The Semi-detached House

Front matter

THE

SEMI-DETACHED HOUSE.

THE

Chapter I

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-tem 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."

Chapter II

CHAPTER II.

"Here is poor Willis coming to see us," said Mrs. Hopkinson, from her commanding position in the window, to her two girls who were drawing and reading at the secluded end of the room. The girls looked at each other with a slight expression of dismay. Willis was not a favourite; he had married their step-sister, and it was thought a great thing for the Hopkinsons, when Mr. Willis of Columbia House, which boasted of a lodge and an entrance drive, a shrubbery and a paddock, and a two-stalled stable, and every sort of suburban magnificence, married pretty Mary Smith, who lived merely at No. 2, without a shilling of her own, and dependant on her step-father for a home. So when she became Mrs. Willis of Columbia House, and of Fenchurch Street, where Mr. Willis duly transacted some mysterious business that appeared to produce a large return of profit, the Hopkinsons thought her a very fortunate young woman, and so she thought herself, till she found out that she had married a man who was by profession a grumbler. He had a passion for being a victim; when he was single, he grumbled for a wife, and when he had found a wife, he grumbled for the comforts of a bachelor. He grumbled for an heir to Columbia Lodge, and when the heir was born he grumbled because the child was frail and sickly. In short, he fairly grumbled poor gentle Mrs. Willis out of the world, and then grumbled at her for dying. But still her death was a gain to him. He took up the high bereaved line, was at all hours and in all societies the disconsolate mourner, wore a permanent crape round his hat, a rusty black coat in the city, and a shining one when he dined out. He professed himself "serious," and proved it by snubbing his friends when they were prosperous, and steadily declining to take the slightest interest in their adversities.

"What were their trials compared to his? A lonely man–ah! poor Mary! don't talk to him of losses indeed!" Certainly, though he might be the very good man he said he was, he was not an agreeable companion. His sisters-in-law were strong in that opinion. Mrs. Hopkinson took him at his own valuation, always called him "poor Willis" from respect to Mary's memory, and relieved him of the care of his sick child, which enabled him to sigh over the sacrifice he had made of his lost angel's legacy to her bereaved mother.

"I wonder what poor Willis will say, girls, when he hears that Pleasance is let?"

"Something very unpleasant, mamma," answered Janet.

"Oh, my dears, you are hard upon poor Willis! I am sure when I think of my dear Mary (what a wife she was to be sure!) I quite respect her dear husband's melancholy face and heavy sighs."

"But, mamma, don't you remember just after Mary had accepted him, and he came to ask for your consent, you said that he looked so gloomy, and sighed so deeply, that it was more like consenting to a funeral than a wedding?"

"Did I?" said Mrs. Hopkinson, trying not to laugh. "Well, he never was much in the cheerful line; but don't talk of it, for here he is. Well, Willis, Charlie is a little better to-day; and only think, Pleasance is let!"

"Of course it is," answered a sepulchral voice.

"Well, it is a sweet place! one can't wonder at anybody taking it; but it has stood empty a long time."

"That I don't care about, that is Randall's loss; but as I liked to smoke my cigar there in peace, and to take my lonely stroll by the river side, and as it suited my child to play in the garden—in short, as it was a sort of con to me—of course somebody else went and took it, that's all!"

Janet and Rose tried to catch their mother's eye, but she was looking compassionately at Willis, the exile of Pleasance.

"It is a Lord Something who has taken it. Mercy me, what a head I have, I remember nothing! What was his name? It was one of our great towns, Lord Leeds, Lord York, Lord Birmingham—could it be either of those?"

"As there are no such people I should think not. I do wish, Mrs. H., I could persuade you to read the 'Peerage' a little more, these blunders annoy me."

"Law, Willis, you'll be a conjuror if you persuade me to read it at all. You might as well ask me to read a list of Red Morocco Chiefs," (Mrs. Hopkinson somehow fancied that the Morocco population was bright scarlet). "I am just as likely to see them as all those peers you are always studying."

"My studies are of a far more serious class," he said tartly; "the 'Peerage' is not of much use to a broken heart. But I see nothing to be proud of in ignorance on any subject!"

Mrs. Hopkinson was in a reverie. "Chester!" she said at last, with a start that immediately threw Mr. Willis into an attitude indicative of a nervous headache, "Lord Chester, that was the name!"

"Viscount Chester, son of the Earl of Chesterton, married last year to Blanche, daughter of the Honourable W. Grenville. I met them this spring at the Lord Mayor's dinner. More frivolous specimens of fashion you could hardly see, all jewels, and laughter, and levity. Oh vanity of vanities!"

"Oh fun of fun!" exclaimed Rose. "A nice gay young couple. How glad I am! I dare say they will give parties and breakfasts, and there will be carriages continually down the lane, perhaps a band sometimes on the lawn. It will put you quite in spirits, Charles," she added, with a demure look.

He leant his head on his hands with a look of acute suffering.

"Got the headache, Charles?"

"One ache more or less makes little difference to me. I ought to have the headache. Have none of you found out who owns that dreadful macaw? It has been screaming all day."

Now it is a remarkable fact in natural history that in all the suburbs of London, consisting of detached houses, called by auctioneers 'small and elegant,' or on Terraces described as first-rate dwellings, there always is an invisible macaw, whose screaming keeps the hamlet or terrace in a constant state of irritation. Nobody at Dulham owned to having one, and detection was impossible, for there, as at all the suburban villages, the inhabitants lived by, and for, and with London. The men went daily to their offices or counting-houses, and the women depended for society on long morning visits from London friends and relations; and they did not, as they observed with much pride, "visit at Dulham." So the Macaw screeched on, and as his noise seemed to come from fifty houses at once, everybody suspected everybody of keeping this plumed atrocity. No. 3 sent to No. 5 to beg that the bird might be shut up for a few days, as No. 3's baby did nothing but start, and would not wean. No. 3's messenger met No. 5's maid-of-all-work, coming with a bold request that the macaw might be sent away, as "Missus's mother-in-law was subject to bad headaches, and was driv half mad." As neither of the parties owned even a linnet, in the way of bird, the nuisance was not abated by this negotiation.

At one time there seemed to be a hope that the mystery was discovered. A singular-looking old lady walked into church with a bunch of parrot's feathers in her bonnet. There was a general nudging of elbows through the church and a low murmur of "macaw." The lady was looked upon with such abhorrence that nobody would offer her a seat, and as for a hymn book or a hassock, money would not have procured them for her. The poor old thing might have fainted away in the aisle, if the pew-opener had not sacrificed to her, her own three-legged stool. It turned out afterwards that she was quite a stranger in the place, and had mistaken the very humdrum Mr. Bosville for the popular preacher of that name, who officiated at a church five miles off. As she was stone deaf, she went away charmed with the sermon. And the macaw screamed on anonymously.

He was a treasure to Mr. Willis; it was a daily and hourly grievance, and he made the most of it. This morning, after several splendid sighs, he withdrew with a cursory look at his child and a hoarse ejaculation, "Poor little sufferer!" but in the afternoon, when the girls were out walking, Mrs. Hopkinson was surprised to see him return, his black coat buttoned up to the very top button, not a streak of white visible. This always portended a stern visit and much good advice.

"Look, ma'am, look there!" and he pre her with a weekly paper of a disreputable character.

"Law my dear, 'the Weekly Lyre,' thank you, I never read any of those abominable papers. Do carry it away for fear the girls should see it."

"For the sake of the girls, ma'am, you must read the paragraph I have marked."

Mrs. Hopkinson was half inclined to put on her gloves, before she touched what she looked upon as poison. She had a pair of hideous dark green gauntlets, that seemed made to encounter the 'Weekly Lyre.' A broad black border, the work of Willis, encircled the following paragraph:—

"Fracas in High Life.—It is our melancholy duty to report the separation of a young and noble couple, whose appearance at the altar of Hymen we detailed some months ago. Whether the levity of the lady, or the temper of the gentleman has brought about this dénouement we are unable to say. Rumours of all sorts are rife—a foreign court, and a villa not one hundred miles from London are the scenes of several piquant anecdotes. Whether the last is tenanted by his Lordship's wife, or his chère amie, we forbear to say."

"Well, ma'am, what do you say to that?" asked Willis, folding his arms, and looking as like John Kemble as was feasible.

"Well, my dear, it is not much worse than paragraphs I have read in the most decent papers—I have seen things like that in the 'Illustrated.' It is odd that the nobility will have 'Fracaws, and chère amies, and picking anecdotes,' but I suppose in our class of life, we have the same things, only with English names. Not that John and I ever had a fracaw, thank goodness; but I am much obliged to you, Willis, for the loan of the paper, and perhaps you had better put it in your pocket, for fear the girls should come home."

"But don't you see, ma'am, what it means? Was not Lord Chester's marriage announced in this very paper six months ago? Isn't he going to a foreign court? and hasn't he taken a villa not one hundred miles from London— and is not a lady whose name is unknown coming to live in it? A nice neighbour for you, Mrs. Hopkinson."

"Oh, gracious goodness, Willis, you don't mean to say that Lord Chester is going to establish his mistress next door, and our back staircase looking on the lawn—in Dulham too! Such a quiet, proper place! Let me have another look at that dreadful paper! It must be so. What shall I do?"

"Bear the misfortune, ma'am—cheerfully as I do. Luckily my house is half a mile off."

"And we are under the very roof of Pleasance. I'll have the shutters of that staircase window shut and barred at once; the house will be as dark as pitch, but that can't be helped. Good bye, Willis, I must be off to take my precautions. This is a business!"

Willis carried off his paper with something that would have been a smile if he had not been Willis, and Mrs. Hopkinson set to work to throw up her fortifications against the vices of the nobility.

In justice to the 'London Lyre,' it may be added that the paragraph in question had no reference whatever to Lord and Lady Chester, nor to any other Lord and Lady in Her Majesty's dominions, it was a stock paragraph inserted occasionally, and with variations, when the editor was distressed for news.

Chapter III

CHAPTER III.

Arthur was gone. He brought his wife to Pleasance and passed one day there with her, in order that he might fancy her way of life while he was absent; and then departed, having promised positively not to dance with Madame von Moerkerke.

"I will not as you make a point of it; but I cannot think why you are jealous of that yea and nay woman, who has but the one merit of being well dressed."

"Oh, Arthur dear, remember that ball at L—— House, where you devoted yourself to her, and never spoke to me at all."

"Of course I did not, for remember the morning of that day, when you let that fellow Hilton ride by your side for two hours, and talked to him all through dinner. I made a vow never to speak to you again, and by the help of the angelic Moerkerke, kept it for a whole evening. The next day, you know, I was obliged to break it, in order to tell you I could not live without you."

Blanche felt the glow these words gave her, even when Arthur had left her, but still he was gone. She cried herself to sleep, and cried when she woke, and cried when Aileen arrived; and then Dr. Ayscough drove down, and gave her a regular scolding, and assured her she would destroy her health and her hopes if she behaved so foolishly, and that he could see nothing to cry about. Mrs. Ayscough had been in Wales with her mother all the summer, and he did not go about sobbing to all his patients; and he told Aileen to have a sofa placed out on the lawn, and make her sister pass the afternoon in the open air. Then Arthur's fond letter came, and after that matters mended considerably. There was the house to shew to Aileen, and the garden to investigate, and all sorts of red and gold barges came careering up the river, with well-dressed people, looking slightly idiotical as they danced furiously in the hot sun. Aunt Sarah and one or two intimate friends drove down, and envied Blanche her shady trees and cool river, and even insinuated that Arthur was very lucky to have obtained such a good appointment. But there Blanche drew her line, she steadily refused that comfort. She had several visitors the first week, and Dulham Lane was, as Janet and Rose had hoped, much enlivened thereby.

But Mrs. Hopkinson sat with her broad back to the window, pertinaciously declining to look at all the wickedness on wheels that was rolling by her door. She had found that the plan of shutting her shutters would probably end in a fall down her narrow staircase, so she had told her girls not to look out of the window, that poor Willis had reason to believe that the people next door were not at all creditable; and as Janet and Rose were singularly innocent in the ways of the world, and were always desirous to thwart Willis, and as they were particularly anxious to know whether flounces or double skirts were the prevailing fashion, they resented this exclusion from their only point of observation. Charlie missed his airings in the garden, and altogether the advent of Lady Chester had thrown a gloom over the Hopkinson circle.

When Sunday arrived, a fresh grievance occurred. The Hopkinsons had been allowed to make use of the pew belonging to Pleasance, and that was now occupied by Lady Chester and her sister. The slight bustle occasioned by the attempt to find a seat for Mrs. Hopkinson, who was of large dimensions, caused Blanche to look up, and with natural good breeding she opened her pew door, and beckoned to that lady to come in. She did so, and what with the heat of the day, and the thought of what Willis would say when he saw her sitting next to a lady of doubtful character, who had made a "fracaw in high life," she could hardly breathe. She enclosed herself in a palisade of hymn books and prayer books, sat close to the pew door, ready to burst through it at the slightest appearance of levity on the part of her companions, and it was only by dint of much fanning that she was enabled to sit through the service. She disappeared at the close of it before the sisters had finished their devotions.

"That poor woman seemed to feel the heat of the weather dreadfully," said Aileen.

"Yes, and I felt the heat of the poor woman, did not you? It was like having a stove put into the pew; but I am glad we were able to give her a seat, she looked troubled in mind. What a good sermon it was! I think we ought to make acquaintance with the clergyman, but I do not know how to set about it."

"I mean to go to the school," said Aileen, "and I suppose he takes charge of that," and so the sisters sauntered home. Mrs. Hopkinson had in the meantime hurried to rejoin her daughters and Willis, who had found places in the gallery. She could hardly wait till they were out of the church, before she began. "Oh, dear me! I wished I had toiled up to the gallery with you, girls; Willis, where do you think I got a seat?"

"On one of the tombs, ma'am?" he gloomily asked.

"No, my dear, in the Pleasance pew, actually in the same pew with one of those shocking women who made the fracaw. I never was so uncomfortable, and they are so pretty, and what is odd, they were so attentive to the service, never took their eyes off their prayer books, and they look so young to be so wicked."

"I forgot to tell you that my paper must have made a mistake," said Mr. Willis in his slowest and most complacent tone. "I saw the real Lady Chester and her sister drive by last Thursday and turn into the gate; fine horses she drives."

"And you have known it was the wife ever since Thursday?" said Mrs. Hopkinson, stopping short in her toilsome walk, and facing her son-in-law, "and never told me; and there was I, actually in church, fancying all sorts of shocking things about those pretty young creatures, and all because of you and your 'Weekly Lyre.' If you bring that vile paper into the house, I will put it into the fire, I will, depend upon it," and she looked as if it were just possible that she might wrap Willis up in the paper before the conflagration commenced. He was almost frightened, his mother-in-law so seldom turned upon him.

"I did not know you cared about it; indeed it rather surprises me, who can no longer take any interest in life, to see you so excited, and all for a woman who has separated herself from her husband."

"But we do not know that she has, it is only your paper that says so; and, indeed, if she has, it is probably Lord Chester's fault. I have always observed that when man and wife part, the husband is a brute. And to think how I behaved, puffing and blowing, and going off at last without even saying thank you, and all on account of the 'Weekly Lyre. The warm-hearted woman was really vexed, the more so, that she did not see how any amende was to be made. However, chance befriended her.

Lady Chester was quite knocked up by the morning's exertion, so Aileen went alone to the afternoon service, and found her fat friend of the morning coming out of the adjoining house, accompanied by her slim daughters. They arrived at the church door together, and then Aileen said, "If you are not provided with a seat, my sister is not coming to church, and there will be room in our pew for all your party." She was surprised to see the difference in Mrs. Hopkinson's appearance since the morning. Her good-humoured face had its usual benevolent look; she was actually cool, though the thermometer was some degrees higher than it had been, and her thanks were so cordial, that Aileen felt pleased to find her little civility so much valued.