Imogen: or, Only Eighteen

Chapter One

The Spirits of the Fells

“Grey Fells Hall” was, I believe, the real name of the old house – the name by which it was described in the ancient deeds and documents, some of them so ancient as to be perfectly illegible, of which more than one chestful still existed in the squire’s safe, built into the wall of his business room. But “The Fells” it had been called from time immemorial, and would no doubt continue to be thus known. It was a cheerful, comfortable, and not unpicturesque old place, with nothing grim about it except the dark, rugged rocks at one side, from which it took its name, whose very grimness, however, but enhanced the calm beauty of the pleasant slope of pasture land to the south.

On this side, too, it was well wooded, and by trees of a respectable size, notwithstanding the northern latitude and the not very distant sea. But it is no story of a lonely, dreary, half-deserted grange I have to tell. The Fells was deserted but during three months of the orthodox London season; for the rest of the year it was full, sometimes to overflowing. For the Helmont family who inhabited, it were a legion in themselves, and seldom content without congenial society in the persons of the innumerable visitors whose list every summer seemed to lengthen. “The boys” had their friends, a host to start with, for “the boys” began with Captain Helmont in a cavalry regiment, and ended with Cecil at Eton. And the girls were all grown up; two married, three still at home intent on finding as much fun and amusement in life as wealth, health, and good looks could unite in achieving. To assist them in this untiring pursuit, the companionship of kindred spirits was of course eminently desirable.

Papa and Mamma Helmont had their cronies too, though scarcely as many as their children. So one way and another The Fells was rarely free from visitors. “A family party” was almost unknown, and not desired. The young Helmonts were all more or less spoilt; nature and circumstances had done their part as well as the father and mother. The Squire was very rich and very liberal; he liked to see people about him happy, and saw no reason why he should not do so. Trouble of any kind had come near the family but slightly; perhaps their organisations were not of the most sensitive order to begin with, still they passed muster as good-natured and kindly, and to a certain extent this was true. If the other side of the medal revealed a touch of coarseness, of inconsiderateness for others, verging upon undisguised selfishness, it was scarcely perhaps surprising; prosperity, in some directions, is by no means the unalloyed blessing one might esteem it, to judge by the universal envy it arouses.

But the Helmonts are not, after all, the most prominent characters in my story. They serve as a background merely – a substantial and not unpleasing one on the whole, with their handsome persons, their genial ways; best of all, perhaps, their rough-and-ready honesty.

I have said that they were hospitable – to a fault. Curiously enough, however, the first words we hear from them would almost seem to contradict this.

It is Alicia, the eldest daughter at home, the second in actual order of seniority in the family, who is speaking.

“You needn’t exaggerate so about it, Florence. It is tiresome and provoking, just when we had got our set so nicely arranged. Still, after all, a girl of that age – almost a child.”

“That’s the very point,” said Florence, impatiently. “I wonder you don’t see it, Alicia. If she were older and had seen anything – an ordinary sort of a girl – one might leave her to look after herself. But when mother puts it to us in that way, appealing to us to be kind to the child for her sake, for old association’s sake, what can one say? I call it ridiculous, I do really. I didn’t think mother was so sentimental.”

“It is a great bore, certainly,” Miss Helmont agreed. “But I wouldn’t worry myself about it, Florence. Take it easy as I do.”

Florence gave a little laugh. It was not an ill-natured laugh, though there was a touch of contempt in it. For Alicia’s “taking things easily” was proverbial in the family, and was probably as much to be traced to a certain amount of constitutional indolence, as to the imperturbable good temper which it must be allowed she possessed. Florence’s laugh in no way disconcerted her.

“Or,” she continued, with for once a little sparkle of mischief in her rather sleepy brown eyes, “give her over to Trixie’s tender mercies. Trixie and Mabella Forsyth can take her in hand.”

Florence turned upon her sister almost fiercely. She was the least placid, though decidedly the cleverest of the Helmont daughters.

“Alicia!” she exclaimed, “you can’t think that you are making things easier for me by talking like that. I have some little sense of what is due to a guest, especially after the way mother has put it. Trixie indeed! Why, I mean to do my best to keep the girl out of Trixie’s and Mabella’s notice altogether. I pity her if she is what I expect, if she should come in their way. They are particularly wild just now, too.”

“Mother should have waited till Mabella was gone,” said Alicia, calmly.

“Of course she should. But she couldn’t, by the bye. Mrs What’s-her-name – Wentworth – this Mrs Wentworth wrote offering a visit before Christmas, when they are going abroad somewhere. Oh, it really is too bad – ”

The sisters were together in a sitting-room, appropriated to themselves, and in which they firmly believed that an immense amount of important business was transacted. It was a pretty little room, not specially tidy it must be confessed; but with the comfortable, prosperous air peculiar to everything to do with the Helmont family.

“Yes,” Florence repeated, “it is too bad.”

She pushed her chair back impatiently from the table at which she had been writing; as she did so, the door opened. Her brother Oliver and another man came in.

“What’s the matter? Florence, you look, for you, decidedly – how shall I express it? – not cross, ‘discomposed’ shall we say? Scold her, Rex; she has an immense respect for you, like every one else. Impress upon her that there is nothing and nobody in this weary world worth putting one’s self out about.”

The person addressed – a man ten years at least the senior of Oliver Helmont, who was the brother next in age to Florence – smiled slightly.

“What is the matter, Florence?” he repeated in turn, as he took up his station on the hearthrug; for it was November, and chilly.

“Ask Alicia,” said Florence. “She’s patienter than I. I’m too cross to explain.”

Major Winchester looked towards Miss Helmont.

“It’s nothing to make such a fuss about,” she said. “It’s only Florrie’s way.”

“It’s not the family way, it must be allowed,” remarked Oliver, complacently.

Major Winchester glanced at him quickly, not to say sharply.

“No,” he said drily, “it is not. – Well, Alicia?”

“It’s only that some stupid people are coming to stay here next week – a mother and daughter, and we have too many women already, for one thing. And the girl is almost a child, only just out, and the mother’s not much better, I fancy. They have been living in some out-of-the-way place, I forget where, for some years, since the father’s death, and he was an old friend of mother’s, and his parents were very good to her long ago, when her parents died. So she wants to be kind to this girl, and she’s rather put her upon Florence and me, and – I don’t see that it’s anything to fuss about, but – ”

“As you have never fussed about anything since you were born, Alicia, it isn’t to be expected you will begin now,” said Florence.

“No, Rex, it’s on my shoulders altogether, and I do say it’s too bad. It’s seven years ago since I was eighteen, I’ve forgotten all about it. I don’t understand girls of that age, and I have my hands full of other things, too. And – ”

“Make her over to Trixie,” said Oliver.

“Trixie’s only a year older.”

Florence glanced at him with contempt. This second time of the suggestion as to Trixie being made, she did not condescend to notice it in words.

“Don’t interrupt your sister, Noll,” said Major Winchester. – “Well, Florence?”

“Well?” she repeated. ”‘Ill,’ I say. What more do you want, Rex? Haven’t I told you enough?”

“Who are these unfortunate people?” he asked after a moments pause. “What is their name?”

“Wentworth,” said Alicia. Florence didn’t seem inclined to speak. “Mrs and Miss Wentworth. The mother herself can’t be very old, I fancy, and the daughter, as we said, is only seventeen or eighteen.”

“Poor little soul!” said Major Winchester.

Florence faced round upon him.

“Now Rex,” she said, “if you call that comforting me, and – ”

“I never said I was going to comfort you,” he said. “I never had the very slightest intention of doing anything of the kind, I can assure you. You don’t need comforting, and if you think you do, it only proves the more that you don’t.”

“What do I need, then?” she asked more submissively than she would have spoken to many. “Scolding?”

“Something like it,” he began. But here he was interrupted. Both Alicia and Oliver turned to leave the room.

“Rather you than I, Florrie,” said her brother.

“I’ve had my lecture from him this morning, and I don’t want any more.”

“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.

“Tell me more about the Helmonts, mamsey,” she said. “You have been there once, didn’t you say?”

“Yes, but only for a day or two, not long before your dear father and I went out to India,” said Mrs Wentworth with a little sigh. “I don’t remember it very distinctly – it was a great big house, an ideal country-house for a large merry party. Of course, a good many of the young people were not grown up then – there was a baby if I remember rightly. Oh yes, the youngest daughter Beatrix, so she must be only a year or so older than you, darling. How very odd that Mrs Helmont and I have children so nearly of an age, when she might really be my mother!” and Mrs Wentworth gave the little self-complacent laugh she often indulged in when her comparative youth, or youthful appearance, was alluded to.

“How delightful!” exclaimed Imogen, ignoring entirely, though with no intention of disrespect, her mothers last sentence. “How delightful that there should be one daughter, anyway, of my age. There are lots older, I suppose?”

“Two, if not three, married, and three at home,” Mrs Helmont said. “In her letter this morning you see she speaks of Florence as hoping to do all she can to make your visit pleasant. Florence – can that be the youngest daughter? I have such a remembrance of the baby being Beatrix, because I thought it such a pretty name; and when you were born I wanted to call you by it, but your dear father would have Imogen. I’ve always thought it rather an eccentric name, but some people like it. I always forget who Imogen was exactly, and it looks so foolish. I must read up about it, or her, again.”

“Oh, bother, never mind about my name, mamsey. Go on about the Helmonts. I daresay Florence is the youngest. You often muddle about people’s names, you know, mamsey dear. And there are lots of sons, too, I suppose?”

“Oh dear, yes; but remember, dear, I don’t think I want you to fall in love with any of them. They won’t be particularly well off, except the eldest one, and he, of course, not till his father’s death.”

“How horrid!” said Imogen. “I can’t bear counting on people’s fathers and mothers dying. But I don’t care about being rich a bit, mamsey. You have such funny ideas sometimes. We’re not rich, and we’re very happy – now especially that I’ve left school, and we’re not obliged to live all the year round at that stupid old Eastbourne, but can go visits – lovely, delightful visits! And oh, mamsey, do you think you’ll let Thorn Bush and take a dear little house in London, anyway for a year or two?”