Maud Florence Nellie: or, Don't care!

“I should like to do something for Florence Whittaker,” she said with a slight emphasis. “We will consider it settled, Mrs Warren, that your niece comes on trial.”

“Your ladyship is very good. Florence will do her best, I am sure,” said Mrs Warren.

Accordingly, in the course of an hour or so Florence found herself in Lady Carleton’s nursery, under the orders of a well-mannered superior nurse, making friends with Lily and Malcolm, and admiring the baby.

“Things are not so tidy as they should be, Florence,” said the nurse, “for our last girl began with the mumps, and was sent off in a hurry. Before you undress Miss Lily, please to straighten out her walking things and put her toys to rights. I couldn’t see properly to them yesterday or to-day.”

Lily Carleton was quite ready to make friends with the new nursemaid, and Florence, who was good-natured with children, had soon told her the names of her little sisters, and was hearing in return about the wood and the squirrels, and the pretty puff-balls, and all the delights of a London child in the country.

“What’s this, Miss Lily?” said Florence, putting her hand into the pocket of the little jacket which she was folding. “Have you been putting a puff-ball in your pocket?”

“No,” said Lily, “that’s a letter from the fairies. I found it in the wood; I told mother that I’d found a fairy letter, but she was too busy to look and see.”

Florence straightened out the crushed ball of damp paper, which, in company with bits of moss and lichen-covered stick, filled Lily’s little pocket.

“Why, Miss Lily,” she began, “this ain’t a fairy letter,” when she suddenly stopped, catching sight of her own name in the short, clearly written note: “Whittaker.” “Whittaker has come with me. Remember I am still your brother. – Alwyn Cunningham.”

Florence would not have taken a letter off the table and read it; but in the case of this mysterious paper no such scruple occurred to her. She saw that it began, “Dear Edgar” – that it stated that the writer had returned, had satisfactory explanations to give, and asked for a meeting at the old ash-tree on the following day. Two things flashed at once into Florence’s mind: one that this was the letter Wyn had lost; the other that the man who had spoken to herself and Miss Geraldine was Mr Alwyn.

“Miss Lily, where did you find the letter? When was it you got it?”

“I found it down under the ferns,” said Lily. “It wasn’t yesterday – mother took us out yesterday. It was Friday.”

Florence stared at the letter. Wyn’s poacher with the red beard – that must have been Harry himself! And, oh! she and Wyn had set the keepers to look out for him.

Florence turned quite pale. She had derived vague and awful notions of Mr Cunningham’s power from the way in which everything at Ashcroft was referred to his pleasure. She did not know what he would do to a “poacher” – also a vague character to the town-bred girl.

“You had better undress Miss Lily,” said the nurse, fearing that her new underling was a dawdle.

“Read me what the fairies say,” said Lily.

“Not to-night,” said Florence, stuffing the letter in her pocket. “You tell Florrie about the fairies to-morrow.”

She bustled about and did her work, till, Lily’s toilet being complete, she knelt up in her bed in her little nightgown, and said her prayers. She went through the usual baby prayers, which were pretty much all that Florence herself had to say, since she had never felt the need of any others; but when she had finished she still knelt with her two little hands clasped together, and said in a clear, parrot-like little voice:

“Please, God, make all wrongs right, and bring travellers safe home, for Jesus’ sake.”

“Miss Lily – who’s a traveller?” said Florence, startled.

“I don’t know; mother told me to say that prayer always,” she said as she curled herself up in her little white bed and shut her eyes.

Florence stood by the window looking out over the garden into the mass of trees that bounded it, under which the level evening light was pouring. If she could only get that letter back to Wyn! only tell him to stop the keepers from minding her foolish talk! With the letter in her pocket, she really did feel a sense of great responsibility; she really did try to think what it would be right to do. She had never felt so serious in her life. Come what come might, she must get at Wyn. She must run home across the forest. Lose her place for it! Perhaps she would; but, if she had lost one place to amuse herself, she could lose another to prevent such dreadful mischief.

“I don’t care,” said Florence, as she had said once before. There was good in her motive now, but it was the old daring, heedless Florence that never stopped to think. She slipped out of the bedroom by an outer door that did not lead through the nursery, downstairs along the passage, out at a side door, open to the summer evening, across the grass of the garden, and right into the wood. She ran on through the band of fir trees that divided Ravenshurst from Ashcroft, and, crossing the stile between the two properties, found herself, though she did not know it, close to the place where the letter had been picked up, and not far from the ash-tree named in it.

Then she began to grow puzzled about the way. The long yellow lines of light faded, the tall trees rustled overhead, the heavy whir and flap of a startled pheasant sounded close at hand. Deadly fear seized on Florence. If she had been frightened in the sunny morning, she was doubly frightened now in the twilight. Besides, it would really get dark soon, and then what would become of her? She had said “I don’t care!” but where was the use of saying “don’t care” to darkness and silence and confusion as to the right way? Should she go back? she knew the way back.

“No,” said Florence to herself, “I may have been a silly to come; but I’ll get that there letter to Wyn if I walk all night. And I’ll not be afraid of the wood. Miss Geraldine ain’t – but oh, dear, I wish I had to go down the broad path in the cemetery at home, all nice and straight, instead. If I go on I’ll have to get somewhere at last!”

Florence knew quite well that she had done a very serious thing, for which she would have to answer, and in the midst of her fear of the solitude came an involuntary fear of the scolding that would meet her arrival anywhere. She had rather enjoyed scolding when she knew she was wrong: why did she dread it when she thought she was right? The wood did grow darker, much darker than Florence had expected, judging by the light that she knew was outside it; and the poor girl’s knees trembled as she hurried along. It was a perfectly formless terror that seized on her; she had had too utterly matter-of-fact a training to fill the wood with any imaginary inhabitants, and she was too old and had too much sense to people it with wolves or bears. It did occur to her that the keepers she had herself stirred up might shoot her through the bushes, and her cheeks tingled at the thought of being seen and recognised by them; while, if she met her Uncle Warren —

“I’ll go through with it – rather than bring my own brother to the gallows,” she thought with a vividness worthy of her Aunt Stroud. But which was the way? what should she do? Florence was so accustomed to trust to her own wits that where her wits were perfectly useless she felt like another person. She did not know the way, she could not get at Wyn, she could not undo the mischief! There was no one to help her! Suddenly there struck into her mind a new thought:

“God.”

Now Florence had never thought about God in her life. She knew about Him: on the very last Sunday before she left Rapley she had answered Miss Mordaunt’s questions about His nature with a glib tongue, but without a trace of reverence in her manner or of awe in her heart. He was everywhere; He could see her in the dark and in the light; He knew her thoughts; He could hear her prayers. Such awful truths had been taught to her, and had been just as much a lesson as the multiplication table. But now, in the greatest need she had ever known, it did suddenly strike Florence that perhaps God would help her if she asked Him. She looked up – up through the dark trees to the pale clear sky above them, and associating praying with nothing but with “saying her prayers,” she began to repeat the childish formulary which she was in the habit of scurrying over every night, and with a sudden thought added the words which little Lily had been taught to say: “Set wrongs right, bring travellers home.”

“Oh, God,” whispered Florence, clasping her hands, “bring me– there! Save them somehow.” Something seemed let loose within her, and for the first time in her life she really prayed. And “Oh say not, dream not,” that those unrealised lessons, that formal habit of prayer, had been hitherto all in vain. How could she have heard without a teacher? There was the knowledge, there was the instinct, so soon as the naughty, graceless girl felt the need.

As she looked round, with a somewhat calmer inspection of the various footpaths, suddenly, in the stillness of the summer evening, she heard the tramp of a foot, and in a moment, round the great tree by which she stood, came the tall broad figure of a man with a long beard – surely the “character” who had given Wyn the letter.

“Hullo, my girl,” he said, stopping with a start at sight of a hatless maiden in a white apron, “what’s the matter? Have you lost your way?”

“Oh!” cried Florence, precipitating herself towards him, “I’ve got your letter – but – but, if you’re my brother Harry that’s come home – the keepers are going to seize you for a poacher!”

Chapter Fifteen

Father and Son

Edgar Cunningham got somewhat the better of his headache as the day went on, and late in the afternoon insisted on getting out into the fresh air on the terrace, in the hope that Wyn might make some excuse for coming up to speak to him. He was hardly fit even for this exertion; but the open air was always the one thing he cared for, and the suspense was more endurable so than when he was shut up in the house.

When his cushions were raised he could see across the flower garden, over the low wall that bounded it, to the road that led from the wood and the village, up to the stables, and to the back of the house; and as his bright eyes were keen and long-sighted, he often amused himself with watching the comers and goers, noticing all that went on, as only those people do who are confined to one place.

To-day, however, as he lay almost flat on his back, he could not see the road, and it was with a start of surprise that he looked up and saw his father standing by him.

“I hope, as you are out of doors, that you are better, Edgar?” he said.

“Oh yes, thanks, almost well,” said Edgar.

“Your boy, little Warren, has been getting into trouble. He has let down the young bay horse and broken his knees.”

“Wyn! Has he? What had he to do with the horse?” said Edgar, very much startled as he thought of what Wyn should have been doing.

“He had been driving his mother and her niece to Ravenshurst as I understand, and went to fetch his sister from the station. He let down the horse in Coombe Lane. That is what I am told,” said Mr Cunningham with emphasis, and using all the advantage his position gave him to look straight down into Edgar’s face.

“Was he hurt?” said Edgar, looking straight up in return.

Mr Cunningham was very angry with his son, and little disposed to be merciful to him, though he had not meant to enter on the subject of the letter if Edgar had been more manifestly unequal to a discussion.

“He broke his head; I believe nothing serious. He had a letter for you, which I undertook to deliver myself,” and Mr Cunningham laid Alwyn’s unopened packet in Edgar’s hand.

Edgar caught his breath, but his face never flinched as his father went on:

“I was not aware, when you spoke to me the other morning, that you were already in communication with your brother.”

“I dare say you think it possible that I might have so deceived you,” said Edgar bitterly. “But my brother made himself known to me for the first time yesterday. I should not be waiting here if I had the use of my limbs like other people. As things are, I’ll beg you to open that letter and read it at once yourself.”

Edgar’s manner and face were alike defiant, and he was so indignant at the imputation cast on him that he never saw that his father’s lips were twitching and that his face was pale, nor took advantage of the moment of softening.