't been listening. I only came this moment. I've had to go on and order some fish, and I thought you would sustain me with some tea before crossing the bridge. Papa said he should be late to-day."

I suspected that this was a little coaxing art on our Lettice's part. She is a great favourite with Susan ; of late from a fellow feeling, for it was three years since she was left to be the stay of a motherless family, and she has owed a great deal to the help and sympathy she has always had from Susan. Mr. Arrowsmith is the chief partner of the County Bank at Warchester, but he bought some property and built a house at Brackenridge, on the lower ground of the ravine, just on the other side of the river. The gardens slope down to the bank, and the lodge gate is close to the bridge, and the plantations run up the steep slope of Ben Boldre behind. His flowers are the pride of the country, and he spends all his leisure days on them and his model farm, giving most of his time, however, to Warchester, and sometimes looking in on the little branch bank in Poppleton.

Lettice was, at this time of which I am writing, twenty-five — a tall, brisk, fresh-coloured creature, with a pleasant look of health and energy. She was the only one of the elder half of the family who had been spared by a grievous visitation of diphtheria, so there was a great gap between her and her fourteen-year-old brother, after whom there came another boy and two little girls. We had, and still have, a little vision about Lettice, but I don't know whether it will be fulfilled. At anyrate, she is such an excellent young mother that it was a wonder to see her without her two little sisters, and Susan enquired after them.

" I left them to play in the garden to-day," said she. " I had some calls to make, and, besides, I wanted to talk over this matter."

" My dear Lettice, you don't mean that you are bitten with these schemes?" exclaimed Susan.

Lettice made a droll shrinking gesture, and put up one hand between herself and Susan.

" I am sure you have enough to do!" said my sister.

"Not so much as I had before Jamie went to school, and now Mary and Bessie have a governess. You know papa wished it, now they are growing too old to be left to servants whenever we go out to dinner; and, besides — now we come to the point — I do know so very little that I'm not fit to teach."

" My dear, I thought you had a first-rate education — a German governess and masters!"

" I do know German pretty well, but I know my French accent is horrible. I have read a good deal, but in an aimless sort of way, just because the books came to hand ; and though I have kept up by working with the boys till they went to school, I found, even in Tom's last holidays, that he was getting beyond me, and that I soon shall not be able to help him. While as to the girls, I find I don't know anything really and properly as a teacher ought to do, when I get above the merest foundations; and the worst of it is," she added, laughing, " that Miss Coles seems to me to know

Tlie Bells. 27 less still, and not even to have arrived at perceiving that she does not know."

" But you are not to be a governess, and you are not bound to Miss Coles for ever?"

" No, but I like her ; the children are good with her ; papa is interested in her family, and would not like a change, which would be wholesome for none of us. I had rather make something of her. Now if I was to propose to her to work up for the local examination by herself, she might very likely think it a burden ; but if I did it with her, and it became the means of introducing her to something pleasant and lively beyond the schoolroom, I think she would take to it, and really be improved."

"And what is to become of the children in the meantime.?"

" Oh ! she has plenty of time in the evening, and I in the morning. You see we have to breakfast early for papa to get off to the bank, and I shall be very glad to have an object now that I have so much less to do for the children."

"You won't go up for one of these examinations.?"

"I don't know how papa may like it when it comes to the point, but, at anyrate, I shall have done the work for it, and that's the important point."

" I am glad you think so," said SusajL

" Besides," added Lettice, " I was really anxious to make the thing succeed when Winifred Walton spoke to me about it. It would be so good for some of the girls here to have something sensible to think about."

It was quite true, as we had always said. The parish work was pretty well disposed of between Mrs. Morland, her daughter, the curate's wife, with Susan, and a few other ladies, for Mrs. Morland preferred having district visitors of a certain age, and except that some took classes in the Sunday school, there was nothing for the girls to do, save that Lettice looked after some cottagers on her father's property, and Penelope after the mining families among whom her father lived. There was Dora, as we all knew, getting quite cross and bitter for want of interest and occupation ; there was Penny attempting all sorts of things in her slap-dash vehement manner, and getting opinionated for want of some standard to bring her to book; there were Edith and Alice Parnell, a pair of sisters, who were a grief to Susan's eyes, because they seemed to do nothing but pace up and down ' the Parade drying their hair after bathing, Then there was Emma Lacy. Lettice and I looked at each other drolly, read in each other's eyes that we had received her confidence, and straightway betrayed it, thinking it good for my sister to hear it. Poor Emma Lacy was always sending manuscripts to magazines and always having them rejected, and she had secretly appealed to both Lettice and me to know why it could be that editors should be so cruel. To me she had shown a poem entitled, "My crushed buds," written in the person of a mother who had lost all her children in infancy ; and to Lettice a romance on some early Christians, who, fleeing from the persecution of Caligula, got into a cavern on the seacoast of Sicily, and were nearly drowned by a spring tide, but beguiled their sufferings by singing the Ambrosian hymn and reading the Book of Revelation. When Lettice had made certain suggestions as to the nature of the Mediterranean and the chronology of the early Church, she found the would-be authoress quite ignorant of such trifling details, and destitute of books whence to supply them.

Susan had come the length of allowing that it would be much better for these damsels to have something rational given them to do. Only, she continued, that she would not have me worried and tired, though she should be less afraid on that score if Lettice undertook to look after me, and she further stipulated that the members should never be more than the nine proposed, or she knew it would be too much for me. We were thankful for having gained this much, and acknowledged both her wisdom and her goodness, knowing well that her consent went much against the grain.