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