Maud Florence Nellie: or, Don't care!

“Yes, I’m tired this morning. Go straight back. I don’t want to go round the wood.”

He fell into silence. Geraldine played with her puppy, and Wyn trudged cheerily at the pony’s head, thinking of an expedition he wanted to propose some day when Mr Edgar was very well and fresh, and there was no one to interfere with them. Mr Edgar had been so weak all the spring, and had had so many headaches and fits of palpitation – once he had even fainted after an attempt to walk a few steps farther than usual – so that he and Wyn had not been trusted to make long excursions alone together.

But now that he was better again, and the weather was so fine, Wyn longed to take Dobbles to a certain spot recently laid open to his approach. He had been thoroughly imbued with his young master’s tastes, knew the haunts of every bird and beast in the wood, every hollow in the old ash-trees where owls or squirrels could nest and haunt. He watched the growth of all the wild flowers, and at the autumn cottage show intended to win the first prize for a collection of them – a new idea in Ashcroft which had been recently suggested by a lady whose husband, Sir Philip Carleton, had just taken Ravenshurst for the shooting.

Chapter Seven

Sunday School

Entirely unfamiliar surroundings will exercise a subduing effect on the most daring nature; and Florence Whittaker for the first few days of her stay at Ashcroft felt quite meek and bewildered. She really had nothing to say. She was quite unused to so small and quiet a family. The eldest son, Ned Warren, had recently married, and did not live at home, Bessie was away at her school until the harvest holidays, and Wyn was busy all day and had lessons to do in the evening. She had never seen so civil and well-mannered a little boy; while Mr Warren was a great big man over six feet high, with an immense red beard, very silent and grave, and good manners gained from the gentlemen with whom he associated. Her Aunt Charlotte, as she was directed to call Mrs Warren, was very kind to her, and never aggravated her, a fact which upset Florence’s previous ideas of aunts. There really was no opportunity of distinguishing herself by “answering back,” for Mrs Warren never said anything that gave her a chance. As she was neither idle nor unhandy, she acquitted herself well in all the little tasks her aunt set her; but she was dull enough to look favourably on the idea of the Sunday school.

“Miss Geraldine’s been inquiring about you, Florence,” said Wyn when he came in to dinner.

“She says she wishes you to come down to Sunday school with Gracie Elton.”

“I don’t mind if I do,” said Florence, “but I attend a Bible class at home.”

“The girls in the first class here are quite as old as you,” said Mrs Warren, “but I dare say you are accustomed to a much larger number.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Florence, with cheerful condescension. “Our teacher says we ought not to be stuck up, so, though we’re nearly all business young ladies, we ain’t exclusive. There’s two generals attend the class, and I think it’s a shame to make them sit by themselves, don’t you?”

“I think it would be very ill-mannered,” said Mrs Warren quietly, “if you did. I dare say you are very fond of the lady who teaches you?”

“Oh, she’s as good as another – better than some. She knows us, you see, and don’t expect too much of us. But there, last spring, when she went away and Miss Bates took us, we weren’t going to go to her. Why, she gave us bad marks for talking, when she’d only just come. She hadn’t any call to find fault with us; she were just there to keep us together till teacher came back.”

“Well, I suppose, as she was kind enough to teach you, you were careful not to give any trouble to a stranger,” said Mrs Warren, “because that would have been rude.”

“We ain’t so rude as the Saint Jude’s girls,” said Florence virtuously. “They locked the door and kept their teacher waiting, and pretended they’d lost the key. That’s going too far, I say. If ever I’m a teacher I’ll not put up with such as that.”

“Could you be a teacher?” said Wyn, who had listened open-mouthed.

“Well,” said Florence, “they’ll always give little ones to the Bible class if we apply, and I’d keep ’em strict if I had ’em. But I don’t think as I’m religious enough.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Warren, “my Bessie says that we never feel our own defects so much as when we come to think of teaching others.”

“I ain’t confirmed yet,” said Florence, “but I mean to go up next spring. I say our church is good enough for anyone but George; he don’t think nothing of us. His place is a deal higher; he says we’re as old-fashioned as old-fashioned can be.”

Here Florence entered on a lively description of the ritual practised at the different churches of Rapley, showing considerable acquaintance with their external distinctions, while Wyn, who had never thought the Church services concerned him in any way except to behave properly at them, stared in amazement. Neither he nor his young master knew much about Church matters outside of Ashcroft.

Mrs Warren listened and pondered, and for the time being said nothing. Silence was a weapon with which Florrie’s chatter had never yet been encountered.

She resolved to make a good impression at the Sunday school, and show these ignorant rustics a little of what a young lady attending a Bible class was accustomed to. Indeed, as she stood by herself on the Sunday morning under the great overarching trees of the silent summer wood, something not very unlike a feeling of affection came into her heart for grave Miss Morel aunt and the dusty classroom and the gay girls sitting round the table.

“They will be quiet without me,” she thought and with more eagerness than the writer expected she began to read a letter from Matty which she had just received. After a little information as to the home news the letter went on: – “Dear Florrie you are not a little girl now, and I am going to write to you about something that I shouldn’t like mentioned to father or Aunt Stroud. I am sure you must remember poor Harry, as used to jump you up and down when you were little. You know he ran away, and I am afraid he did something very wicked; but only father knows what it was. But he went away from Ashcroft, and, dear Florrie, do remember about it, for everyone says it was a daring spirit led to his ruin, so do be a good girl, and mind what Mrs Warren say; for think of Harry, wandering in a cruel world.”

Florence only remembered a little and knew nothing of her eldest brother. She had no fear of touching on a tender subject, and thought that the simplest plan was to ask for an explanation; so as she and Wyn walked down to the Sunday school together that afternoon – they did not go in the morning – she broached the subject before they reached the gardener’s cottage, where Grace Elton was to join them.

“I say, Wyn, do you remember my brother Harry?”

Wyn coloured up and answered shyly, “We don’t ever talk about him.”

“No more do we. Why,” said Florence, staring at him with her great round eyes, “where is he?”

“I don’t know,” said Wyn.

“Who does?”

“Maybe the master do.”

“Mr Cunningham? What did Harry do?”

“Well, Florrie, so far as I know – only I don’t think mother knows I know it – he ran away with poor Mr Alwyn.”

“Ran away? What for?”

“Well, they was up at Ravenshurst having a lark – which they oughtn’t to have had anything to do with – and the lady’s jewels were all stolen at the same time. So folks say Harry did it – but whether Mr Alwyn knew – they never came back again.”

“Why should they put it on Harry?”

“He was always playing tricks.”

“Playing tricks isn’t stealing,” said Florence.

“Well, but,” said Wyn, “it isn’t as if he’d stood his trial – he ran away. And they say master had never have banished Mr Alwyn if he hadn’t done something downright disgraceful.”

“Does no one ever talk about him?”

“Well, old Granny do sometimes to mother; and once I saw his picture, and Harry’s too.”

“Where?”

“Well,” said Wyn, lowering his voice, “since you’re his sister I’ll tell you. One day last winter Mr Edgar was ill, and couldn’t come out of doors, and I went to tell him how all the creatures were; but he didn’t seem to take much interest, his back ached so. But he asked me to fetch him a little leather case out of a drawer, and he opened it and looked at it, and he let it fall. And when I picked it up I saw it was a photograph, and suddenly Mr Edgar said, ‘Look at it, Wyn;’ and there was my brother Ned and your brother Harry – I knew it must be – and a tall young gentleman, all sitting in the forest under the big beech with their guns, and Mr Edgar sitting swinging on the bough behind them, like other people, and Mr Edgar put his finger on Mr Alwyn’s picture and said, ‘If ever you see him again, Wyn, tell him I showed this to you. Don’t you forget.’ I ain’t likely to forget.”

“May be they’re dead,” said Florrie.

“Why, Florence, I look at it like this: It ain’t very likely two young men would both die. I think it over often,” said Wyn, “for I know Mr Edgar thinks of it. There’s places in the wood where I know he thinks of it, and I’d like to hunt all over the world to find Mr Alwyn and bring him back.”

Florence was older than Wyn, and a good deal more versed in the world’s ways.

“I expect they were a couple of bad ones,” she said, “or they’d have been back before now. Well, people may say I take after Harry; but I’ll never run away, not if they tell any number of talcs of me.”

“Hush,” said Wyn, “here’s Grace Elton. Don’t you say nothing, Florence, to no one.”

“I ain’t given to blabbing,” said Florence coolly.

Grace Elton was a pleasant, well-dressed girl, though in a far quieter style than Florence. Wyn fell behind with a pair of boy Eltons, and the girls chatted until they reached the little whitewashed school – close by the church, with a great climbing rose hanging over its rustic doorway.

Ashcroft was a very small village, and the school was a mixed one. On Sunday two classes of boys, under charge of the clergyman, Mr Murray, and Miss Hardman, occupied one side of the room. The day-school mistress taught the younger girls at the other; and under the pretty latticed window on a square of forms sat the elder ones. They were a flaxen-haired, rosy-faced set of children, simple and rather stolid-looking, among whom Wyn Warren, Grace Elton, and others of the head servants’ children were decidedly the superiors. As Florence and Grace came up to their class, a girl in a straight white frock, with a red sash and a large straw hat, came and sat down on the teacher’s chair. “Miss Geraldine’ll take us,” whispered the girls, as they stood up and curtseyed; “Mrs Murray’s got a cold.”