Imogen: or, Only Eighteen

“Yes. How is it you have never heard them mention her? My cousins are not generally so reticent,” and again the idea struck him, could there have been malice at work in all this?

“She has been very ill: that was what I was going to ask leave to tell you about.”

“I think I heard Florence speak about her. But I thought it was your sister. Her name is Evangeline, and some one said she was sometimes called Eva, and they said it troubled you to have it mentioned; so, even though you had told me about your sister, I scarcely liked to ask how she was.”

She put great control on herself to speak thus; but as she went on, Rex was relieved to see that she was rewarded for the effort by her calmness increasing. He had been dreading tears. Once let them begin, and he scarcely knew what could be done.

“I see,” he said; “but still, some day perhaps I may be able to tell you our melancholy little romance. We have been engaged five years, Miss Wentworth!” with a smile that was sad enough. “But who told you that Eva was my sister? Who warned you not to speak of her?” he added, with another flash of the strange, on the surface unreasonable, suspicion he had already felt more than once.

Imogen tried to collect her bewildered faculties.

“Trixie, I think,” she said; “and – and – I am not sure, but I think Miss Forsyth said something of the same to mamma.”

The lines on Major Winchester’s face hardened.

“They are both so likely to consider my feelings tenderly!” he said sarcastically.

“No,” said Imogen, bluntly, not detecting the satire. “I think they both almost hate you.”

The quiet, matter-of-fact tone in which she spoke startled him. “Hate,” uttered in cold blood, is an ugly word. But a new misgiving was now making its way to his mind, and for the moment, in his intense anxiety to save Imogen further suffering, he put aside the question of the present terrible complication being more than accident.

“Your mother?” he said, with quick inquiry.

“Do you mean – ” He hesitated. It was so difficult to express what he wanted to know. “She – she has not seen this?” and again he touched the fatal letter.

“Yes,” said Imogen, simply. “She was with me when I got it. Indeed, she gave it me,” and as the remembrance of that morning – when she had wakened so happily – came back to her, it was very, very hard work to force down her tears; “and so, naturally, I showed it her, before I noticed the postscript. And she has thought – oh!”

“Never mind what she has thought,” he said hastily. “If only – you don’t think she has told any one else?”

“I don’t know; not exactly. She promised she wouldn’t; but Miss Forsyth is so cunning, and mamsey is so – so simple,” said the girl. Major Winchester pulled himself together. “Miss Wentworth,” he said, “I must stop farther mischief, at once: they must not and shall not torture you. But will you trust me still? I shall hurry on, and take measures to put your mother on her guard.”

“You – you won’t tell any one – not Florence, about me – about this morning?” said Imogen, piteously.

“No, no, of course not. Come on quietly to the house in half an hour or so, and I think I shall be able to manage it. Now, my poor dear child – don’t be angry with me for calling you so this once – good-bye in the meantime.”

“Good-bye,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I wish you would count it good-bye for always.”

He glanced at her; she did not mean it, but in these few words was the bitterest reproach she could have expressed. Again the dull pallor crept over his face for an instant.

“Perhaps you are right. God bless you!” and he hurried away.

Imogen retraced her steps again to the outer margin of the wood. Then she turned, and walking slowly, found herself in twenty minutes or so at the gates of the inner drive. She looked at her watch mechanically: no, she must not go in yet, it was too soon. It was a winter day, but she did not feel cold, only very, very tired. She looked about for a seat. There were several, she knew, in among the shrubberies, which were here very thick. She turned down a little path, bordering, though she did not know it, a side entrance to the stables; there was a rustic seat there, almost an arbour, for it was shaded by the trunks and branches of a group of old elms. There she sat down, and for the first time the pent-up misery burst out. She could keep it in no longer, but broke into a passion of convulsive sobs.

She did not cry loudly. She was too worn out and spent to do so, even though for the first few moments her abandonment was so great that she gave not a thought to the possibility of attracting attention. But it was a very still day; sounds carried clearly. Beatrix, on the lookout for a scene of some kind as she came hurrying down the drive, caught the faint gasping sobs not many yards off, and stood, still to listen.

She had been forced to make one of the luncheon party in the coverts, sorely against her will; for Mabella, on pretext of a headache, had skilfully backed out of it, and Trixie more than suspected her motive. Florence was not to be back from Catborough till too late, and Alicia flatly refused to undertake the management of the party without one or other of her sisters. But Trixie succeeded in escaping in time to get back to the house not very much later than the hour at which Rex was expected. She wasted some minutes, however, in looking for Mabella, and hearing from a servant that Miss Forsyth had gone out some time before by herself, her suspicions redoubled, and she set off, racing along in her usual reckless harum-scarum fashion. Major Winchester, so far as she could discover, had not arrived (nor had the dogcart sent for his luggage); the truth being that Rex, by good-fortune having met Florence at the side entrance, was at that moment in close confabulation with her in the library.

But the strange sounds which reached her made Trixie slacken her pace. What could it be? At first she was by no means sure that they were not those of some animal in distress, in which case, to do her justice, the wild girl would not have been without some feeling of pity.

“Can it be one of the dogs?” she thought, as she pushed aside the thick-growing shrubs and made her way “cross country,” as she would have described it, in the direction of the gasping sounds. But she was quickly undeceived. On the rough bench lay or crouched Imogen, her face hidden, her whole figure shaken by sobs, now and then broken by low moans, equally piteous to hear. The Helmonts were not given to vehement grief or vehement feeling of any kind, except when Beatrix, the only really hot-tempered one, got into a passion, and the display of it was almost like an unknown language to them. In Trixie it seldom roused anything but a sort of contempt. But if this was her first sensation on seeing Imogen’s prostration of suffering, it was soon mingled with other emotions. Pity of a kind, and quickly succeeding to it remorse – of a kind also – and speedily overmastering both, extreme and unreasoning fear.

“Imogen,” she called out, though not very loudly, and instantly concealing herself again.

“Imogen, what is the matter?”

But there was no reply. Trixie’s terror increased.

“Can she be having some sort of a fit?” she said to herself; and as there was a good deal of cowardice, moral and otherwise, mixed up with the rough animal courage of the girl, no sooner had the idea struck her, than she turned and fled, rushing off, heedless of aught else, in search of some one or something, she scarce knew what.

At the turn of the path – the same path down which Imogen had wandered, and which, it will be remembered, led into a side road to the stables – Beatrix ran full tilt against a man, walking quickly towards the house. It was the younger of her cousins, by good-luck; for, in her state of excitement, she would scarcely have cared who it was – silly Percy Calthorp, or Newnham, the stately butler, would have suited her equally well.

“Robin, oh, Robin!” she screamed, “do come! I believe Imogen Wentworth has gone out of her mind, or else she’s dying in a fit.”

Chapter Twelve

The Bull by the Horns

For so young a man, Robin Winchester was possessed of a remarkable amount of presence of mind. Added to which, he was not, as will be seen, wholly unprepared for a dénouement, probably stormy, and very certainly painful, of the complicated state of affairs as to which, Cassandra-like, he had lifted up his voice. At Trixie’s appeal he turned and walked rapidly back in the direction whence she had come, without speaking; he had no idea of wasting his breath in words, and for another reason. So strongly was he imbued with the suspicion that the girl beside him had been “at it again with one of her odious practical jokes,” that he doubted his own self-control should he once allow his indignation to find words. He had no cause to ask her for direction. Two or three moments brought them to a spot whence the pitiful, and, it must be allowed, almost alarming sounds were clearly audible.

“She is there,” whispered Beatrix, “on the bench behind those trees.”

“Go on first and show me,” he said, sternly.

But to his amazement his guide rebelled.

“I won’t,” she said. “I’ll stay here. She’s given me such a fright already, and I don’t want her to see me. You speak to her and I’ll wait.”

Robin was not given to strong language, especially to a woman; he opened his mouth and shut it again without speaking. Then a second thought struck him. Perhaps it was better so, though no thanks to Trixie. He caught her by the arm and held her, not too gently.

“You’ll give me your word of honour, Beatrix Helmont,” he said, “that you will stay here, on this spot, till I come back and say you may go?”

“Yes; if I must stay, I will. But you are very rough and unkind, Robin. Why are you angry with me?”

He gave her no answer, but hurried on to the bench. Some instinct had warned Imogen that she was no longer alone. She had sat up, and was trying to look about her composedly. The effort only made her seem the more piteous. Robin’s heart positively swelled as he looked at her, recalling the last, the only time indeed he had ever seen her, and her glad girlish beauty.

She did not start as he came near; she sat still as if stupefied.

“Miss Wentworth,” he said most gently and respectfully, “I am afraid you have had a start or a fright, or – or that you have had bad news. Can I do anything?”

She looked at him and smiled, the strangest smile he had ever seen, and with a thrill of horror he remembered Trixie’s words, “Gone out of her mind.” But in a moment he was relieved of this worst of terrors.

“You are Mr Robin Winchester,” she said. “Yes, thank you. I have had bad news, and I am so dreadfully tired. I want to go home – to go in, I mean; but I am afraid of meeting any one, because, you see – though it is very silly of me – I have been crying. How can I get in without meeting any one?”

“Do you know the way in by the fernery, and the little back-stair up from what used to be the schoolroom?” he asked.

She shook her head. Then he considered for a moment in silence.

“Miss Wentworth,” he said, “Trixie is there, behind the trees. It was she that saw you and called me. If you could agree to it, the very best thing would be to let her take you in. You need not speak to her, and she will do what I tell her.”