Maud Florence Nellie: or, Don't care!

“Mr Alwyn,” he went on, after some preliminaries about the buying of the land, and the discovery of the coal upon it, “never played the fool any more after he was on his own hands as it were. He seemed to want to justify himself, and prove those mistaken that thought we should both go to the bad. He never let on that he felt parting from home and being cut off from his expectations, nor did I. But, when there’s no longer anyone to pull a young fellow up, it’s one of two things: either he goes down altogether, or he has to pull up himself. And I can tell you, aunt, if all the graceless young chaps knew what a much easier sort of thing it is to get a good blowing up at the time, and the consequences saved you afterwards, than to go scot-free and find out for yourself what you’ve brought about, they’d not be in such a hurry to kick over the traces. But Mr Alwyn said that he’d brought suspicion and trouble on me, and he wouldn’t be the ruin of me further. So we kept straight and got on, and thought a deal of ourselves for doing it.”

“It’s what no one never expected!” ejaculated Mrs Stroud.

“No,” said Harry. “Well, I got married, as I’ll tell more about by-and-by, and I thought I’d done with the old country altogether, and went on as comfortable as could be till my little boy came. Then, Aunt Eliza, somehow it came over me more and more what it would be to have that little chap hear that there were those over here that thought I was a thief, and have him know that I was an undutiful son that left my father in his old age. If that there baby was for eight years without so much as thinking of me, or caring what I thought of him, why, it’d go near to break my heart, and I’d sooner follow him to his grave now, and never see him again. God forgive me! I’d been a bad son, but ‘don’t care’ was a word I couldn’t say before the little chap, nor have him say after me.

“Well, when all this was waking in me, Mr Alwyn was away in Boston, and I’d reason to guess what kept him there, and how there was a young lady in the case. He came back sudden, and while I was thinking how to tell him what was in my mind he turned round upon me and said, says he ‘Harry, I’m going home to beg pardon.’

”‘If you do,’ says I, ‘I’ll go with you.’

“And then he told me how he couldn’t ask Miss Dallas to marry him till he had told about his quarrel with his father; but his pride had held him back from trying to make it up, and going to seek for what he’d thrown away. He’d had a very hard time, he told me, what with the oath he’d made, and all that lay behind him. And he did look pale and changed, I can tell you, and seemed as if he couldn’t speak what was in his mind. But he should go, he said, whether the jewels were found or not, and even if the opening up of all the old scandal put him further off the young lady. And then I told him the thoughts I’d had on the subject, and he said: ‘There’s more than that, Harry, for through all this I’ve come to see that I sinned against God.’”

“Well,” said Mrs Stroud, “I never did think to hear as Mr Alwyn was a converted man! It’s a miracle!”

“Well,” said Harry gravely, “as you may say it was; but ’twas that conviction that conquered his pride and made him resolve to go home again. Just as we’d settled on this conclusion, and were wondering what to do next, there was an accident with some paraffin, and a young fellow working for us was near burnt to death, and would have been killed on the spot but for Mr Alwyn. Now we knew that this young man Lennox had been footman at Ravenshurst, and had left the place about a week before we did, to go abroad with a gentleman. He told us he came to seek work because he had known us formerly.

“To make a long story short, Mr Alwyn, worse luck, sent the only other man about for the doctor, and he and I stayed with Lennox. Then, says he, he’d been a great sinner, and he’d like to own it before he died. And he told Mr Alwyn a number of dishonest actions, small and great, and at last he said he’d taken the Ravenshurst jewels. He’d come back on the sly to see his sweetheart after he left the place, and saw the young lady come down and slip the jewels under the ferns on the rockery, and he took them on the spur of the moment. Well, he was just off with his new master on a trip to India; but he contrived to hear how I was suspected before he started.”

“And took the jewels with him?”

“Well – it’s all in the confession Mr Alwyn wrote down. But one of the jewels he had still, and that he gave us, and Mr Alwyn has it row. But he said it had been on his conscience all the time he was knocking about the world, and that when he heard our names he came and got work with us on purpose, though he put off owning his guilt from day to day. He’d near put it off too late, for before he’d told us all we wanted to know the death struggle came on him and he could tell us no more. And ’twas then, Aunt Eliza, by the words Mr Alwyn said, and the prayers he made that I knew of the change that had come on him and first thought of my sin against God, as well as against the little one.

“Well, the doctor came as Lennox died, and Mr Alwyn made him stay with us and keep us in sight while, without a word to one another, we each wrote down what the dying man had said to us; and the doctor witnessed that we had written it without speech with one another since Lennox’s death. Then we took the papers before the nearest judge, and made our affidavits that they contained a true confession. But it’s all on our words after all; howsoever, on that confession we came back.”

“Well, Harry,” said Mrs Stroud, “I’d take my dying oath you was innocent. But whatever made you decamp just at that moment?”

“My father knew where I was,” said Harry. “He knew I joined Mr Alwyn. But he declared that after the jewels had been named in connection with us he’d never go home, if they were found twenty times over, without the squire made him an apology.”

Mrs Stroud sat and looked at her recovered nephew, at his good clothes, his watch chain, his air of undoubted respectability, and also at the unembarrassed and cheerful air with which he faced her.

“What are you going to do now?” she said.

“That must depend on Mr Alwyn. He thought Mr Edgar would perhaps have helped him search, or told him how the land lay, anyhow; so he wrote him a note appointing a meeting, which I gave to little Wyn Warren in the wood. It seems he lost it; and, though the meeting came about, Mr Alwyn was so distracted at the state in which he found his poor brother that he never laid any plans at all. When I joined him he couldn’t hardly speak of him. ’Twas the heaviest punishment of all, he said.”

“Ah, poor young gentleman,” said Mrs Stroud; “it’s a sad business, and I doubt he’s not long for this world. But do I take you to say, Harry, that you’re a family man?”

Harry nodded, and produced a photograph of his wife and baby, and another of the substantial house in which he lived; and over the tea a great many more questions and answers were interchanged. Harry heard all about his sisters, and where Florence was, and what his brother George was doing. He couldn’t help enjoying the joke of appearing to his aunt in so new a light – even while he asked with real affection after Mattie, and studied the photographs of his family in his aunt’s book. He could not make himself known to his father, he said, until Mr Alwyn had taken some action, and, of course, he could not but hope that the explanation of the lost jewels would be accepted at Ashcroft.

His coming to see his aunt had been, he said, a sudden thought, prompted by Mr Alwyn’s shock and distress at his brother’s illness.

“I didn’t know then what I might find at the old place,” he said. “But if you could keep my coming quiet for a few days, aunt, it would be all for the better.”

“Well, Henry,” said Mrs Stroud, “there’s nothing declares to me that you’re a reformed character so much as your coming and consulting me, as was your true friend in the past always. It’s a lucky thing that Stroud has gone down the line to-day to his cousin’s funeral. I’ll keep your secret, Harry, though the thought of you, sitting there so broad-shouldered, and so well-to-do looking, is so amazing that I feel as if it would ooze out of me at the seams of my gown!”

“Well, aunt,” said Harry, “you’re very good, and I hope in a couple of days the concealment will be over.”

“It’s well,” said Mrs Stroud, “that that unlucky Florrie knows nothing of it, or she’d have controverted your intentions to a dead certainty.”

Chapter Thirteen

Most Haste, Worst Speed!

Unfortunately for his scheme of meeting with his brother again, poor Edgar awoke the next morning to one of the blinding and overpowering headaches to which over-fatigue and excitement always rendered him liable. There was no chance of getting that day to the trysting-place, no possibility of anything but lying still. He could not write a note to be given to Alwyn, he could hardly even think of a safe message for him.

“Tell Wyn – I cannot go out – tell him to – get what I told him – in the wood – he will understand,” he said, with a great effort at something that would be comprehensible.

“Yes, sir; don’t trouble yourself, sir,” said Robertson; “it shall be attended to.”

“And tell him to come for orders to-morrow; I shall be able to go to-morrow.”

“Very well, sir,” said Robertson, privately thinking that his master would be quite unequal to such fatigue to-morrow, or probably for two or three days to come.

Edgar chafed and fretted at his incapacity in a way that of course aggravated the headache. It was such a disappointment, besides the anxiety and suspense, not to see Alwyn again. He had not known how much he should care about it. Robertson thought that he had never known his master so restless and impatient.

The message to Wyn did not strike anyone as of paramount importance, and was sent down by the footman.

“Tell little Warren the pony won’t be wanted. Mr Edgar is ill. Warren is to get something, I believe, in the wood – flowers, I suppose – but they won’t be wanted to-day.”

This information was finally shouted out to Wyn by the stable-boy as he fed the peacocks before coming up for orders:

“Mr Edgar’s ill and can’t go out, but he says you’re to pick him some flowers instead.”

“Is that all?” said Wyn, horrified.

“That’s all, as I knows on.”

“But I say, what’s the matter with Mr Edgar?”

“Didn’t hear – that was my message.”

Wyn was a very sharp boy. He had been told by Edgar as little as possible, except as to the identity of the two strangers whom he had seen in the wood, as to which he was sworn to secrecy; but after puzzling a little over the message about the flowers he came to the conclusion that the best thing he could do was to keep Mr Edgar’s appointment for him. He was detained all the morning by Mrs Elton, under whose superintendence he attended to the fancy poultry, to give them an extra cleaning, as Mr Edgar did not want him; and when he went home to dinner he found his own family in a state of excitement and hurry.

Lady Carleton, at Ravenshurst, wanted a girl to help her nurse for a few weeks, and by favour of the wife of the Ravenshurst keeper had sent to see if Mrs Warren’s niece could come over.

Mrs Warren thought it a wonderful chance for Florence to try her hand at service in a good family, without being bound to a regular place, and Florence was just tired enough of the keeper’s lodge to think that she should like the change.

“I must take you over myself,” Mrs Warren said, “and explain to her ladyship that you haven’t things suitable at present for her household, but they shall be soon provided. She’ll excuse it, as they want you to come this afternoon. You can put on your grey dress, and turn your hair up and brush back your fringe.”

“My fringe! Why, even the generals at Rapley are allowed their fringes!” said Florence indignantly.

“Very likely. But it’s not the custom in good families,” said Mrs Warren dryly. “I look to you, Florence, to do me credit where you go.”

Florence pouted a little, but just then Warren, who had come in to his dinner, said rather meaningly to his wife:

“Mother, have you forgotten as Lady Carleton is Miss Lilian Fletcher that used to be? Maybe that will make an objection; it’d be best to name Florence, and make sure as she understands about her.”

Florence caught the words, and the confidence she had received about her brother from Wyn came, into her mind. So this was one of the owners of the jewels which Harry had been accused of stealing. Intense curiosity, and a sort of impulse for which she could not account, determined her on going to Ravenshurst at all costs. She went upstairs after dinner, screwed her hair up into a neat knot behind, brushed it back from her brows, and generally stroked herself down into a much tidier-looking young person than she had ever before appeared.

Wyn had also heard the hint, and sat listening, open-eared, to the strange coincidence.