A Girl of the Period

Chapter I

BLANCHE FONTAINE was a girl who was not very happy at home: at least she thought so, which in many cases comes to the same thing. She was the only child of her parents, who believed on their side that no girl in England had so many reasons for being happy. They had no other object so dear to their hearts as this: that their child should be surrounded with everything that is best and most delightful in life; that she should have not a wish that was unfulfilled within limitations, of course); that she should know everything and see everything that a young lady moving in the best society ought to know and see. And they spared themselves no trouble in this desire for Blanche's happiness. Many long vacations which the Judge would have given a great deal to spend at home in his house in the country, resting from his many labours, he had spent instead in Italy, when it was too hot, or in Switzerland when it was too wet, for pleasure, in order to please Blanche. In winter or spring he was often left alone for months together in his big dull old London house on the same argument. As for Lady Fontaine no washerwoman toiled more constantly than she did in the ceaseless effort to perfect and satisfy her child—"the only flower of my garden," she would say with hands clasped and soft eyes turned to heaven. She was a pretty woman herself, very apt to be admired and applauded on her own account, just forty when Blanche was nineteen; but her ambition was all for her daughter. She had not herself been carefully educated, and had resolved that her child should have everything she had lacked; and when Blanche ceased to be a child, and set up independent ways of thinking and ambitions of her own, Lady Fontaine was (at first) much delighted. She was continually telling her husband how original the child was, what character she had, so unconventional, always taking a way of her own. The Judge admired both of them, and thought them more delightful than any other created beings. To see them together was to him the most charming picture: and he loved to see the little rebellions of the girl, her assertions of herself. It pleased him more than anything when she defied himself, and proved to him that he knew nothing, and that all his views of life were out of date—"That little thing!" he said with a chuckle of pride and pleasure.

Now Blanche had not the least idea of being treated as a little thing. "What I feel so much," she said to one of her friends, "is that though they are fond of me, and I know very good to me, it is all in a selfish way—I mean it is for them-selves and not for me. Don't you see the difference? They want to have me always with them, either at home, or going with me when I go anywhere. Now you know that is quite destructive of anything like independence. How am I to get any experience of my own, to form any views, if I have always my father and mother keeping the wind from blowing on me, on either side?"

The friend to whom she was speaking was not, as the old-fashioned reader may suppose, a girl like herself, but a man, and this man not a lover so far as Blanche was aware {indeed I believe honestly that she had never bestowed a thought upon the subject whether he was or was not so), but only a friend who agreed in some of the young lady's opinions, and was in the course of indoctrinating her with many of his own. He was a kind of man captivating to the maiden imagination of the present day as the young soldier was to that of an earlier and milder development of womankind—a man of literature, chiefly journalistic, saying his say daily in the papers, and thus influencing, as he himself half fictitiously, and his feminine friend most sincerely, believed, not only the opinions but the action of the world. He laughed a little as Blanche spoke, eying her from under his eyelids with looks that meant a great deal—much more than she was as yet aware.

"I have heard," he said, "that the only way of real love was so, to love you not for your sake but for one's own—because life was not possible without you: that's the highest compliment don't you think?"

"Oh, love!" she cried impatiently, though with a quick blush, "that is such a different thing! I was speaking of my father and mother;" she said this with calm conviction, as if any feeling that actuated them could belong only to a much inferior kind of sentiment. "What you say is an interesting view," she added after a moment. "It has a specious air of truth about it; it is the old-fashioned kind of compliment, isn't it? belonging to the time when a girl always replied to a man who proposed to her that she never could be grateful enough for the honour he did her, &c.—don't you know?"

"Oh, yes, I know—Miss Austen's young ladies and so forth. But if you come to think of it, poor creatures as men are—that's allowed, I believe—it is the highest compliment the wretched fellow can pay you."

"What?" cried the young lady, "to ask a girl who perhaps has been very well taken care of all her life to step off from her pedestal and take care of him! to follow him wherever he likes to go, perhaps to India, for instance, she who has been the leader herself ever since she remembers! Is that what you call the greatest honour, the highest compliment, &c.? I don't see it in that light."

He laughed again, but with a discomfited air. "Let us hope he would not mean anything so dreadful. Put it another way: what he might mean would be to take care of you better than you ever had been taken care of before, to be your constant guardian and defender, to work for you all his life."

"Thank you," said Blanche, "or rather thank him," she added with another vivid blush which dyed her face for the moment, "this imaginary person! I shall be well enough off I suppose: I shall not want any man to work for me. However this is a complete digression; what I was saying was about fathers and mothers. Men are so much better off that they scarcely ever understand a girl's feelings on the subject. Sons are allowed to take up the struggle of life for themselves."

"Oh, very much so indeed," said Mr. Dewsbury with a laugh.

"Your parents treated you so?" cried Blanche. "Well, then you never can understand how fettered a girl is, how unable to move a step one way or another, how continually kept in a kind of hot-bed, shut out from life. Ask your sister how she feels on the subject—that is, if you have a sister."

He laughed again in a curious way, with an evident sense of something ludicrous in the question which was altogether hidden from Blanche. "Yes," he said, "I have indeed more sisters than one; but they are very simple country girls. I don't think they have ever thought of that side of the question."

"Ah!" cried Blanche, "if there are two of them that will probably make a great difference, they will side with each other. Two against two is fairer than two against one. What did you say, mother? Am I ready? I really should like to stay half an hour longer if you don't mind—I am in the middle of a most interesting conversation."

"It shall be just as you like, my darling," said Lady Fontaine; "but remember your father and I are waiting, don't be longer than you can help." As she moved away through the groups of the crowded room Blanche turned again to her companion.

"You see!" said that young lady with a slight elevation of her eyebrows. "I never can be allowed to forget the chain at my foot; you would not submit to that for a day."

"But you don't want to walk home at your own time, to call at your club on the way, to go in with your latch key?"

"Why not?" cried the girl, "there is nothing wrong in any of these things. Yes, that is just what I should like—to feel the air blowing on my face and know that I was free!"

"My dear Miss Fontaine—well, there is one way of securing that, you know."

"What way?" she cried with a little eagerness.

He laughed, and to do him justice coloured a little too. "In Miss Austen's time," he said, "—and indeed I hear elderly ladies sometimes do it now—the men were advised to marry when they made complaint of their forlorn freedom, which is often our view of the subject you know. And perhaps I ought to apologize for recommending it to a young lady. But to be bold—marry. Miss Fontaine! that is the way to freedom."

"Marry!" she cried half contemptuous, half abashed.

"I heard somebody say the other day," he added hurriedly, "that there was no such freedom as that of a young married woman—that she could go everywhere, do everything, walk out at night, look in wherever she pleased, see life as much as she liked—in short do anything: with her husband."

"Ah!" cried Blanche clasping her hands, "now you have spoilt it all! I was getting quite excited. With her husband! What is that but the old slavery again under another form?"

"I should not say that," said Dewsbury; "it is quite the reverse of course, from my point of view."

"The point of view of the man who has the other end of the chain!"

"Not so, Miss Fontaine. Don't you think that two comrades going everywhere together are much more jolly than one alone?"

"Ah, comrades!" she said.

"My authority, whom I have already quoted, says there is no such camaraderié as that between two young people married; and it stands to reason don't you know—a man and a woman get on together much better than two men, or two women. I assume," he added, once more laughing, "that this is a well-established fact."

"I fully believe," said Miss Fontaine with grave decision, "that there is no such sound friendship as that between a man and a woman."

"So our old Master at Oxford always said. He was not perhaps himself a lovely object."

"As if women only thought of what was lovely!"

"Well, perhaps not. I think I do myself; but that is no doubt a weakness. Still there is no harm, I suppose, in being youngish, and decent-looking."

"Oh, no harm whatever," cried Blanche with a laugh. Something flashed in her eyes at the moment and made her perceive that Mr. Dewsbury answered perfectly to this description—nay, went beyond it. He was more than youngish and decent-looking. He was young and rather handsome than otherwise. She made this observation quite involuntarily and blushed as she made it: she was, as she said herself, "dreadful for blushing," the colour coming at a word, and so often when it was particularly inconvenient that it should do so. At this moment (with no will of hers) he showed himself to her in quite a new light. She perceived with startled instinct that it was himself of whom he was speaking; and she felt sure that with those exceedingly keen eyes of his looking from under the eyelids in their peculiar way, he could see that she had perceived it. Poor Blanche, just then perceiving with double force that other uncomfortable consequence of being a woman, felt herself glow suddenly all over with a heat and flush which dazzled her eyes as if they had been the reflection of a flame.

"Good-night," she said suddenly putting out her hand, "my father does not like to be kept waiting. I must go now."

"Let me take you to Lady Fontaine," he said, offering his arm.

But Blanche did not desire to present herself before her parents leaning upon Mr. Dewsbury's arm—leaning upon anybody's arm! What old-fashioned folly! as if a girl could not walk through a crowded room without protection. She was at the other end of the great drawing-room gathering up her mother's train before Dewsbury's arm had time to straighten itself—a will-o'-the-wisp! flashing in her white dress through all the serried ranks. He smiled to himself as he stood watching her, feeling that he had successfully sowed a few seeds in that young lady's mind to-night.

Chapter II

Mr. Edward Dewsbury had attained an honour unto which he was not born when he put on the wig and gown of a barrister and acquired the right to plead in Her Majesty's Courts of Law. He kept a discreet silence as to his antecedents, and nobody had ever heard him make any local allusions such as could identify one district rather than another as having been the place of his birth. There was indeed one person whom he spoke of sometimes as his guardian, sometimes as "the friend who brought me up," whose name was to be found among the names of other recognized persons, a Mr. Flete, of some manor or other, whom he visited occasionally. It is true that he had allowed to Blanche Fontaine, in a moment when he was off his guard, that he had sisters: but she did not repeat this to trouble anybody's preconceived ideas: and the general opinion entertained of Dewsbury was that he was an orphan whose estate or property had been left in Mr. Flete's hands. He had been at one of the smaller colleges in Oxford and had done very well; he had also done well on leaving it; and he was now a man thriving somewhat at the bar, and in the meantime supporting himself by general literature and the Piccadilly Evening Light, He wrote very smartly on a number of subjects, and was considered "a power" in several of the houses to which he had gained admittance, introduced by other young men whom he had known at college or met on circuit. Nobody's acquaintance with him was older than this, or more intimate; but that of course was a thing not publicly recognized, nor thought of in the society to which he had made his way. Sir William Fontaine's was a house of which he had gradually grown an habitué nobody very well knowing why. The Judge thought he was a meritorious young man, with a very good knowledge of the law; and Lady Fontaine had found him very useful at theatres and other places where it was difficult to find her carriage. He was a very handy man in many ways. If he heard her speak of anything she wanted, he remembered weeks after and took the liberty of getting it for her when an occasion occurred; and he refrained from paying any special court to Blanche when she first made her appearance in society, for which both her parents were grateful to him. They went on indeed thinking for a long time that Mr. Dewsbury had only a sort of paternal kindness for their daughter, which was perhaps rather remarkable, considering that there was but a dozen years or so between them in point of age, which, as everybody knows, is only enough to put a young man and a young woman upon a level. This was Blanche's own idea, who thought herself at twenty "just about the same age" as the clever contributor to the Evening Light: who was in reality half a world older not only than she, but than her mother, and even the Judge himself. He looked upon them all as innocents if the truth were known, and was fully minded to make them stepping-stones in his upward career. But this was not thought of in Portland Place when that terrible trouble rose between Blanche and her parents, and she thought herself the most ill-used girl in the world.

It arose in this way. Blanche had a pretty talent for drawing, of which both the Judge and Lady Fontaine were very proud. Lady Fontaine's boudoir, which was a very pretty and dainty little room, was hung with what she called "my daughter's works," as if the girl had been a Raphael. They had allowed it to be said to them, and they had themselves said with bated breath, that their child was a child of genius, and that had it not been that she had no need of such vanities, the world would soon have heard of her. They were of opinion—both, though the Judge ought to have known better—that genius was sufficient, and that to arrive at the head of a profession needed nothing but that heaven-born gift. I think Blanche would have been very willing to think so too; but, in an unlucky moment, it occurred to Lady Fontaine to ask of a well-known artist that he would come and see "my daughter's works." The artist came, lunched and talked and made himself very agreeable. He thought (or at least he said) that the "works" as hung in the boudoir were very pretty, and smiled most kindly upon the young student. "To draw as much as that will always be a pleasure to you," he said benignly, admiring them with a smile upon his face. "To draw as much as that!" What did he mean? For at home the Judge and his wife thought better of Blanche than of many an R.A. The girl, hot with curiosity and emulation, intent upon knowing exactly what he meant, and on showing him that she could do better than what she called "those old things," brought him in a special portfolio, her latest and choicest productions; and at these the critic lifted his eyebrows and pondered, giving forth at last such a thunderbolt as had never fallen in that house before. He said these remarkable words: "This is another pair of shoes altogether. My dear Miss Fontaine, you ought to learn to draw."

To learn—to draw!

I will not venture to describe the scene that followed, the astonishment, the indignation, the dismay. Blanche became pale and Lady Fontaine red. The mild mother was like a dove enraged, the impetuous daughter was silenced. Learn—to draw! It was as much as that Academician's life was worth: but the man had the courage of his opinions. "So long as she does only that sort of thing," he said, waving his hand all round at the beautiful pictures, "my daughter's works," upon the wall, "it doesn't matter; they're very pretty little things, and that's all right; but when an uneducated girl does a thing like this out of her own head—"

"And pray, sir," said Lady Fontaine, "what do you suppose she should do it out of? Would you have my daughter copy from some one else—with her genius? And if you think Blanche is an uneducated girl—"

"I am sure Miss Fontaine is a most accomplished young lady," said the R.A., "and she has got a very good notion of colour—"

"Well then, what do you mean when you tell me—"

"—but," he went on doggedly, "and it's a great pity—she doesn't know how to draw."

Blanche did not say a word. She gathered up her sketches into her portfolio trembling, and she cast a glance of hate and horror at the walls of her mother's pretty room, where all her "works" had turned suddenly into "pretty little things." Pretty little things! those pictures of castles and villages and woods and waters, which they all thought good enough (if not too good) for Burlington House! Scarcely a word was to be got from Blanche all the rest of that day and night; but next morning she electrified her parents by informing them that it was quite indispensable she should spend the next season in Paris, where she wished to place herself in M. Fleur-de-Chaux's studio in order to learn to draw. The Judge, whom of course his wife had informed at length of Mr. Lake's unparalleled rudeness and ignorance, burst forth into a guffaw, and Lady Fontaine cried "Blanche!" in a voice that might have been heard in the street. But it was in vain that the parents laughed or stormed or argued, she stood to it with the determination of a martyr. Blanche had made up her mind to draw or die. Nothing that Mr. Lake could have said equalled her scorn, her contempt for her previous work. "Call those things drawings?" she cried, with a white face and red eyes. The Judge had scarcely had his laugh out when he saw how serious it was.

To go to Paris into M. Fleur-de-Chaux's studio, she, a young lady in the best society, at the beginning of the season, when all the world was flocking into London, and invitations were coming in every day! to work ten hours a day (which was what Blanche stated as the easiest possible hours) among all the vagrants of art that flock to such places! It was impossible, impossible! Lady Fontaine demanded with tears whether her child, her only child, wanted to break her heart, to leave her alone; but Blanche was not moved by the pathos of the situation. "You have got papa," said the heartless girl; and she did not hesitate to state to her mother the conviction, which she had already revealed to Edward Dewsbury, that the love of her parents was a selfish love, and that they cared for her not on her account but on their own. Lady Fontaine did not answer this terrible accusation so wisely as Dewsbury did. She was one of the women to whom the very name of selfishness is a terrible thing, and who would almost rather be guilty of a crime than be supposed to desire anything for her own sole gratification. There were a great many dreadful scenes, and Lady Fontaine was moved to take into her confidence the most dangerous counsellor she could have hit upon, that extremely sensible person, Mr. Dewsbury, who was Blanche's friend. Lady Fontaine was a woman of her century too, in a way. She believed in such friendships; and thought it most prejudiced, gross, and coarse-minded, not to say old-fashioned, of those who did not. She told Mr. Dewsbury all about it, and begged him to use his influence with Blanche. "For she knows you must be quite disinterested, and she will listen to what you say to her," the unsuspecting mother said.

Mothers should never be unsuspecting when their daughters are in question: this was what the Judge said to her when one fine day Mr. Dewsbury called on Sir William before dinner and requested his consent to his marriage with Blanche. The young man did everything in the most perfect good taste, nobody could say that his conduct was not that of a gentleman. He explained that; feeling himself in so many ways her inferior, he could not address himself to Blanche without her father's consent; and he hastened, notwithstanding the Judge's frown, to lay bare his circumstances, how much he was already making a year, and how much he hoped to make. He was not able to offer such settlements such as Sir William's daughter had a right to expect but2"

"Don't you think you are going a little too fast, Mr. Dewsbury?" said Sir William in his gruffest voice. "It is time enough to talk of settlements when you are in the position of an accepted lover; and we are as yet a long way from that. You don't seem to see that I might have grave objections to giving you my daughter at all."

"That is surely for the young lady herself to settle, sir, said the lover.

"There are some suits that are never allowed to come to a young lady's ears," cried Sir William angrily.

"I think you'll allow that that is bad law, sir," said the other with a smile of imperturbable temper, "no arrangement, as you know, can stand that is done without the consent of both the principals."

"I do not allow that Miss Fontaine is one of the principals," said the angry Judge.

"Ah!" cried the suitor, "but then you have not fully entered into the case. I have not said anything to your daughter on the subject yet: but after all that has passed between us, I should be treating Miss Fontaine in a most unwarrantable manner if I did not make her a principal. A man cannot break off in such a case, unless he receives his dismissal."

"You don't seem afraid of that!" cried the Judge in a towering rage.

"Miss Fontaine, sir, is not a girl to draw a man on, and then to cast him off."

"To draw a man on! My daughter!"

"You forget. Sir William, that I have been allowed lately to see a great deal of Miss Blanche."

Oh, yes, of course! It was the mother's fault! When was there a case of the kind in which it could not be said that it was more or less the mother's fault? They like to see young men fluttering about, to make them fetch and carry, to drag a set of captives at their chariot wheels! Poor Lady Fontaine was the last person in the world to drag captives at her chariot wheels, but the angry Judge did not discriminate. He fell upon her as soon as Dewsbury was gone and sacrificed her as the handiest victim; and as Blanche was made the witness during the dreadful dinner which followed of her mother's tortures, the cause of them could not long be concealed from her. Nor, need I say, was it long before Dewsbury found an opportunity of pouring his suit into her own ear. The Judge in his passion had not attempted to bind him by any promise, nor probably would he have given any. They met in many places, though no longer in Portland Place, and Blanche, it must be allowed, found it highly amusing to have this little drama going on, though she would not perhaps have used those words. And it went against every principle of her creed to allow a man who loved her to be sent away by her father. What had her father to do with it? It was not he whose happiness was in question. The mere idea of settling the matter thus without consulting her was enough to drive her to any extremity. And I must say that the house in Portland Place was in these circumstances anything but a home of peace. They would force her to be constantly with them, these tyrannical parents, to go out with her mother when she wanted to stay at home, to remain indoors with her mother when she wanted to go out. What is a mother that she should thus annihilate the personal freedom of a grown-up Individual, with personal rights as strong as her own—a mere accidental relation—who had not chosen Blanche or been selected by her, in the only way in which such mutual bonds can have any real weight!

Chapter III

I could not say with truth that Blanche loved her energetic and persistent lover. It would scarcely be true even to say that she was "in love" with him, which is a different matter. But to have him there in the midst of her discontent, a confidant to whom she could tell everything, to whom every detail was interesting, who was never weary of hearing her talk about herself and expound her views, was a distraction and consolation unspeakable. What he wanted, she felt sure, was her own advantage not his, and that she should please herself, and carry out her own wishes—very different from the parents who desired nothing "but that she should constantly be with them. Blanche indeed did not represent to herself very clearly what should be done after she was married, if it were by any means possible to wrest a consent to her marriage out of her father and mother. Whether she expected that he would yield in that matter of going to Paris for instance, which had been the great question—before the greater question arose of his acceptance as her husband:—whether he would have less objection than her parents had to let her go off alone, and live, as she said, her own life:—even a young woman of advanced principles does not require to be logical, and that problem was lost in the rush of others still more delicate to solve. It may be asked how it was that in these circumstances she had the opportunity of meeting Dewsbury at all; to which the only reply is that Lady Fontaine was, like her daughter, a woman of her time. She could not behave like an unnatural mother of the dark ages, and coerce her child. She would not even condescend to let the young man see that she was afraid of him. All that she could do was to avoid the houses in which she was likely to meet him: but he was too clever a man to lose a chance in that way. He breathed his story into the ears of here and there a lady of their mutual acquaintance: and there was scarcely one of them who did not throw herself on the side of the lovers. It was during a prolonged interview thus procured, while Lady Fontaine was held in conversation by her hostess in another room, that Blanche first introduced a subject which made Mr. Dewsbury wince. The season was drawing to an end, and they were both of opinion that something ought to be done to settle the question, though they could not decide upon the best means to be employed. It was however with an idea in her mind which she did not think fit to explain that Blanche began to question about his family the man who was so anxious to gain entrance into her own. Dewsbury was as much startled as if she had put a pistol to his head—all the more as there was in her look a something of mysterious meaning which he could not fathom.