Imogen: or, Only Eighteen

“And I must go to have a dress tried on, I’m sorry to say,” said Alicia. “Besides which,” she added confidentially to Oliver when the door was safely closed behind them, “Rex is a very fine fellow, we all know, but his sermonisings are rather too much of a good thing now and then. And if it’s Florrie he’s at, there’s never any saying when he’ll leave off, for you see she answers him back, and argues, and all the rest of it. How she can be troubled to do it, I cannot conceive!”

“She’s not cast in quite the same mould as the rest of us, I’m afraid,” said Oliver.

“For that reason I suppose Rex thinks her the most promising to try his hand on.”

“He might be satisfied with Eva,” said Miss Helmont. “He can twist and turn and mould her as it suits him. Why can’t he let other people alone?”

“He’s looking out for new worlds to conquer, I suppose,” said Oliver. “Eva’s turned out; complete, perfect, hall-marked.”

“Well, he might leave poor Florrie alone,” said Alicia.

“My dear child, you are unreasonable. As far as I remember, you and she poured out your woes and grievances to him, and he was bound to answer.”

“He might have sympathised with her and let her grumble,” said Miss Helmont. “However, perhaps it will distract her attention. Poor Florrie,” with a gentle little sigh, “it’s a pity she takes things to heart so.”

“There’s a lot of vicarious work of that kind to do hereabouts for any one who’s obliging enough to do it,” said Oliver. “But I agree with you, Florrie’s had plenty; she needn’t go about hunting up worries for herself. After all, I daresay the little schoolgirl will be very good fun,” and he went off whistling.

It was true. Florrie was not a Helmont out and out. She had had some troubles too. Of the whole family she was the only one who had been misguided enough to fall in love with a – or the – wrong person. And she had done it thoroughly when she was about it. He was a very unmistakably wrong person, judged even by the not exaggeratedly severe standard of the family of The Fells. He was a charming, unprincipled ne’er-do-weel, who had run through two, if not three fortunes, and in a moment of depression had amused himself by falling in love with Florence Helmont, or allowing her to do so with him. They had been childish friends, and the touch of something big and generous in the girl’s nature, a something shared by all the Helmonts, but which in her almost intensified into devotion, had made her always “stand up for Dick.” Foolish, reckless, even she allowed that he was; but selfish, heartless, unprincipled, no, she could not see it, and never would. So it was hard necessity and not conviction that forced her to give in and promise her father to have nothing more to say to him.

“He’d be starving, and you with him, within a couple of years,” said Mr Helmont. “For stupid as he is in many ways, he’d manage to get hold of your money somehow, tie it up as I might, and I would never get at the truth of things till it was too late; you would be hiding it and excusing him. Ah, yes! I know it all,” and the Squire shook his head sagely, as if he had been the father of half a dozen black sheep, at least; whereas, all the Helmont boys had turned out respectably, if not brilliantly.

So Florence gave in, but it changed her: it was still changing her. There was a chance yet, if she fell under wise influence, of its changing her “for good,” in the literal sense of the words. But she was sore and resentful, impatient of sympathy even; it would take very wise and tactful and loving influence to bring the sweet out of the bitter.

Her second-cousin Rex, like the rest of her family and some few outsiders, knew the story and had pitied her sincerely. He had hoped about her, too; hoped that trouble was to soften and deepen the softer and deeper side of Florence’s character. But there was the other side, too – the pleasure-loving, rough-and-ready, selfish Helmont nature. Major Winchester sighed a little, inaudibly, as he looked down at the girl and caught sight of the hardening lines on her handsome, determined face.

“If she could have been alone with Eva, just at that time,” he thought to himself.

“Florence,” he said at last, after a little pause. They two were alone in the room.

“Well? say on; pray don’t apologise.”

“I think you are really rather absurd about this little girl, Miss Wentworth; is that her name? It is the smallest of troubles, surely, to have to look after her for a day or two. Are you not making a peg of her to hang other worries on?”

“Well, yes, perhaps so,” said Florence, honestly. She would bear a good deal from Rex. “Perhaps I am. But that is just what I do complain of. I’m tired, Rex, and cross, and they all know it. They needn’t put anything fresh on me just now.”

“Who are they? It is only my aunt’s doing, as far as I understand, is it not?” he said.

“Of course mamma is responsible for the people’s coming. But it’s just as much the others’ fault that it’s all to fall on me. Alicia is too indolent for anything, and Trixie – you know, Rex, Trixie is going too far. She really forgets she’s a lady sometimes. That’s why mamma has to appeal to me in any difficulty of the kind.”

“Well, my dear child, you should be proud to feel it is so.”

Florence’s face softened a little.

“I might be,” she said, “if I felt myself the least worthy of her confidence. I don’t mean that I won’t do what she asks; but look at the way I am doing it. I have wasted a couple of hours and any amount of temper this very morning over the thing. No, Rex, it’s too late for me to learn to be unselfish and self-sacrificing, and all these fine things. I’m not Eva.”

“No, but you’re Florence, which is much more to the purpose. And, if you care about my affection and interest in you – you have both, Florrie dear, and in no scant measure.”

Florence’s head was turned away; for a moment she did not speak. Was it possible that a tear fell on her lap? Rex almost fancied it, and it touched him still more.

“May not this very opportunity of self-denial, and having to take some trouble for another person, for perhaps small, if any, thanks – may it not perhaps be just the very best thing that could come in your way just now, dear?” he said, very gently. No one could have detected a shadow of “preachiness” in the words; besides there was that about the man, his perfect manliness, his simple dignity, that made such an association of ideas in connection with him impossible.

Florence looted up. There were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling, too.

“Perhaps,” she said. “How you do put things, Rex! Well, if I do try to be good about it, will you promise to praise me a little – just a little, quite privately you know, for encouragement; beginners need encouragement, and I’ve never tried to be unselfish in my life. At least – oh I could have been, Rex!”

“You could have been devotion itself, Florrie, I know,” he said. “But devotion to a bad cause? However,” seeing that she shrank from the allusion, “we need not touch upon that. I’ll do what I can to help you in this little matter, I promise you.”

“At least you can help me to keep the girl out of Trixie’s way – Trixie and that horrid Mabella Forsyth. There is no saying what they mightn’t do if she’s an innocent, inexperienced sort of creature, as she can’t but be. And very pretty, too – extraordinarily pretty, by her mother’s account; that won’t make ugly Mab like her any better either.”

“I thought she – Miss Forsyth – prided herself on being plain, and was sincerely indifferent about looks,” said Major Winchester, rather inconsequently.

Florence laughed scornfully.

“My dear Rex,” she said. “So you believe that! You are not more than a child yourself in some ways. I shall have to protect you as well as Miss Imogen.”

“Imogen! What a pretty name!” he said.

“I don’t like it; high-flown and romantic, I call it,” said Florence as she left the room.

Chapter Two

“The Girl” and her Mother

November outside – a less attractive November than even up in the north among the Fells. For there, at least, though chilly and raw, it was clear and clean. Here, in a London lodging, very unexceptionable as to respectability and practical cleanliness, but not much above the average of London lodgings as regards attractiveness, it – whatever “it” means, the day, the weather, the general atmosphere – was assuredly not the former, and did not look the latter. For it was a morning of incipient fog; a state of things even less endurable – like an ailment before it has thoroughly declared itself – than full-fledged fog at its worst. Naturally so, for mature fog cannot last more than a day or two after all, whereas indefinite fog may be indefinite as to duration as well as quality. And besides this, thorough fog has its compensations; you draw down the blinds and light the lamps, and leave off pretending it is a normal day; you feel a certain thrill of not unpleasing excitement; “it is surely the worst that has yet been known” – what may not be going to happen next; the end of the world, or a German invasion?

Hoarse cries from the streets, rendered still more unearthly by the false sound of distance that comes with the thickened air, garbled tales of adventure filtering up through the basement from the baker’s boy, who, through incredible perils, has somehow made his way to the area gate; the children’s shouts of gleeful excitement at escaping lessons, seeing that the daily governess “can’t possibly be coming now, mamma;” all and everything adds to the general queerness and vague expectancy, in itself a not unexhilarating sensation.

But things were only at the dull unromantic stage of fog this morning at Number 33 Bouverie Terrace, where two ladies were seated at breakfast. It was not a bad little breakfast in its way. There were temptingly fried bacon and London muffins, and the coffee looked and scented good. But the room was foggy, and the silver was electroplate of the regulation lodging-house kind, and there was nothing extraordinarily cheering in the surroundings in general, nothing to call up or explain the beaming pleasure, the indescribable sunshininess, pervading the whole person of the younger of the two companions; brightness and pleasure reflected scarce undiminished on the older face of her mother as she sat behind the breakfast tray.

“It is just too beautiful, too lovely, mamsey dear. And oh, how clever it was of you to think of it! We might have been years and years without ever coming across these old friends, mightn’t we?” she exclaimed.

“We might never have come across them; probably we never should, if I had left it to chance,” said Mrs Wentworth, with a little tone of complacency. “But that I would scarcely have thought it right to do, considering the old friendship and the kindness Mrs Helmont when a girl received from my people. Not that I can remember it clearly, of course; she is ever so much older than I,” – and here the complacency became a little more evident. “Why, her eldest daughter, Mrs Poland, can’t be much under thirty-five.”

“Almost as old as you, mamsey,” said Imogen.

“For you know you’re not forty yet, and I don’t think I’m ever going to allow you to be forty.”

“You silly child,” said her mother, smiling. “Why, you may be married before we know where we are, and it would not do at all to be a grandmother – fancy me a grandmother! – and not forty. I should have to pretend I was.”

“Wait till the time comes,” said Imogen, sagely. “I’m not at all sure that I ever shall marry. I should be so terribly afraid of finding out he had a bad temper, or was horribly extravagant, or – or – ”

“You absurd child, who ever put such ideas into your mind?” said her mother, looking at her with fond pride.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Imogen replied, with a little coquettish toss of her head; “I think a lot of things, and then you know, in books mamsey, too often men who seem very nice are really dreadful tyrants or something horrid after they’re married.”

“Well, darling, there shall be choice care taken as to whom we give you to,” said her mother. “I daresay it won’t be the first comer, nor the second, nor third whom I shall think worthy of my Imogen.”

“I wonder when he will come,” thought the girl to herself, but she did not express the thought. She only smiled and blushed a little at her mother’s words.