Maud Florence Nellie: or, Don't care!

“Now, Warren,” said Mr Cunningham, “cut away till you lay the bottom of the hole open.” Wyn held the light, the keeper gave two or three cuts with a small axe, and a great piece of the rotten bark gave way under the stroke.

“You can look in now, sir,” he said. “Give us the lantern, Wyn.”

Sir Philip and Mr Cunningham peered into the hole, which seemed to be full of decayed wood, soft and crumbling.

“Will Lady Carleton see if she can find anything?” said Alwyn.

Lady Carleton came forward and put her hand into the hole.

“It’s like a bran pie!” she said, with a nervous little laugh. “But yes – here is a prize!” Out came something, discoloured and tarnished, but a gold bracelet; then something else, which, as the dust was shaken off and the light fell on it, flashed and dazzled – a diamond star, rings, brooches, everything. The lost jewels were found at last!

“Begging your pardon, gentlemen,” said Harry Whittaker, “I can’t understand now how they came to be hidden so completely.”

“It is clear enough at last,” said Sir Philip.

“Lady Carleton, as she wishes every one fully to know, hid the box in which she had put the jewels among the ferns on the rockery. Lennox, who had left the place the week before, came back on the sly to see his sweetheart, and, according to his statement to you, stole the jewels, threw the box into the pond, and put the jewels for security into that great hole, just within a man’s reach. You explained why he never came back for them, and if he had I don’t see how he would have got them out, for of course they slipped through the smaller hole in the bottom of the visible hollow, of which he was not aware. Wyn Warren stopped that hole up to make a nesting-place for the squirrels, little thinking what he was burying away. He did his work so cleverly that the other day, when his father inspected this great shallow hole, he never thought of the cave beneath.

“And now this great discovery has been made by so strange a set of accidents that they must be called Providential: the losing of the letter, my little girl picking it up and this young woman finding it, which, I suppose, led to her knowing of the search for the jewels; Wyn’s good-nature in getting Lily the honeysuckle; your offer of the wild-flower prize – all these trifles have worked in to clear up a most unhappy perplexity. And, Mr Henry Whittaker, I beg to congratulate you.”

“And I,” said Mr Cunningham, holding out his hand to Harry, “to apologise for having misjudged you.”

Harry touched his hat first and then took the extended hand.

“Thank you, sir,” he said. “It’s very handsome of you to say so; but, under the circumstances, I should certainly have suspected myself.”

“You will all come in to Ravenshurst and get some supper, and look at the jewels in a better light?” said Sir Philip.

“Thank you,” said Alwyn, “but my brother will want me, and Whittaker and I would like to walk back together, if you don’t mind driving home alone, father.”

“As you will,” said Mr Cunningham; then, in a lower tone, “I am glad we had it out to-day, Alwyn. That was poor Edgar’s doing; he will be glad of this.”

So the group, so strangely gathered together, dispersed. Harry and Alwyn walked away through the wood together. Theirs had been a strange comradeship, first for evil and then for good, in bad fortune and good fortune. It was hardly likely that they could be as close companions in the future as they had been in the past, but there would always be a tie between them that nothing could loosen.

And when Lady Carleton, taking Florence by the hand, led her into her own room, and kneeling down with her gave thanks that the undoing of her childish folly had come through the sister of the man who had been most injured by it, and that all doubt and mystery were over, Florence never thought of being elated at her discovery; she felt grateful and quiet, and went to bed thinking chiefly of the hearty kiss with which Harry had parted from her, and his words: “I’m heartily grateful to you, Florence. You’ve been the means of doing me a real good turn.” Even while, as she thought how she would try and deserve my lady’s kind words, and be worth the friendly treatment she had had from her, the girlish thought pressed in between:

“Oh, my! what would Carrie and Ada think if they’d have known I’d had the finding of a real diamond necklace!”

The flower show next day in a tent in the park was an occasion never to be forgotten, for there, in the centre of the tent, above Mr Elton’s best orchids, and the geraniums from Sir Philip’s garden, under a glass case, and with Mr Warren on guard beside them, lay the lost jewels of Ravenshurst, still tarnished and dusty, with the bits of touchwood clinging to them still, and testifying to the prison from which their brightness had been released, that all the world might know that they were found at last.

And there all the country round came to look at them; Mr Cunningham, with his eldest son, looking more bright and genial than he had ever been seen before, telling the story to Mr and Mrs Murray. And there were Harry Whittaker and his father, to whom he had sent an urgent telegram, and Florence walking round with them, an object of astonishment to her Aunt Stroud and to Mattie, who had come also to see the wonderful jewels. And there were Geraldine and her governess – Geraldine calling Florence eagerly to look at the wild-flower baskets sent by “our class.” And at last in the afternoon, to the intense joy of Wyn Warren, came Mr Edgar himself. How carefully Wyn led the pony across the smooth turf and round the tent, where every one made way, and Edgar lay back quite still, not nodding and half raising himself and looking about, as had been his wont, but resting on his pillows, with only his bright eyes watching everything! He stopped in the middle of the tent, and Alwyn lifted down the jewels and showed them to him, one by one; and Harry, who had never yet seen him, came up to shake hands with him, and Edgar smiled at him and said in his old lively way:

“Found at last, you see!” and then, “My brother talks to me often about you.”

Harry could hardly speak, the white face and bright eyes quite overcame him.

“I want to see the wild flowers,” said Edgar, and the various collections were shown to him, with Wyn’s with the words “First Prize” on it.

“I’m so fond of wild flowers, you know,” he said. “I want all the children who collected them to have a shilling from me, besides their prizes. Wyn shall give them away.”

So the dozen or so of children who had competed were called up and named, and Alwyn gave Wyn the shillings to distribute as they bowed and curtsied and smiled at Mr Edgar.

Then Alwyn said that that was enough and he must come home, and Wyn led the pony back across the turf, while Alwyn walked beside it, looking sad and anxious, bright as the day should have been for him.

Before he was lifted out of the chair, Edgar called Wyn up to him and took his little red fist in his long white fingers.

“I’ve liked my drive very much,” he said. “Take care of old Dobbles.”

Wyn could not speak a word, and when Edgar had been carried away, and he had led the pony safely out of sight, he suddenly flung his arms round Dobbles’ neck and burst into a passion of tears; for he knew, as well as if any one had told him, that all their long pleasant days were over, and that he would never take Mr Edgar out again. He could not go back to the tent, to the tea that was to come, and the merry-making. He sat on the straw in Dobbles’ stable and cried as if his heart would break.

Here he was discovered by Alwyn, who had come to fulfil his father’s wish, by looking at the horses. Wyn jumped up in a hurry and feigned to be absorbed in the contents of Dobbles’ manger. Alwyn, although he saw pretty well what was amiss, did not want to face the boy’s grief just then, so he only patted Dobbles, and said that Mr Edgar was resting comfortably and did not seem overtired, and that Wyn had better go and play cricket and come up to-morrow to tell him how many runs he had made.

The half-realised fears of youth are easily soothed by cheerful words from an elder. Wyn, partly perhaps from Edgar’s influence and theoretical instructions, was an excellent cricketer for his age and station, and now went off quite cheerfully to share in the game; and as the boys, and indeed all the village, were much fuller of the discovery of the jewels than of Mr Edgar or of anything else, the flower show and fête concluded joyously.

Florence remained at the Lodge that night to see her relations, and as she walked back with Harry from the station after seeing them off by the last train for Rapley, he had a long talk with her, and told her, being an outspoken person, a good deal about his own history, and of his feelings when he had contemplated his returning.

“I’d never have got over it, Florrie,” he said, “if father hadn’t been there to make it up.”

He did not lecture Florrie nor allude to any of her misdemeanours, but somehow the tone he took influenced her and made her feel that the results of sauciness and defiance were not matters to be laughed at.

Chapter Twenty Two

Wild Flowers

Wyn saw Mr Edgar many times after the day of the flower show, though he never took him out again with Dobbles. The weather continued fine and bright, and Edgar, in every interval of pain and faintness, insisted on getting on to the terrace or near the window, saying that the feeling of the air and the sight of the sky and the trees kept the life in him.

Then Wyn would bring him a flower or two or tell him some anecdote about his pets, and it was very seldom that Edgar did not smile and brighten at these reminders of his old solaces.

It seemed as if with the jewels some spirit of kindliness and affection had also been released from long imprisonment. The Cunninghams drew nearer to each other, and it was not so much that Alwyn’s presence made the house more cheerful or might fill up the gap that Edgar would leave, as that the melting of the hardness of displeasure made them all more able to feel a common grief. Mr Cunningham was gentler to Edgar, and spoke of him tenderly; Geraldine softened down and began to have thoughts of making herself her father’s companion as time went on. They remembered, and seemed to feel for the first time, how faithful the love of old Granny Warren had been for them all and to know the value of such lifelong love. The master himself, and Geraldine, to say nothing of Alwyn, went to give her accounts of Edgar, and once she was taken down to see him, and to look at her two dear boys together again.

All the village had a feeling of sympathy with the trouble at the great house which was much warmer than the old respect. Mr Murray found that his squire could give him more than courtesy and the necessary subscriptions. He visited Edgar frequently, and when Geraldine Cunningham, Florence Whittaker, and Alwyn Warren were put under instruction for an approaching confirmation, it was for all of them something more than a piece of ordinary propriety, an occasion for dress and companionship, or a mere act of obedience, as it might have been once. But on poor Edgar himself the shadow of the valley of death fell heavily. He had indemnified himself for the long years of physical dependence, so peculiarly trying to one of his temper, by the unconquerable self-reliance of his spirit. He had doffed aside his suffering and given it the go-by with unfailing courage. And now, with his bodily strength, the strong nerves failed too; every trifle startled and fretted him. All his gay indifference was gone.

He could not meet the thought of death now as he might perhaps have done once, with unrealising boldness. He was brave still, and in moments of suffering would often whisper the old formula “I don’t care – it will soon be better;” but the time came when he answered Alwyn’s words of comfort with an altogether new look in his eyes, and with the faltering confession, “I am afraid.”

“Of what, my boy?” said Alwyn, pressing the clinging fingers tenderly.

“Of Death,” whispered Edgar; “when I must let you go.”

He listened dutifully to Mr Murray, and without any mental dissent, but his words did not seem to make much impression. In fact, it was difficult to know what to say to him; for the difficulty was hardly in a region where words could reach.

“If I am afraid I’ll face it,” he said once.

But at last the intense conviction that had been sent into Alwyn’s soul, and which had power to change his whole self – how, it was hard to say – by words or looks or tender hand-clasp, slid also into Edgar’s heart. Alwyn never thought himself that it was anything that he said or did that brought peace to Edgar at last.

But there came a morning bright and blue, when the ash trees were touched with gold, and the smooth turf was thick with dew, and the clear autumn air blew through the open window – when Edgar lay in his brother’s arms with the life ebbing fast away from him.

Then he opened his eyes once more and looked up into Alwyn’s face:

“I don’t care, Val,” he said, “for He careth for me.”