Part 50 (1/2)
”The marriage is to take place quite quietly three weeks from now,” said Florence. ”We have arranged everything. We are not going to have an ordinary wedding. I shall be married in my travelling-dress. Tom says he can barely spend a week away from his editorial work, and he wants me to live in a flat with him at first.”
”Oh, those flats are so detestable,” said Edith; ”no air, and you are crushed into such a tiny s.p.a.ce; but I suppose Tom will sacrifice everything to the sitting-rooms.”
”He means to have a salon: he wants to get all the great and witty and wise around us. It ought to be an interesting future,” said Florence in a dreary tone.
Edith gazed at her again.
”Well,” she said, after a pause, ”I suppose great talent like yours does content one. You certainly are marvellously brilliant. I read your last story, and thought it the cleverest of the three. But I wish you were not so pessimistic. It is terrible not to help people. It seems to me you hinder people when you write as you do.”
”I must write as the spirit moves me,” said Florence, in a would-be flippant voice, ”and Tom likes my writing; he says it grows on him.”
”So much the worse for Tom.”
”Well, I will say good-night now, Edith. I am tired, and mother will be disturbed if I go to bed too late.”
Florence went into her own flat, shut and locked the door, and, lying down, tried to sleep. But she was excited and nervous, and no repose would come to her. Up to the present time, since her engagement, she had managed to keep thought at bay; but now thoughts the most terrible, the most dreary, came in like a flood and banished sleep. Towards morning she found herself silently crying.
”Oh, why cannot I break off my engagement with Tom Franks? Why cannot I tell Maurice Trevor the truth?” she said to herself.
Early the next day Mrs. Aylmer the less received a telegram from Bertha Keys. This was to announce the death of the owner of Aylmer's Court.
Mrs. Aylmer the less immediately became almost frantic with excitement.
She wanted to insist on Florence accompanying her at once to the Court.
Florence stoutly refused to stir an inch. Finally the widow was obliged to go off without her daughter.
”There is little doubt,” she said, ”that we are both handsomely remembered. I, of course, have my fifty pounds a year--that was settled on me many years ago--but I shall have far more than that now, and you, my poor child, will have a nice tidy fortune, ten to twelve or twenty thousand pounds, and then if you will only marry Maurice Trevor, who inherits all the rest of the wealth, how comfortable you will be! I suppose you would like me to live with you at Aylmer's Court, would you not?”
”Oh, mother, don't,” said poor Florence. ”I have a feeling which I cannot explain that Mrs. Aylmer will disappoint everyone. Don't count on her wealth, mother. Oh, mother, don't think so much of money, for it is not the most important thing in the world.”
”Money not the most important thing in the world!” said Mrs. Aylmer, backing and looking at her daughter with bright eyes of horror. ”Flo, my poor child, you really are getting weak in your intellect.”
A few moments afterwards she left, sighing deeply as she did so, and Florence, to her own infinite content, was left behind.
The next few days pa.s.sed without anything special occurring; then the news of Mrs. Aylmer's extraordinary will was given to Florence in her mother's graphic language.
”Although she is dead, poor thing, she certainly always was a monster,”
wrote the widow. ”I cannot explain to you what I feel. I have begged of Mr. Trevor to dispute the will; but, would you believe it?--unnatural man that he is, he seems more pleased than otherwise.
”My little money is still to the fore, but no one else seems to have been remembered. As to that poor dear Bertha Keys, she has not been left a penny. If she had not saved two or three hundred pounds during the time of her companions.h.i.+p to that heathenish woman, she would now be penniless. It is a fearful blow, and I cannot think for which of our sins it has been inflicted on us. It is too terrible, and the way Maurice Trevor takes it is the worst of all.”
When Florence read this letter, she could not help clapping her hands.
”I cannot understand it,” she said to herself; ”but a great load seems to have rolled away from me. Of course, I never expected Aunt Susan's money, but mother has been harping upon it as long as I can remember. I don't think Maurice wanted it greatly. It seemed to me that that money brought a curse with it. I wonder if things are going to be happier now.
Oh, dear, I am glad--yes, I am glad that it has not been left to any of us.”
Florence's feelings of rapture, however, were likely soon to be mitigated. Her wedding-day was approaching.
Mrs. Aylmer the less, who had at first told Florence that she could not on any account marry for three or four months, owing to the sad death in the family, wrote now to say that the sooner she secured Tom Franks the better.