Maud Florence Nellie: or, Don't care!

Martha, when she might have been attending to the comfort of hers, was sometimes lost in imagining herself reading to a mothers’ meeting in “a tightly fitting costume of the richest velvet,” etc, etc; but, confused as were her notions, she had ideas and aspirations, and was ready for a guiding hand if only she could have found one.

Chapter Two

A Sunday Walk

Florrie was troubled with no aspirations and with very few ideas. She was just like a young animal, and enjoyed her life much in the same way and with as little regard to consequences. When she and her little sisters came out of the great cemetery gates into a broad, cheerful, suburban road, the children ran on, afraid of being late. Florrie caught up, as she had expressed it, with Carrie Jones and Ada Price, also in the full glory of their new summer things, and both eagerly looking out for her. For Florrie was bigger, smarter, and more daring than any of them; she was the ringleader in their jokes, and bore the brunt of the scrapes consequent upon them; she was therefore a favourite companion. The three girls hurried along the sunny road, chattering and laughing, with their heads full of their new clothes, their friends, and themselves, so that there was not an atom of room left for the Bible lesson which they were about to receive. They came with a rush and a bounce into the parish room, where their class was held, just as the door was unfastened after the opening hymn, found their places with a scuffle and a titter, pulled some Bibles towards them, and looked all round to greet their special acquaintances, as the teacher began her lesson.

Florrie Whittaker did not behave worse than several others of the young, noisy, irrepressible creatures who sat round the table; but there was so much of her in every way that the teacher never lost the sense of her existence through the whole lesson. Miss Mordaunt was a clever, sensible lady, not very young, nor with any irresistible power of commanding attention, but quite capable of keeping her class together, and of repressing inordinately bad conduct. Sometimes her lessons were interesting and impressive, and, as she was human, sometimes they were rather dull; but the girls liked her as well as they liked anyone, and if they had been aware that they wanted a friend would have expected her to prove a kind one. But they were mostly young and well-to-do, with life in every limb and every feeling; and the Bible class was a very trifling incident to them.

Florrie felt quite good-naturedly towards her, but she did like to make the other girls laugh, and to know that she could upset nearly all of them if she liked. She was not clever enough to care with her mind for the history of Saint Paul, and she was no more open to any spiritual impression than the table at which she sat, new gloves to button and new hats to compare effectually occupying her attention. She jumped up when her class was over, a little more full of spirits for the slight restraint, and rushed out in a hurry with Carrie and Ada, that they might be round on the other side when the boys’ class came out, and see who was there.

It was general curiosity on Florrie’s part, and the desire to do what was disapproved of; her family were above the class who were likely to “walk with” anyone at fifteen, and she only hurried along giggling and whispering towards the riverside.

A pretty, sleepy, flat-country river ran through the meadows that lay round about Rapley, and the towing-path beside it was a favourite Sunday walk, and in its quieter regions was the resort of engaged couples, and of quiet families walking out with their babies in their perambulators. But the stretch of river between the suburban region where the cemetery lay and the church of Saint Jude, in the district of which it was included, was near the lower parts of the town, and on Sundays was full of roughs, and idle lads on the way to become roughs. No girls who were careful of their conduct and wished to keep out of noisy company would have gone there in the afternoon. Florrie Whittaker and her two friends knew quite well that they had no business to be in that direction; but a feint of pursuit from some of the lads as they hung about the classroom door sent them scurrying and looking behind them down the street, and they soon found themselves, in all their conspicuous finery, walking along the towing-path by the river. It was a shabby region; new and yet dirty little houses bordered it, their back yards and back gardens, each one less ornamental than the last, stretching down to the path, between which and the river were a few pollard willows. On the other side spread out a low-lying marshy region, which was generally flooded in the winter. A small public-house ended the row of houses where a swing gate led into the fields beyond.

“I say,” said Carrie, “we didn’t ought to have come down here. Mother ’ll give it me when I get back.”

“No more we’d ought,” said Ada. “If Miss Simpson were to hear of it, she’d say I was letting down the school. Come through the gate and across the fields, Florrie; this ain’t nice at all.”

“I don’t care,” said Florrie, stimulated by sundry remarks caught in passing; “we can take care on ourselves. I ain’t a-going to speak to anyone; but I’ll walk here as long as I like. Oh my! what fun it’d be if your governess did catch you, Ada!”

“You wouldn’t think it fun if Mrs Lee was to catch you,” said Ada.

“Oh my! shouldn’t I though?” said Florrie, with her beaming face all in a twinkle. “I’d like to see her coming through the gate. There’s a boat on the river; let’s stop and see it go by.”

“Don’t, Florrie Whittaker,” said Carrie. “There’s Liza Mason and Polly Grant, and I ain’t a-going to be seen with they.”

“Well, I am then,” said Florrie, delighted at teasing her friends, and quite indifferent to the fact that the two girls who joined them were of a much rougher, lower stamp than themselves – girls whose Sunday finery consisted of an artificial flower to enliven their weekday dirt, and who, poor things, were little general drudges in places which no respectable girl would take. Liza and Polly were nothing loth, when Florrie chose to acknowledge an old Sunday school fellowship in mischief by stopping to speak. Liza was saucy, and called out loudly that she thought they’d all be too proud to take any notice.

“Not I,” said Florrie. “I don’t care for no one. You come into our shop, Liza, any day, and I’ll show you all the best things in it.”

“That you won’t,” said one of a group of the Sunday school lads who had followed. “I’d dare you to do that – you’d be afraid.”

“I dare,” said Florrie. “You come in with an errand and see. I dare do anything I’ve a mind to; I don’t care for no one!”

“Florence Whittaker,” said Ada Price, the pupil-teacher getting the better of the mischievous, idle girl in her, “I’ll never walk with you again, you’re too bad – and – oh my, come on, for there is your Mrs Lee coming through the gate. Florrie, Florrie! She’ll see you in another minute!”

Ada and Carrie were indifferently behaved and common-minded girls, but they were not without some sense. A moderate amount of misbehaviour at, and on the road to and from their Sunday class was their way of enjoying their rather scanty bit of freedom; but risking their weekday occupation and their means of earning their living was another thing altogether. They pulled away from Florence, held up their heads, and walked on.

But Florence Whittaker was daring with a different degree of folly from that of most silly girls. The sense of when to stop was lacking in her, as it had been woefully lacking in her eldest brother, and the sense of how delightful her employer’s face of horror would be kept her standing in the midst of the group of rough lads and girls, and tempted her to raise her voice and call out again, “You see if I don’t!”

Mrs Lee, a most respectable-looking tradeswoman, walking through the fields with a friend, stopped short at sight of the “young lady” who served in her fancy shop thus surrounded. “Miss Whittaker!” she said in a voice of blank amazement.

“Good afternoon, Mrs Lee,” said Florence pertly. “Isn’t it a nice afternoon?”

“Miss Whittaker, I am surprised.”

“Are you, Mrs Lee? Our class is just over.” Mrs Lee looked her up and down, and walked on in silence. This was no place for an altercation.

“Go on, Florence Whittaker,” said one of the bigger lads. “The old lady’s right enough, and this ain’t the place for young ladies – ”

“’Twas all along of you we came,” said Florence. “Well, good-bye, Liza; don’t you forget.”

She ran off after her companions, who were now walking soberly enough across the field path which led back into the high road. But Florrie’s spirits were quite unchecked. She laughed at the thought of Mrs Lee’s amazement, she laughed at Carrie and Ada’s fright, she repeated with more laughing the various vulgar jokes which had passed with the lads and with Polly and Liza.

“I never thought,” said Ada indignantly, “that you’d join company, Florence Whittaker, with such as them. It’s as much as I’d do to pass the time of day with them.”

“Now then,” said Florrie, “didn’t Miss Mordaunt say last Sunday as it was very stuck up and improper to object to Maria Wilson coming to the class because she’s a general? and she said I was a kind girl to let her look over my Bible, so there!”

“Maria Wilson do behave herself,” said Carrie.

“Well, Carrie Jones, don’t you talk about behaviour! Do Miss Mullins always behave herself? Don’t she walk out at the back with the young men in the shop, and wait outside the church for them? And you’re glad enough to walk with her. I don’t care how people behave so long as I can have my fun, and I don’t care who they are neither.”

Ada and Carrie, brought face to face with one of the practical puzzles of life for girls of their standing, the difficulty of “keeping oneself up” in a right and not in a wrong way, were far too conscious of inconsistency to have anything to say, and Ada changed the subject.

“Well, anyway, I wouldn’t be you to-morrow morning, Florrie,” she said.

“I like to get a rise out of Mrs Lee,” said Florrie, “and I don’t care a bit for her. I shall just enjoy it.”

Carrie and Ada did not believe her, but, worse luck for Florence, it was perfectly true. She did not care. The power of calculating consequences was either absent from her nature or entirely undeveloped in it. She was not a bit put out by her companions’ annoyance, and laughed at them as she parted from them at the upper gate of the cemetery. The sun was still shining brightly on the clean gravel walks, the white marble crosses and columns, and on the many flowers planted beneath them. Apart from its associations, Rapley cemetery was a cheerful, pleasant place, and Florence, as she noted a new-made grave, heaped up with white flowers, only thought that there was an extra number of pretty wreaths there, without a care as to the grief which they represented.

Mr Whittaker was very proud of the good taste and good order of his cemetery, and took a great deal of trouble to have everything kept as it should be.

Even Martha, in whose favourite literature lonely churchyards and silent tombs were often to be met with, never thought of connecting the sentiment which they evoked with the nice tidy rows of modern monuments among which she lived. Aunt Lizzie occasionally pointed a moral by hoping her nieces would remember that they might soon be lying beneath them; but they never regarded the remark as anything more than a flower of speech.

Florence got in just in time for tea, to find her father giving Mrs Stroud the history of some transactions he had lately had with the “Board,” in which he had brought over all the gentlemen to see that he was right as regarded certain by-laws.

Mr Whittaker was a round-faced, rosy man, like his younger children. He was a very respectable, hard-working man, and a kind father; but he thought a good deal of his own importance and of the importance of his situation, and a good deal of his conversation consisted in impressing his own good management on his hearers. He would have been almost as much put out with Martha for wanting what she had not got as he had been with the one of his children who had brought him into disrepute. Florrie’s misdemeanours had never come across him, and she did not know what his displeasure would be like. She knew quite well what that of her brother George could be, and enjoyed provoking it. George was an irreproachable youth, and aimed at being a gentleman. He was of the dark and slender type, like Martha, and cultivated a quiet style of dress and manner. He sang in the choir of another church in the town, and was friendly with the clergy and church officials. It was a new line of departure for the Whittakers, and an excellent one; but somehow George rather liked to keep it to himself, and did not encourage his sisters to attend his church, or follow his example in religious matters.

Florrie came in, and as soon as tea was over, and her father and aunt were out of hearing, she amused herself with scandalising George and Martha by boasting of how she had shocked Carrie and Ada through stopping to talk to Liza and Polly. She omitted to mention either Mrs Lee or the cause of the walk by the river. There were limits to the home endurance, and even Florence, when not worked up to delightful defiance, was aware of their existence.

Chapter Three

Don’t Care!

Mrs Lee was a widow. She kept a small, but very superior, ‘Fancy Repository’ in a good street in Rapley. Her daughter helped her to manage the business, and Florence Whittaker was being trained up as an assistant. Idleness was not one of Florrie’s failings, and, as she was quick, neat-handed, and willing, she gave tolerable satisfaction, though Mrs Lee considered her lively, free and easy manners to pleasant customers, and her short replies to troublesome ones, as decidedly “inferior,” and not what was to be expected in such an establishment as hers. Florence, however, was gradually acquiring a professional manner, which she kept for business hours, as too many girls do, apparently regarding refinement and gentleness as out of place when she was off duty.

She presented herself as usual on Monday morning, in a nice dark frock and hat, and with her flying hair tied in a neat tail, and began cheerfully to set about her duties, which were not at all distasteful to her. But she wondered all the time what Mrs Lee was going to say. Perhaps, if that lady had been a keen student of human nature, she would have disappointed the saucy girl by saying little or nothing. But she knew that most girls disliked being found fault with, and had not discovered that Florrie Whittaker rather enjoyed it. She believed, too, in the impressiveness of her own manner, and presently, summoning Florence into the parlour, said majestically:

“Miss Whittaker, it is not my intention to say much of what I witnessed yesterday, except that it was altogether unworthy of any young lady in my employment. Should it occur again I shall be obliged to take other measures.”

“I’m very sorry, ma’am, I’m sure,” said Florence meekly, and hanging down her head.

“No one can say more. I will not detain you from your duties.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll remember,” said Florrie, retreating, and leaving Mrs Lee much pleased with the result of her admonitions. Miss Lee, who caught sight of the young lady’s face as she passed behind the counter, did not feel quite so well satisfied.

There was, however, very little fault to be found with Florence in business hours; and all went well till about twelve o’clock, when, there being several customers in the shop, Miss Lee became aware of an unusual bustle at one end of it, and beheld Florence opening boxes, spreading out fine pieces of needlework, and showing off plush and silk, with the greatest civility and a perfectly unmoved countenance, to a shabby little girl in an old hat and a dirty apron, while a boy with a basket on his arm stood just inside the door, open-mouthed with rapturous admiration.