"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.