Belles and Ringers

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BELLES AND RINGERS

BY

HAWLEY SMART,

AUTHOR OF

"BOUND TO WIN;" "FALSE CARDS;" "TWO KISSES;" "COURTSHIP," ETC.

NEW EDITION.

LEVER BROTHERS, LTD.,

PORT SUNLIGHT, NEAR BIRKENHEAD.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

TODBOROUGH GRANGE

CHAPTER II.

THE CONSPIRATORS TRIUMPH

CHAPTER III.

THE COMMONSTONE BALL

CHAPTER IV.

THE ROCKCLIFFE GAMES

CHAPTER V.

AN EXCURSION TO TROTBURY

CHAPTER VI.

A SHORT CUT HOME

CHAPTER VII.

"THE PLAY'S THE THING!"

CHAPTER VIII.

MRS. WRIOTHESLEY

CHAPTER IX.

SATURDAY AT HURLINGHAM

CHAPTER X.

MRS. WRIOTHESLEY'S LITTLE DINNER

CHAPTER XI.

THE RINGING OF THE BELLES

BELLES AND RINGERS.

CHAPTER I.

TODBOROUGH GRANGE.

Todborough Grange, the seat of Cedric Bloxam, Justice of the Peace, and
whilom High Sheriff for East Fernshire, lies low. The original Bloxam,
like the majority of our ancestors, had apparently a great dislike to
an exposed situation; and either a supreme contempt for the science of
sanitation, or a confused idea that water could be induced to run
uphill, and so, not bothering his head on the subject of drainage, as
indeed no one did in those days, he built his house in a hole, holding,
I presume, that the hills were as good to look up at as the valleys to
look down upon. It was an irregular pile of gabled red brick, of what
could be only described as the composite order, having been added to by
successive Bloxams at their own convenience, and without any regard to
architectural design. It was surrounded by thick shrubberies, in which
the laurels were broken by dense masses of rhododendrons. Beyond these
again were several plantations, and up the hill on the east side of the
house stretched a wood of some eighty acres or so in extent.

As a race, the Bloxams possessed some of the leading Anglo-Saxon
characteristics; to wit, courage, obstinacy, and density--or perhaps I
should rather say slowness--of understanding. The present proprietor
had been married--I use the term advisedly--to Lady Mary Ditchin, a
daughter of the Earl of Turfington, a family whose hereditary devotion
to sport in all its branches had somewhat impoverished their estates.
The ladies could all ride; and some twenty odd years ago, when Cedric
Bloxam was hunting in the Vale of White Horse country, Lord Turfington
and his family chanced to be doing the same. Lady Mary rode; Cedric
Bloxam saw; and Lady Mary conquered. She had made him a very good
wife, although as she grew older she unfortunately, as some of us do,
grew considerably heavier; and when no longer able to expend her
superfluous energies in the hunting-field, she developed into a
somewhat ambitious and pushing woman. In this latter _role_ I do not
think she pleased Cedric Bloxam quite so well. She insisted upon his
standing for the county. Bloxam demurred at first, and, as usual, in
the end Lady Mary had her own way. He threw himself into the fight
with all the pugnacity of his disposition, and, while his blood was up,
revelled in the fray. He could speak to the farmers in a blunt homely
way, which suited them; and they brought him in as one of the
Conservative Members for East Fernshire. But on penetrating the
perfidy of the wife of his bosom, Cedric Bloxam mused sadly over the
honours that he had won. When Lady Mary had alternately coaxed and
goaded him into contesting the eastern division of his county, she was
seeking only the means to an end. They had previously contented
themselves with about six weeks of London in May and June; but his wife
now pointed out to him that, as a Member of Parliament, it was
essential that he should have a house for the season. It was the thin
end of the wedge, and though Cedric Bloxam lost his seat at the next
general election, that "house for the season" remained as a memento of
his entrance into public life.

"You see," said Lady Mary to her intimates, while talking the thing
over, "it was absolutely necessary that something should be done.
After he has done the Derby, Ascot, and the University Match, Cedric is
always bored with London. The girls are growing up, and how are they
ever to get properly married if they don't get their season in town,
poor things! I began by suggesting masters; but that had no effect on
Cedric--he only retorted, 'Send them to school;' so it was absolutely
necessary to approach him in another manner, and I flatter myself I was
equal to the occasion."

All this took place some six or seven years before the commencement of
our story; and the result had fully warranted Lady Mary's machinations,
as she had successfully married off her two elder daughters, and, as
she had occasionally told her intimates, her chief object in life now
was to see Blanche, the younger, suitably provided for. Lady Mary was
in her way a stanch and devoted mother. Her duty towards her
daughters, she considered, terminated when she had once seen them
properly married. She had two sons--one in a dragoon regiment, and the
younger in the Foreign Office--and she never neglected to cajole or
flatter any one who, she thought, might in any way be capable of
advancing their interests.

The Bloxams had come down from town to entertain a few friends during
the Easter holidays at Todborough, and Lady Mary was now sitting in the
oriel window of the morning-room engaged in an animated _tete-a-tete_
with one of her most intimate friends, Mr. Pansey Cottrell. Mr. Pansey
Cottrell had been a man about town for the last thirty years, mixing
freely everywhere in the very best society. It must have been a pure
matter of whim if Pansey Cottrell ever paid for his own dinner during a
London season--or, for the matter of that, even out of it--as he had
only to name the week that suited him to be a welcome guest at scores
of country houses. Nothing would have been more difficult than to
explain why it was that Pansey Cottrell should be as essential to a
fashionable dinner party as the epergne. Nothing more puzzling to
account for than why his volunteering his presence in a country house
should be always deemed a source of gratulation to the hostess. He was
a man of no particular birth and no particular conversational powers;
and unless due to his being thoroughly _au courant_ with all the very
latest gossip of the London world, his success can only be put down as
past understanding. Neophytes who did not know Pansey Cottrell, when
they met him in a country house, would gaze with awe-struck curiosity
at the sheaf of correspondence awaiting him on the side-table, and
wondered what news he would unfold to them that morning. But the more
experienced knew better. Pansey Cottrell always came down late, and
never talked at breakfast. He kept his budget of scandal invariably
for the dinner-table and smoking-room. Such was Pansey Cottrell, as he
appeared to the general public, though he possessed an unsuspected
attribute, known only to some few of the initiated, and of which as yet
Lady Mary had only an inkling.

A portly well-preserved gentleman, with iron-grey hair, and nothing
particularly striking about him but a pair of keen dark eyes, he sits
in the window, listening with a half-incredulous smile to the voluble
speech of his buxom hostess.

"Well," exclaimed Lady Mary, in reply to some observation of her
companion's, "I tell you, Pansey" (she had known him from her
childhood, and always called him Pansey, as indeed did many other
middle-aged matrons)--"I tell you, Pansey," she repeated, "it is all a
mistake; the majority of young men in our world do _not_ marry whom
they please: they may think so, but in the majority of cases they marry
whom _we_ please. The bell responds to the clapper; but who is it that
makes the clapper to speak? The ringer. Do you see the force of my
illustration?"

"If I fail to see its force," he replied, "I, of course, perfectly
understand your illustration; and in this case Miss Blanche is of
course the belle, you the ringer, and Mr. Beauchamp the clapper."

"Just so," replied Lady Mary, laughing. "Look at Diana, my eldest.
She thinks she married Mannington; he thinks he married her; and _I
know I married them_. People are always talking of Shakespeare's
'knowledge of human nature,' more especially those who never read him.
Why don't they take a leaf out of his book? Do you suppose Beatrice
nowadays, when she is told Benedick is dying for love of her, don't
believe it, and that Benedick cannot be fooled in like manner? Go
to--as they said in those times."

"And you would fain play Leonato to this Benedick," replied Pansey
Cottrell. "Is this Beauchamp of whom you speak one of the Suffolk
Beauchamps?"

"Yes; his father has a large property in the south of the county; and
this Lionel Beauchamp is the eldest son, a good-looking young fellow,
with a healthy taste for country life; just the man to suit dear
Blanche admirably."

"And when do you expect him?"

"Oh, he ought to be here this evening in time for dinner," replied Lady
Mary. "He seemed rather struck with Blanche in London, so I asked him
down here for the Easter holidays, thinking it a nice opportunity of
throwing them more together."

"I see," replied Mr. Cottrell, laughing; "you think in these cases it
is just as well to assist nature by a little judicious forcing."

"Exactly. You see, a good-looking girl has such a pull in a country
house, and when she is the only good-looking one, has it all her own
way; and I need scarcely say I have taken care of that."

"Ahem! Todborough lies dangerously near to that most popular of
watering-places, Commonstone," observed Cottrell; "and there is always
attractive mettle to be found there."

"But I don't intend we shall ever go near it," replied her ladyship
quickly. "We'll make up riding parties, plan excursions to Trotbury,
and so on. Just the people in the house, you know, and the rector's
daughters, nice pleasant unaffected girls, who, though not plain----"

"Cannot be counted dangerous," interposed Cottrell. "I understand. I
congratulate you on your diplomacy, Lady Mary. By the way, who is your
rector?"

"The Rev. Austin Chipchase. A good orthodox old-fashioned parson,
thank goodness, with no High Church fads or Low Church proclivities."

"Chipchase? Ahem! I met an uncommon pretty girl of that name down in
Suffolk last autumn, when I was staying at Hogden's place."

At this juncture the door opened, and the object of all this maternal
solicitude entered the room. Her mother did Blanche Bloxam scant
justice when she called her a good-looking girl. She was more than
that; she might most certainly have been called a very good-looking
girl of the thoroughly Saxon type--tall and well made, with a profusion
of fair sunny hair, and deep blue eyes. Blanche was a girl no man
would ever overlook, wherever he might come across her.

"What state secrets are you two talking," she exclaimed, "that you pay
no attention to the bell? Come to lunch, mamma, please; for we have
been playing lawn tennis all the morning, and are well-nigh distraught
with hunger."

Lady Mary rose and followed her daughter to the dining-room, where the
whole of the house party were assembled round the luncheon-table. It
consisted, besides the family and Mr. Cottrell, of a Mr. and Mrs.
Evesham and their two daughters--"such amiable girls, you know," as
Lady Mary always said of them; a Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris, a young married
couple; Jim Bloxam, the dragoon; and a Captain Braybrooke, a brother
officer of his.

"Come along, mother," exclaimed Jim. "Mrs. Sartoris has given me such
a dusting at lawn tennis this morning that no amount of brown sherry
and pigeon-pie will support me under the ignominy of my defeat."

"Thank you, Mrs. Sartoris," said Lady Mary, laughing. "I am very glad
indeed, Jim, that somebody has been good enough to take the conceit out
of you. But what do all you good people propose doing with yourselves
this afternoon? There are a certain number of riding-horses; and of
course there's the carriage, Mrs. Evesham."

"Don't you trouble, mother," exclaimed Jim Bloxam; "we are going upon
an expedition of discovery. Mrs. Sartoris has got a brother in the
army. She don't quite recollect his regiment; and beyond that it is in
England, she does not know precisely where he is quartered. But he is
in the something-somethieth, and we are going to see if we can find him
in Rockcliffe Camp."

"Don't be so absurd, Captain Bloxam," rejoined Mrs. Sartoris. "But I
am told, Lady Mary, it is a pretty walk to the camp, and that there is
a grand view over the Channel on the south side of it."

"It is the very thing, mamma," observed Blanche. "It is our duty to
absorb as much ozone as possible while we are down here, in order to
fit us for the fatigues of the season which, I trust, are in store for
us."

"Getting perilously near Commonstone," whispered Pansey Cottrell, who
happened to be sitting next to his hostess.

Although the arrangement did not exactly meet with her approbation, yet
Lady Mary could make no objection, any more than she could avoid
smiling at Cottrell's remark; but it would seem as if some malignant
genie had devoted his whole attention to thwarting her schemes, the
malignant genie in this case taking the form of her eldest son. Upon
an adjournment, Jim Bloxam strongly urged that those of the party who
were not for a tramp to Rockcliffe should drive into Commonstone, and
ascertain if there was anything going on that was likely to be worth
their attention. In the middle of this discussion came a ring at the
front door bell, immediately followed by the announcement of the Misses
Chipchase; and the rector's two daughters entered the room,
accompanied, to Lady Mary's horror, by one of the most piquant and
brilliant brunettes she had ever set eyes on.

"So glad to see you down again, dear Lady Mary," said Miss Chipchase,
"and with a house full too! that's so nice of you; just in time to
assist at all our Easter revelries. Let me introduce you to my cousin,
Sylla Chipchase, just come down to spend a month with us." And then
the rector's daughters proceeded to shake hands with Blanche and
Captain Bloxam, and be by them presented to the remainder of the party.

Pansey Cottrell could scarce refrain from laughing outright as he
advanced to shake hands with Sylla Chipchase, the identical young lady
whom he had met last autumn in Suffolk, and who had now turned up at
Todborough, looking more provokingly pretty than ever. He had caught
one glance of his hostess's face; and, behind the scenes as he was,
that had been so nearly too much for his risible faculties that he
dared not hazard another. As he advanced to shake hands with Miss
Sylla, he felt that the Fates had been even more unkind to Lady Mary
than she could as yet be possibly aware of; for he remembered at
Hogden's that Miss Sylla had not only been voted the belle of a party
containing two or three very pretty women, but had also enchanted the
men by her fun, vivacity, and singing. Poor Lady Mary! it was hard, in
spite of all her efforts to secure a clear field, to find her daughter
suddenly confronted by such a formidable rival.

"We meet again, you see, Miss Sylla," said Cottrell, as they shook
hands. "I told you in Suffolk, if you remember, that in my ubiquity I
was a person very difficult to see the last of."

"And who that had ever met Mr. Cottrell would wish to have seen the
last of him?" replied the young lady gaily. "We had great fun together
in Suffolk, and I hope we are going to have great fun together in
Fernshire. My cousins tell me there are no end of balls and dances to
come off in the course of the next ten days."

"Dear me!" replied Mr. Cottrell, his eyes twinkling with the fun of the
situation. "This is all very well for you country people, Miss Sylla;
but we poor Londoners have come down for rest after a spell of hot
rooms and late hours, preparatory to encountering fresh dissipations.
Is it not so, Lady Mary? Did you not promise me quiet and country air,
with a dash of the salt water in it?"

"Of course," was the reply; "we have come down here to recruit."

"Oh, but, Lady Mary, you will never shut yourself up and turn recluse,"
returned the elder Miss Chipchase. "You must come to the Commonstone
ball on Easter Monday; you will all come, of course. I quite count
upon you, Captain Bloxam."

"Perfectly right, Miss Chipchase," replied the dragoon, with a glance
of unmistakable admiration at the new importation. "Did you ever know
me fail you in valsing? and are not the soldiers of to-day every bit as
much 'all there' as the sailors of yore, whenever England generally, or
Commonstone in particular, expects that every man this night will do
his duty?"

"Ah, yes," replied Miss Chipchase, "I recollect our trying to valse to
'God save the Queen;' but we could make nothing out of it. And you,
Mr. Bloxam,--you are bound to be there. Remember you engaged me for
'Sir Roger de Coverley,' for the next dance we met at, last Christmas
Eve."

"I don't forget, Laura," laughed the Squire; "only you really must
moderate the pace down the middle this time."

"And then," continued the voluble young lady, "they have got a big
lunch at the camp, with athletic sports afterwards, on Tuesday, for
which you will, of course, receive cards."

"There is nothing like rural retirement for rest and quietness,"
observed Pansey Cottrell, dryly.

"My dear Laura," interposed Lady Mary, "your tongue is running away
with you. I have told you we have come down here for a little quiet.
I am very glad, for your sake, that you have so much gaiety going on;
but I am afraid you will have to excuse us taking part in it."

"Now, really that is too bad of you, Lady Mary," returned Miss
Chipchase. "You are always so kind," she continued, dropping her
voice; "and you know what a difference it makes to us to be able to
join the Todborough party. With my cousin Sylla staying with us and
all, I really did hope----"

"Impossible, my dear," interrupted Lady Mary. "If we don't get a
little quiet now, I shall be having dear Blanche thoroughly knocked up
before the season is over."

Miss Chipchase said nothing, but marvelled much what all this anxiety
about dear Blanche's health might portend. The two girls were sworn
friends, and Laura Chipchase had more than once envied Blanche's
physique when she had met her, looking as fresh as a rose, at the
covertside in the morning, after they had been both dancing until four.

"I am so sorry we shall not see you at the Commonstone ball, Captain
Bloxam," said Miss Sylla, with whom Jim had entered into conversation.

"Why so? What makes you think I shall not be there?"

"Because your mamma has brought you down here for the repairing of your
shattered constitutions," replied the young lady, demurely. "Do you
all go to bed at half-past ten?"

"Well, yes," returned Jim, with mock gravity. "I shall have to comply
with the maternal's programme as far as that goes; but to do honour to
the _debut_ of so fair a stranger in the land, I think Miss Sylla, I
can contrive to get out of the window after they are all asleep, and
make my way over to Commonstone."

"Dear me, how I should envy you! What fun it would be, the really
going to a ball in such surreptitious fashion!"

"Yes," said Jim; "but think about all the fears and anxieties of
getting back again. It's always so much easier to get out of a window
than to get into one."

"But what are you all proposing to do this afternoon, Blanche?"
inquired Laura Chipchase.

"Well, we thought of walking up to the camp and having a look at the
sea."

"And to search for Mrs. Sartoris's brother," interposed Jim Bloxam.

"You have a brother quartered at Rockcliffe, Mrs. Sartoris? I wonder
whether we know him? What is he in?" exclaimed Laura Chipchase.

"No; it is only some of Captain Bloxam's nonsense. I have a brother in
the army, and he pretends that I don't know where he is, or what is his
regiment."

"A walk to the camp--ah, that would be amusing!" said Miss Sylla. "I
never saw one. Are they under canvas?"

"No; boards," returned Jim. "But come along; if we are going to walk
to Rockcliffe, it is time we were off. The sooner you ladies get your
hats on, the better. We'll find Mrs. Sartoris's brother, launch Miss
Sylla here in military circles, and return with raging appetites to
dinner." And so saying, the dragoon, followed by most of the party,
made his way to the front door.

"Very nice of you, Pansey," said Lady Mary, "to put in that plea for
peace and quietness. I can't think what has come to the place. Who
ever heard of Commonstone breaking out with an Easter ball before?
Todborough generally is as dull as ditch-water at this time of year.
Something, it is true, may be going on at the camp; but as we know
nobody there just now, it usually does not affect us. However, I have
no intention of submitting to such a _bouleversement_ of my schemes as
this; and go to that ball _I don't_."

CHAPTER II.

THE CONSPIRATORS TRIUMPH.

The dressing-bell was pealing as the gay party returned in high spirits
from their walk. It had been a very successful excursion, and the
newcomer, Miss Sylla, was unanimously voted an acquisition.

"Laura tells me," said Miss Bloxam, "that her cousin sings charmingly,
and is simply immense at charades, private theatricals, and all that
sort of thing."

"Ah, we might do something in that way one evening next week," said her
brother, as they passed through the hall. "Mr. Beauchamp here, James?"

"Yes, sir; came about a quarter of an hour ago; he has just gone up to
dress."

Blanche was sitting in front of her dressing-table, with her maid
putting the finishing-touches to her toilette, when a slight tap at the
door was followed by the entrance of her mother.

"That will do, Gimp," said Lady Mary. "I will arrange those flowers in
Miss Blanche's hair myself;" and, obedient to the intimation, the
lady's-maid left the room. "I have just looked in to speak to you,
Blanche, about this ball. If the subject is revived at dinner this
evening, you won't want to go to it: you understand?"

"Of course, mamma, I will say so if you wish it; but I should like to
go, all the same."

"Oh, nonsense! An Easter ball at Commonstone would be a shocking,
vulgar, not to say rowdy, affair. Besides, surely you have had plenty
of dancing in London, to say nothing of heaps more in perspective."

"Dancing!" replied the girl, with a shrug of her shoulders. "I don't
call a London ball dancing. One jigs round and round in a place about
ten feet square, but one never gets a really good spin. We have been
at Commonstone balls before. What makes you think this one would be
more uproarious than usual?"

"We have never been to an Easter ball, my dear," replied Lady Mary,
adjusting a piece of fern in her daughter's tresses. "We came down
here for quiet, and if you don't require a rest, I do. You must think
of your poor chaperon a little, Blanche."

"Don't say another word, mamma. You are a dear amiable chaperon, and
have been awfully good about staying a little late at times. I don't
want to drag you over to Commonstone, when your wish is to be left
peacefully at home. We won't do the Easter ball, though it is sad to
think what a capital room they have for it. But come along, there goes
the bell, and I am sure now I look most bewitching."

It was not Lady's Mary's custom to take her daughters into her
confidence, in the first instance, with regard to the matrimonial
designs she had formed for their benefit. All the preliminary
manoeuvres she conducted herself. The idea of young people gravitating
together naturally was a theory she would have received with profound
derision. She looked upon it that all what she would have termed
successful marriages were as much owing to the clever diplomacy of
mothers or chaperons as the victory of a horse in a big race is due to
the skilful handling of his jockey. During the afternoon she had been
meditating over the plan of her Easter campaign, and resolved to adhere
to her original determination. Most decidedly she would have nothing
to do with Commonstone and its gaieties, nor would she afford greater
favour to any revelries at the Rockcliffe camp; and most devoutly did
she wish that it was in her power to keep the rector's daughters
altogether at arm's length, now that she had seen this new cousinly
importation. At arm's length as much as possible the Misses Chipchase
should be held, she determined.

"That Miss Sylla," she muttered, "is just the sort of girl men always
lose their heads about; clever, too, if I mistake not. Well, I don't
mean to see more of her at the Grange than I am positively obliged to;
but keep her out altogether I can't. The Chipchase girls have grown up
with my own, and been always accustomed to come and go pretty much as
they liked. However," thought her ladyship, "the first thing to settle
undoubtedly is this ball;" and, as she and her daughter descended to
dinner, Lady Mary did fancy that, at all events, she had settled that.

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