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GENERAL BOUNCE


[Illustration: "'Where have you been all day? You promised to
drive me out--you know you did!'"

_Page 77_]


GENERAL BOUNCE

or

The Lady and the Locusts

by

G. J. WHYTE-MELVILLE

Author of "Katerfelto," "The Interpreter," "Market Harborough," etc.

Illustrated by Frances E. Ewan







London
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
New York and Melbourne




PREFACE


Where the rose blushes in the garden, there will the bee and the
butterfly be found, humming and fluttering around. So is it in the
world; the fair girl, whose sweetness is enhanced by the fictitious
advantages of wealth and position, will ever have lovers and admirers
enough and to spare.

Burns was no bad judge of human nature; and he has a stanza on this
subject, combining the reflection of the philosopher with the _canny_
discrimination of the Scot.

    "Away with your follies of beauty's alarms,
    The _slender_ bit beauty you clasp in your arms;
    But gi'e me the lass that has acres of charms,
    Oh, gi'e me the lass with the _weel-plenished_ farms."

Should the following pages afford such attractive young ladies matter
for a few moments' reflection, the author will not have written in
vain.

May he hope they will choose well and wisely; and that the withered
rose, when she has lost her fragrance, may be fondly prized and gently
tended by the hand that plucked her in her dewy morning prime.




    CONTENTS


      CHAP.                                 PAGE

         I. My Cousin                          9

        II. The Abigail                       26

       III. The Handsome Governess            41

        IV. "Libitina"                        58

         V. Uncle Baldwin                     72

        VI. The Blind Boy                     85

       VII. Boot and Saddle                  101

      VIII. The Ball                         116

        IX. Want                             130

         X. Superfluity                      146

        XI. Campaigning Abroad               161

       XII. Campaigning at Home              177

      XIII. The World                        194

       XIV. To Persons about to Marry        204

        XV. Penelope and her Suitors         212

       XVI. Forgery                          225

      XVII. Club Law                         236

     XVIII. The Strictest Confidence         247

       XIX. Dispatches                       259

        XX. Dawn in the East                 276

       XXI. Hospital                         292

      XXII. The Widow                        303

     XXIII. "Stop her"                       309

      XXIV. King Crack                       323

       XXV. "Dulce Domum"                    333

      XXVI. "Eudaemon"                       347

     XXVII. Flood and Field                  360

    XXVIII. "The Sad Sea Wave"               374




GENERAL BOUNCE

_OR, THE LADY AND THE LOCUSTS_




CHAPTER I

MY COUSIN

     AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOLIDAY--ST. SWITHIN'S IN A CALM--THE
     MERCHANT'S AMBITION--"MON BEAU COUSIN"--CASTLES IN THE AIR--A
     LIVELY CRAFT--"HAIRBLOWER" AND HIS COLD BATH


Much as we think of ourselves, and with all our boasted civilisation,
we Anglo-Saxons are but a half-barbarian race after all. Nomadic,
decidedly nomadic in our tastes, feelings, and pursuits, it is but the
moisture of our climate that keeps us in our own houses at all, and
like our Scandinavian ancestors (for in turf parlance we have several
crosses of the old Norse blood in our veins), we delight
periodically--that is, whenever we have a fortnight's dry weather--to
migrate from our dwellings, and peopling the whole of our own
sea-board, push our invading hordes over the greater part of Europe,
nor refrain from thrusting our outposts even into the heart of Asia,
till the astonished Mussulman, aghast at our vagaries, strokes his
placid beard, and with a blessing on his Prophet that he is not as we
are, soothes his disgust with a sentiment, so often repeated that in
the East it has become a proverb--viz. that "There is one devil, and
there are many devils; but there is _no_ devil like a Frank in a round
hat!"

It was but last autumn that, stepping painfully into our tailor's
shop--for, alas! a course of London dinners cannot be persisted in,
season after season, without producing a decided tendency to gout in
the extremities--hobbling, then, into our tailor's warehouse, as he
calls it, we were measured by an unfledged jackanapes, whose voice we
had previously heard warning his brother fractions that "an old gent
was a waitin' inside," instead of that spruce foreman who, for more
years than it is necessary to specify, has known our girth to an inch,
and our weight to a pound. Fearful that in place of the grave habit of
broadcloth which we affect as most suitable to our age and manner, we
might find ourselves equipped in one of the many grotesque disguises
in which young gentlemen now-a-days deem it becoming to hide
themselves, and described by the jackanapes, aforesaid, who stepped
round us in ill-concealed admiration of our corpulence, as "a walking
coat, a riding coat, a smoking coat, or a coat _to go to the stable
in_!" we ventured to inquire for "the person we usually saw," and were
informed that "the gent as waited on us last year had gone for a few
months' holiday to the Heast." Heavens and earth, Mr. Bobstitch was
even then in Syria! What a Scandinavian! rather degenerate to be sure
in size and ferocity--though Bobstitch, being a little man, is
probably very terrible when roused--but yet no slight contrast to one
of those gaunt, grim, russet-bearded giants that made the despot of
the Lower Empire quake upon his throne. And yet Bobstitch was but
obeying the instinct which he inherits from the sea-kings his
ancestors, an instinct which in less adventurous souls than a tailor's
fills our watering-places to overflowing, and pours the wealth, while
it introduces the manners, of the capital into every bight and bay
that indents the shores of Britain.

Doubtless the citizens are right. Let us, while we are in Scandinavian
vein, make use of an old Norse metaphor, and pressing into our service
the two Ravens of Odin, named Mind and Will, with these annihilate
time and space, so as to be, like the Irish orator's bird, "in two
places at once." Let us first of all take a retrospective glance at
Mrs. Kettering's house in Grosvenor Square, one of the best houses, by
the way, to be had in London for love or money. We recollect it well,
not so many years ago, lit up for one of those great solemnities which
novelists call "a rout," but which people in real life, equally
martially as well as metaphorically, designate "a drum." To us
creeping home along the pavement outside the _fete_, it seemed the
realisation of fairyland. Row upon row, glaring carriage-lamps, like
the fabulous monsters keeping watch, illuminated the square and
adjoining streets, even to the public-house round the corner, that
night driving a highly remunerative trade; whilst on a nearer
inspection magnificent horses (horses, like ladies, look most
beautiful by candle-light), gorgeous carriages--none of your Broughams
and Clarences, but large, roomy, well-hung family coaches, with
cartoons of heraldry on the panels--gigantic footmen, and fat
coachmen, struck the beholder with admiration not totally unmixed with
awe. Then the awning that was to admit the privileged to the inner
realms of this earthly paradise, of which the uninitiated might know
but the exterior; what a gauzy, gaudy transparency it was, no
unfitting portal to that upper storey, from which the golden light was
hardly veiled by jalousies and window-blinds. Ever and anon, much
lashing of bay, brown, or chestnut sufferers, and the interference of
a tall policeman, with a hat made on purpose to be assaulted by
bludgeons, betokened the arrival of a fresh party, and angelic beings
in white robes, with glossy hair, tripped daintily up the steps over a
cloth, not of gold exactly, but of horse-hair, amongst a phalanx of
unwashed faces, gazing half enviously at such loveliness in full
dress. How beautiful we used to think these apparitions as we plodded
home to our quiet chambers! but young Bareface, our connecting link
with the great world, who goes to all the _best_ places, through the
influence of his aunt, Lady Champfront, assures us they don't look
half so beautiful inside, and that he sees quite as pretty faces, and
hair quite as nicely done, at the little gatherings in Russell Square
and Bloomsbury, to which even we might go if we liked. A radical dog!
we don't believe a word of it. Never mind, let us look at that house
in the dead time of year. Without and within, from attics to basement,
from the balcony facing the square to the empty bird-cage overlooking
a precipice of offices at the back, Repose and Ennui reign supreme.
Were it not for the knocking of the workmen next door, we might as
well be in the Great Desert. There _is_, we presume, a woman in
possession, but she has gone to "get the beer," and if you have ever
sighed for a town-house, now is the time to be satisfied with your
rustic lot, and to hug yourself that you are not paying ground-rent
and taxes, church-rate, poor's-rate, and water-rate, drainage,
lighting, and paving, for that ghastly palace of soot and cobwebs,
dust, dreariness, and decay. There is a scaffolding up in every third
house in the square; and workmen in paper caps, with foot-rules
sticking out of their fustian trousers, and complexions ingrained with
lime-dust, and guiltless of fresh water, seem to be the only
inhabitants of this deserted region, and even they are "between earth
and heaven." Brown and parched are the unfortunate shrubs in those
gardens of which discontented householders "round the corner" covet so
to possess a key; and the very birds, sparrows, every feather of 'em,
hop about in dirty suits of plumage that can only be described as of
that colour unknown to naturalists, which other people call "grimy."
Who would be in London in the autumn? Not Mrs. Kettering, certainly,
if she might be elsewhere; and although she had possessed this
excellent and commodious family mansion, with all its boudoirs,
retreats, and appurtenances, so well described in the advertisement,
but a short time, and was not the giver of that "reunion of
fashionables" we have depicted above (indeed, the hostess of that
evening has since been economising up two pair of stairs at Antwerp);
yet Mrs. Kettering having plenty of money, and being able to do what
she liked, had wisely moved herself, her fancies, her imperials, and
her family to the coast, where, obeying the instinct for freedom that
has driven Bobstitch to the desert, she was idly inhaling the salt
breezes of the Channel, and dazzling her eyes with the sun-glint that
sparkled over its dancing waves.

Some few years have elapsed since the events took place which we shall
endeavour to describe; but the white cliffs of our island change
little with the lapse of time, though the sea does make its
encroachments ever and anon when the wind has been blowing pretty
steady from the south-west for a fortnight or so, and the same scene
may be witnessed any fine day towards the middle of August as that
which we are about to contrast with the dulness, closeness, and
confinement of the great town-house in Grosvenor Square.

First, we must imagine a real summer's day, such a day as in our
island we seldom enjoy till summer has well-nigh given place to
autumn, but which, when it does come, is worth waiting for. Talk of
climate! a real fine day in England, like a really handsome
Englishwoman, beats creation. Well, we must imagine one of these
bright, hot, hay-making days, almost too warm and dusty ashore, but
enjoyable beyond conception on the calm and oily waves, unruffled by
the breeze, and literally as smooth as glass. A sea-bird occasionally
dips her wing on the surface, and then flaps lazily away, as if she
too was as much inclined to go to sleep as yonder moveless fleet of
lugger, brig, bark, and schooner, with their empty sails, and their
heads all round the compass. There is a warm haze towards the land,
and the white houses of St. Swithin's seem to glow and sparkle in the
heat, whilst to seaward a modified sort of mirage would make one fancy
one could plainly distinguish the distant coast of France.

Ashore, in those great houses, people are panting, and gasping, and
creating thorough draughts that fill their rooms with a small white
dust of a destructive tendency to all personal property. The children
up-stairs are running about in linen under-garments, somewhat more
troublesome than usual, with a settled flush on their little
peach-like cheeks, and the shining streets are deserted, save by the
perspiring pot-boy, and the fly-men drinking beer in their shirt
sleeves. Only afloat is there a chance of being cool; and
sailing-boat, gig, dinghy, and cobble, all are in requisition for the
throng of amateur mariners, rushing like ducklings to the refreshing
element.

It was on just such a day as this that Mrs. Kettering found it
extremely difficult to "trim the boat." A mile or so from the shore,
that boat was slowly progressing, impelled by the unequal strength of
her nephew Charles, commonly called "Cousin Charlie," and its worthy
proprietor, a fine specimen of the genus "seaman," who certainly had
a Christian name, and probably a patronymic, but had sunk both
distinctions under the sobriquet