Chapter Six.
The Plot Thickens.
“You’re not cold, I hope, Florence,” he said suddenly, waking up out of a brown study.
“Oh no, it is never very cold just here; the rocks shelter us,” she said. “Besides, I am well used to it, and well wrapped up. I only hope your protégée won’t catch cold,” she added, somewhat uneasily. “I should get into a scrape both with her mother and my own.”
“She’s right enough,” he replied, with the slightest possible accent of impatience, which did not altogether displease his companion.
“There’s really less risk of catching cold in caves in winter than in summer, when it’s hot outside.”
Then he relapsed into silence.
After a minute or two Florence spoke again.
“Rex,” she began, half timidly, “I didn’t like to ask you before—indeed, I’ve hardly seen you to-day, but, at breakfast, I saw when you got your letters. Was there anything new, anything worse?”
Major Winchester sighed.
“You’re very quick, Florry dear,” he said. “Yes. There wasn’t anything exactly new, but worse—yes, it was all worse. That was partly why I went out with Paddy. I wanted to battle off my—misery.” He gave a short laugh. “No, that is a womanish word; my disappointment, let us say. And that was how I came to pick up the Wentworths, you see. I had to call at the station.”
“But what is the disappointment—specially, I mean,” Florence asked.
“Only that there is no chance of her, of Eva’s coming home,” he said. “The doctors won’t hear of it. She is to go straight to Algiers from Ireland. And last week, when I left her, there did seem a lightening in the clouds. They won’t even allow her to pass through London on her way.”
“And everything—what you told me about—it is all put off again indefinitely?”
“More than indefinitely—most definitely, I fear,” he said. “Heaven only knows.” But here he broke off.
“Oh, Rex, I am so sorry for you,” said his cousin impulsively. “And you are so unselfish. When I compare myself with you, I do feel so ashamed. Just to think of your bothering yourself with that silly little goose of a child.”
“Poor little girl!” he said. “Under good influence there is the making of a nice woman in her, I think. I’m sure Eva would have been good to her. Perhaps it’s partly that,” he went on simply. “If ever I try to—to do any little thing for others, it seems to bring her nearer me.”
The tears rose to Florence’s eyes—assuredly she was not a thorough-going Helmont.
“It is beautiful to feel like that,” she said.
“I can’t altogether pity you and Eva, Rex. The sympathy between you is so perfect; it would be worth living for to feel like that for an hour of one’s life.”
Major Winchester smiled.
“Yes,” he said, “I do feel it in that way sometimes. And the best of it is, that when you do feel sympathy and union of that kind, you feel that it is independent of circumstances—that it is, so to speak, immortal. Nothing that could happen could altogether shipwreck us.”
Florence sighed deeply.
“I understand,” she said; “or, at least, I understand that I don’t understand; and there is a certain satisfaction, almost exhilaration, in realising that there are things, good and beautiful things, which one can’t understand.”
Major Winchester smiled again, a kindly but somewhat rallying smile.
“Florence,” he said, “you are getting on. I’m not a clever man, and I’m not a prophet. All the same, I believe, some day you will say good-bye to scepticism and cynicism, and all the rest of them.”
“It will be thanks to you and Eva if ever I do,” she said softly. Then, with her usual dislike to any approach to sentiment or emotion, she hastened to change the subject. “How is Angey?” she said. “Mamma or somebody spoke as if there had been news of her.”
“I heard from, or of her, too, this morning,” her cousin replied. “Just the old thing, waiting till her eyes are ready for the operation. They are trying to be hopeful. Her husband is very unselfish, I must say; nevertheless, I cannot understand what made her marry him. My letter was from Arthur. He says—” But a sudden sound of voices just behind where they were standing, or walking, made him stop.
“Who in the world?” he began; then added quickly, “We are unlucky, Florence. Here are Trixie and her double, and that offensive boy, Calthorp. I wish we had not let them know we were coming this way, and I wish I had not let Miss Wentworth go exploring. They have all been in there together.”
He looked and felt really annoyed. Florence cared less, but in her softened mood she was inclined to sympathise with him, as the noisy party emerged from the caves laughing and talking loudly. Miss Forsyth was the first to greet them.
“I can’t congratulate you on the way you do your duty as a cicerone, Florry,” she said. (Florence especially detested Miss Forsyth using her pet name.) “We ran across Miss Wentworth all by herself in the cave. She might have been lost and never heard of any more.”
Major Winchester tamed to Imogen. She was looking rather pale; truth to tell, she was tired and very cold, and rather cross.
“What was Oliver about?” he said. “He promised to look after you. You weren’t really frightened, were you?” he added in a lower tone.
“No, not exactly. But I don’t think any one would like to be all alone in a dark care where they’ve never been before,” said Imogen, childishly but resentfully. “Mr Oliver Helmont and Mrs Wyngate went another way. I don’t know where.”
“It was all right, I assure you,” said Oliver, who was just behind. “Mrs Wyngate wanted to see the large stalactites, and when we turned round, Miss Wentworth had disappeared.—It was you, I think, who went another way, not we,” he added good-naturedly.
And so it was, for Imogen, annoyed at finding that Major Winchester was not following, and that she was to be left to the semi-guardianship of Oliver, had turned, with the intention of retracing her steps to the outer world; and not till she had proceeded some little distance did she discover that she was diving farther into the dim, almost black recesses of the cavern. Then she got frightened, and welcomed effusively the apparition of Trixie and her satellites.
“I don’t see how you can say it was all right,” said Imogen coldly. “People have been lost in caves, as Miss Forsyth says.”
“Not in Tor Cave,” said Oliver. “It’s not really deep a bit. I’ll show you a plan of it when we get home. You couldn’t have helped coming out again in a minute or two.”
“But I can quite understand your having been frightened, and I only hope you have not caught cold,” said Rex with real concern in his voice. “I should say the best thing to be done under the circumstances is to walk home as briskly as possible. A cup of hot tea will be an excellent preventive of harm, as soon as we get in.”
“We shall not be satisfied with walking, thank you,” said Trixie. “We’ve got the dogs Gunner and Plunger with us, tied to a gate over there,” and she nodded her head in a direction behind where they stood, “and we mean to have a good race with them.—Won’t you come with us, Imogen?”
Then she got frightened, and welcomed effusively the apparition of Trixie and her satellites.
“Oh do,” said Mabella, insinuatingly. “I’ll take one hand and Mr Calthorp the other, as Trixie will have enough to do with the beasts. So you shan’t come to grief even when we go at full-speed down Grey Bray.—Noll, won’t you come?”
“Many thanks, no,” said Oliver, dryly. Something in his tone made Imogen hesitate in the acceptance of the invitation she had been on the point of. She glanced half longingly towards Beatrix; but before she had time to speak, before Florence had time to break in with what, though well-meant, would probably have been an entirely ineffectual remonstrance, Major Winchester took the matter in his own hands.
“Miss Wentworth has had fatigue enough,” he said. “I know what your ‘good races’ are, Trixie. Besides which, I promised Mrs Wentworth to bring her daughter safely home.”
“Looks like it,” murmured Trixie, who had drawn near him, “when you left her all to herself in the cave.” No one but Rex himself heard the words, and he went on, without apparently taking any notice of the impertinence, “And I mean to do so.”
Imogen’s face flushed with mingled feelings, but she did not speak.
“You will stay with us—with Florence and me,” said Major Winchester, turning to her, and speaking very gently. The pink on the girl’s fair face grew into crimson.
“Very well,” she said, not too generously, though with an undertone of submission which pleased Rex, who at heart, it must be confessed, was a bit of a martinet.
The group divided. Miss Forsyth, Beatrix, and their attendant turning off to the right in the direction of a low wall of loose stones which they proceeded to clamber over.
“You might have cleared it, surely, Mr Calthorp,” said Trixie, contemptuously.
“I’ll do it now: what’ll you bet?” said the young man. He proceeded to execute his boast, thereby, as the girl had foreseen, giving her and her friend a few moments to themselves.
“What a donkey he is, to be sure!” said Mabella. “What do you want to say, Trix?”
“Only this—didn’t I do it splendidly? Nothing pulls the strings for Rex like contradiction. He will be devoted to her all the rest of the afternoon, and she will imagine it’s all the result of her fascinations. Really, it’s the best joke I’ve had for ever so long.”
“Provided Florry doesn’t step in and spoil it all,” said Mab.
“Florry!” ejaculated Beatrix. “She’s more than half stupefied still. She sees nothing but what is forced upon her. It’s really extraordinary how hard she’s been hit. I couldn’t have half believed it of one of us.” She ended with a light laugh.
“Nor could I,” said her companion. “To do you justice, there’s uncommonly little heart among you.”
“Now don’t be rude,” said Beatrix. “What do you know? Don’t you begin setting up to be as good as Florry, my dear, or—”
They were on the verge of one of the quarrels which frequently relieved the monotony of their friendship. But Mabella thought better of it. Her spite had found an ample field in which to disport itself for the present, and she felt it wise to concentrate her forces.
“Don’t be silly!” she said calmly. “Here comes that boy—bravo, Mr Calthorp! Now listen, Trix, let’s get in before them, and you be sure to back up any remark I may make. I think I may have a chance of insinuating something already. But leave it to me—you’re too clumsy—for remember I shall not say one word that could be brought up against us, should it go great lengths, and you would.”
“And if it does go great lengths, what will happen?” inquired Beatrix, slightly aghast.
“A nice mess for Major Rex; that’s all I care about,” answered Mabella. “Goodness, how those dogs are pulling. They’d have strangled themselves or torn the gate-post down if we’d kept them waiting much longer. Thank you, Mr Calthorp, I think we had better leave them to Trixie. They know her more intimately than they do us. Discretion is sometimes the better part of valour.” And she stood by coolly, while Beatrix struggled to loosen Gunner and Plunger, nearly knocking Mr Calthorp down in their first rush of freedom.
“You would have been safer beside me after all,” said Trixie contemptuously to her two “discreet” companions.
The other party, meanwhile, were wending their way home in a more decorous manner.
Oliver, somewhat disillusioned by Imogen’s unfair reproach, had re-attached himself to Mrs Wyngate. Florence, satisfied that Rex had undertaken for the time the “personal conduct” of his self-imposed protégée, walked on silently between the two couples, apparently one of the group, in reality thinking her own thoughts, though feeling a degree less entirely sad and hopeless than usual, thanks to the glimmer of reflected light she had been conscious of in her conversation with her cousin.
And Major Winchester, too, felt a little cheered. He began to have hopes of Florence, and he realised, though by no means for the first time, that his own sorrows were not without their brighter side. Then he was touched, even gratified, by Imogen’s confidence in him, and he felt that she deserved some return. So he devoted himself to her anew, and this time their talk called for less effort on his part—they seemed to grow rather more on a level, as half unconsciously the conversation became of a somewhat personal kind.
“I’m sure Mrs Wentworth will say I did right in preventing your going over to the enemy in that traitorous fashion; don’t you think so?” Major Winchester began. He spoke in a light half-rallying tone, for at first Imogen preserved her dignified silence, and he felt uncertain as to how the ground lay.
The girl gave her head the very slightest possible toss, as she replied:
“Mamma trusts me to look after myself. Indeed, she asks my advice more often than I do hers. Mamma hasn’t a very decided character, and I’m afraid I have.”
Rex was silent.
“Are you shocked?” said Imogen with a touch of apology, or at least timidity. And she glanced up at him from under her long eyelashes, like a naughty but repentant child.
”‘Shocked?’ no. That tone about one’s elders is too common nowadays to shock,” he said quietly. “But I own it would disappoint me in you if I thought you really meant it. It was your tenderness to your mother that—that first”—“made me feel an interest in you,” he was going to have said, but the words struck him as priggish and patronising. Imogen blushed, but he did not see her blush, and he went on speaking:
“It reminded me a little of my own sister,” he said. “She was my elder sister, and my mother was an invalid for many years. One of my clearest remembrances since early boyhood is of Angey’s unfailing care and tenderness about our mother.”
He seemed to be “thinking back,” as I have heard a child express it. Imogen, glancing up again, caught the look in his face and respected it.
“You say ‘was.’ But your sister is not dead?” she hazarded after a little.
“Oh no,” he replied, recollecting himself with a little start, “she is living. But I am in great anxiety about her just now. She is soon to undergo a very serious—very, very serious operation on her eyes. And we shall not know for months if it is successful. I am very foolish, I daresay, but I can scarcely bear to speak of it. I had a letter this morning—my poor Angey.”
“I am so sorry,” said Imogen softly. “What is her name?” she added. “I should like to think of her by it. Is it Angela?”
“Not quite. It is even more fantastic. It is Evangeline. Eva some people call her, but her home name has always been Angey. Evangeline is too much of a good thing in the way of names.”
“It is very pretty. And ‘Eva’ is very pretty,” said Imogen, simply.
Major Winchester smiled.
“Yes, ‘Eva’ is very nice,” he said. “Of course, it is the diminutive of other names as well as my sister’s.” Then he seemed to wish to change the subject. “Don’t think me impertinent, Miss Wentworth, apropos of what you were saying about having a ‘decided character.’ Young people—very young people especially,” and here he gave a slightly deprecating smile—“often make a mistake between impulsiveness and self-will and decision of character, much in the same way that obstinacy and firmness are often confused.”
“I am not so very young, Major Winchester,” Imogen returned, much more irate, evidently, at the reflection on her youth than at the other suggestion. “I am eighteen past, and I don’t think I am particularly self-willed; at least, I don’t mean to be. Mamma and I generally wish the same things. And when you live with a person who can’t make up their mind, and you have to decide, that isn’t being impulsive.”
“No, certainly not,” he agreed.
“Besides,” she went on, “sometimes I have to give in very much against my own will. As about coming here,” and she related the history of the “breaking the journey,” which had led to such uncomfortable results.
Rex listened with considerable amusement.
“But after all,” he said, “it’s an ill wind, you know. But for the little episode in question, I might never have had the pleasure of getting to know you so well.”
“No,” said Imogen, with the sort of bluntness of manner which was, somehow, one of her charms, “that’s true.” Then there fell a little silence.
“Major Winchester,” said Imogen after a moment or two.
“Miss Wentworth?” he replied.
“You mustn’t mind my saying so,” she began, “but do you know I can’t help thinking you are all a little hard upon Trixie.”
His face darkened at once.
“How so?” he said.
Imogen hesitated.
“It’s very difficult to answer when you’re asked like that,” she said, pouting a little. But her companion seemed to have lost his playfulness. He did not speak.
“I mean—I mean,” she went on, “that because she’s spoilt, perhaps, and rather noisy, and—and what you call loud or fast sometimes, you all, you and her sister, and even her brother,”—with a glance round to make sure that Florence was not within earshot—“seem to think there’s no good in her.”
“Heaven forbid!” Major Winchester ejaculated; “Heaven forbid that I should say such a thing of anybody!”
“Well, well, you know what I mean,” Imogen went on; “you don’t think there’s much, anyway. Now she was really very kind to me when we arrived, much kinder than anybody; except you, of course,” she added naïvely.
Rex’s tone softened.
“I am far from saying there is no good in Trixie,” he repeated. “If we could get her away from other influences, if she could really be made to feel, if—if— But it’s no use discussing her. And, excuse me, my dear child,”—he was scarcely aware that he used the expression—“but can you judge in so very short a time as to whether we are hard on her or not?”
“N-no,” said Imogen, consideringly. “Only sometimes one seems to see thing’s at first better than afterwards.”
“Or one fancies so,” he remarked. “But don’t begin thinking Trixie a martyr. She is nothing of the kind, I assure you. I am glad—if she has been really kind to you, I should be glad. Still, I cannot help hoping that you will make more of a friend of Florence.”
Imogen made a little moue.
“I will if I can,” she said, adding: “It’s Miss Forsyth you think the bad influence, I can see. I’m afraid you don’t think there’s much good in her.”
“No,” said Major Winchester, gravely; “I’m afraid I do not.”
“I don’t like her,” continued the girl, “but mamma does. Miss Forsyth’s so nice to her. You’d better warn mamma. Major Winchester,” she added, rather flippantly.
“You know perfectly well I could not do anything so impertinent,” he said, with a touch of asperity. Imogen reddened. “Forgive me,” he went on, “I do not mean to speak harshly. But one thing—do promise me, Miss Wentworth, that if you are in any real trouble or dilemma here—anything in which your mother, as a stranger herself, might not be able to help you—you will not be afraid of applying to me.”
“Yes,” said Imogen, “I promise you.”
They were close to the house by this tune. As they entered the hall they came upon the two who had preceded them, warming themselves at the fire. Major Winchester stalked across and disappeared through a doorway without speaking. He had gone to look after some hot tea for Imogen, for she was blue with cold.
“What’s the matter now?” said Miss Forsyth.
“Have you offended his majesty, Miss Wentworth?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Imogen.
“How silly you are, Mab!” said Trixie.
“Don’t you see, Imogen, she—like the rest of us—is so flabbergasted that she doesn’t know how to take it?”
“Well, no wonder,” Mabella replied, lightly.
“Did any one ever before see Major Winchester devote himself like that to anything in the shape of a young lady? How have you done it, Miss Wentworth?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Imogen again. She turned to go up-stairs as she spoke, and she spoke coolly. All the same the shot had taken effect.