“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 –