The Mystery of Mrs. Blencarrow
9781465639868
330 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The house of Blencarrow, which, without being one of the great houses of the county, was as comfortable and handsome as a country gentleman not exactly of the highest importance could desire, stood in a pretty little park of its own, by the side of a bright little mountain river, either in Cumberland or Westmoreland or North Lancashire—for the boundaries of these counties are to me somewhat confused, and I cannot aver where one ends and another begins. It was built, as is not unusual in North-country houses, on the slope of a hill, so that the principal rooms, which were on a level with the great entrance, were on the other side elevated by at least one lofty story from the flower-garden which surrounded the house. The windows of the drawing-room commanded thus a delightful view over a finely diversified country, ending in the far distance in a glimpse of water with a range of blue hills behind, which was one of the great lakes of that beautiful district. When sun or moon caught this distant lake, which it did periodically at certain times of the day and night, according to the season, it flashed suddenly into life, like one of those new signals of science by which the sun himself is made to interpret between man and man. In the foreground the trees of the park clustered over the glimpses of the lively North-country river, which, sometimes shallow and showing all its pebbles, some times deepening into a pool, ran cheerfully by towards the lake. To the right, scarcely visible save when the trees were bare in winter, the red roofs of the little post-town, a mile and a half away, appeared in the distance with a pleasant sense of neighbourhood. But the scenery, after all, was not so interesting as the people inside. They were, however, a very innocent, very simple, and unexciting group of country people. Mrs. Blencarrow had been a widow for five or six years, having lived there for some dozen years before, the most beloved of wives. She was not a native of the district, but had come from the South, a beautiful girl, to whom her husband, who was a plain gentleman of simple character and manners, could never be sufficiently grateful for having married him. The ladies of the district thought this sentiment exaggerated, but everybody acknowledged that Mrs. Blencarrow made him an excellent wife. When he died he had left everything in her hands—the entire guardianship of the children, untrammelled by any joint authority save that of her own brothers, whose names were put in the will as a matter of form, and without any idea that they would ever take upon them to interfere. There were five children, the eldest of whom was a slim girl of sixteen, very gentle and quiet, and not very strong; two boys of fourteen and twelve, at school; and two little ones, aged eight and nine respectively. They lived a very pleasant, well-cared-for, happy life. Mrs. Blencarrow’s means, if not very large, were comfortable enough. The house was handsomely montée, the children had everything they could desire; the gloom of her first widowhood had been over for some time, and she ‘saw her friends’ like any other lady in the county, giving very pleasant dinner-parties, and even dances when the boys were at home for their holidays—dances, perhaps, all the more gay and easy because the children had a large share in them, and a gentle license prevailed—the freedom of innocence and extreme youth. It is not to be supposed, when I say this, that anything which could in the remotest degree be called ‘fast’ was in these assemblies. Indeed, the very word had not been invented in those days, and Mrs. Blencarrow was herself an impersonation of womanly dignity.
