Maud Florence Nellie: or, Don't care!

The kind-faced, white-haired old clergyman read the prayer, and then the first class began to repeat fluently, but with an accent that Florence could hardly follow, a surprising number of lessons.

“Can you say your collect?” said Miss Geraldine to Florence.

“No, teacher. We don’t learn lessons at home – we’ve no time for it,” said Florence.

“You can learn it for next week,” said Miss Geraldine, with a calmness that astonished Florence as much as the other girls were amazed at hearing Miss Geraldine called “teacher.”

But there was something in the unconscious composure of this slip of a girl, who looked as if she had never been disobeyed in her life, and did not know what a struggle to keep order meant, that impressed Florence with a curious sense of fellow-feeling.

“She’s got a spirit of her own,” she thought; but Geraldine was only secure of her position and unquestioned in her relation to the girls she was teaching.

“Yes, teacher; and I’ll look over a hymn too if you like, teacher,” said Florence with alacrity.

“A psalm. Grace Elton will show you.”

When the lessons were over the young lady asked questions on them in a clear, steady little voice, which were nicely answered by the girls, and then proceeded to hear the Catechism, and, thinking to be polite to the new-comer and give her an easy piece, asked her her name, to begin with.

Florence was not accustomed to say lessons standing up, nor to say the Catechism at all, and at the first attempt to repeat her long name she went off into a hopeless giggle, and stuffed her pocket-handkerchief into her mouth. Some of the other girls giggled also. Miss Geraldine’s dark eyes gave a little flash.

“When you have done laughing, Florence, I’ll ask you again. Grace, go on.”

Florence did not know the next answer that came to her turn, and it soon became apparent that a great girl of fifteen could not say her Catechism – a fact common enough at Rapley, but unknown at Ashcroft.

She pouted and shook her shoulders; but there was an odd fascination for her in this young, firm little teacher, and when the marks were given at the end of school she anticipated notice for her giggling by saying with a benevolent smile:

“Law, teacher, I’ll say my Catechism next Sunday. I ain’t a-going to give you any trouble.”

Geraldine had never seen anyone in the least like Florence before. Her smiling absence of deference and good-natured patronage amazed her.

“I suppose you don’t intend to give trouble,” she said. “I am sorry you don’t know your Catechism, but we’ll try and teach you while you’re here. Learn the first three answers for next Sunday.”

The two pair of bright eyes met, a little defiantly, but somehow Florence felt uncomfortable.

“Well, she is a plucky little thing,” she said to her neighbour as they rose. “She ain’t afraid of us.”

“Miss Geraldine!”

“I like the look of her,” said Florrie. “I shall try behaving myself. I can if I choose; some girls can’t.”

Chapter Eight

Granny

After church Wyn went to attend to the supper of some of the animals which were in his special charge, and Mrs Warren took Florence up to the great house to see her old mother-in-law, who had once been housekeeper, but was now old and rheumatic, and confined to one room. As they walked through the park they met Geraldine and her governess. Mrs Warren made her dignified little curtsey, and Florrie grinned from ear to ear with extreme good-nature, and what she felt to be the kindest notice of her new teacher. Mrs Warren noticed, but again said nothing. They walked through the great fruit-gardens round to the back entrance and into the servants’ hall, from which they went first to visit Mrs Hay in the housekeeper’s room. Mrs Warren was a welcome guest, and there was plenty of politeness to her young friend. Florence was an observant girl; her ideas of superior service had risen hitherto to a villa “where three were kept.” These solemn upper servants, with their vast comfortable premises, their handsome clothes, and their intense sense of superiority, were more overawing to her than their masters and mistresses would have been.

“They can’t have much to do but look at each other,” she thought, with some truth; for the establishment at Ashcroft had never been reduced when the gay rush of social life, for which it had been calculated, had stopped altogether.

Aunt Stroud had certainly talked of the Ashcroft household, but Florence had been rather in the habit of supposing that all these respectable ladies and gentlemen had been invented for her edification. Like all girls of her sort, Florence, if she did feel shy, had absolutely no manners at all and when Mrs Hay spoke to her she only sniggered and stuck out her foot, feeling relieved when they went upstairs to see “Granny.”

Mrs Warren was a little old woman in a black gown and old-fashioned frilled cap. She had been in the family when the present Mr Cunningham was born, and she was always treated by him with the greatest respect. Her great trouble was that she was too lame to go and see Master Edgar, and it had been no small loss to the lonely Edgar when old “Bunny,” as by some childish play on her name of Warren she was always called, was no longer able to pay him visits, and give him all the petting which, poor fellow, he ever got.

She knew all the family troubles, and regarded them as her own; if she could have brought Alwyn back or cured Edgar, she would have sacrificed herself with entire and unconscious devotion. That Miss Geraldine “did not have the advantages nor the company of other young ladies” was a constant regret to her. She had a cat and a canary bird which lived in harmony together; and in her room Wyn frequently nursed white mice, or dormice, on the plea that they would amuse Mr Edgar; they certainly amused himself, and possibly Granny too. When Mrs Warren and Florrie arrived Wyn was already established, eating buttered toast, with his infant dormice asleep on his pocket-handkerchief. Granny never thought that animals or babies were dirty, noisy, or troublesome. She preferred her cat to her carpet, and her young masters and mistresses and grandchildren to her afternoon nap.

As she was filling up her brown teapot, which had already for some time been drawing on the hob, and was setting Wyn and Florence to fetch out various delicacies from her cupboard, a quick step sounded, and Geraldine came rushing in, and, flinging her arms round the old woman’s neck, kissed her heartily.

“How d’ye do, Bunny? Oh! good afternoon, Mrs Warren. I didn’t know you were having tea. Sit down, please.”

Florence had stood up because all the others did.

“Have a bit of cake, Miss Geraldine, my dear?” said Granny coaxingly.

“Miss Geraldine grows a tall young lady,” said Mrs Warren.

“They don’t give us half such nice cake in the schoolroom. Oh! – baby dormice! How lovely!”

“Would you be pleased to accept of a pair, Miss Geraldine?” said Wyn.

“You don’t think Apollo would eat them? He has eaten my German exercises and half a sheet of music.”

“There now, you’d better bring him up to me, Missy, and only have him out sometimes,” said Granny.

“He likes German – I don’t,” said Geraldine. “Wyn, if you like you can take Florence Whittaker to see the peacocks.”

“Thank you, ma’am, I will,” said Wyn, while Florence grinned and sniggered.

Geraldine went off in a whirlwind as she had come, and after tea Wyn and Florence went out together, leaving daughter and mother-in-law for a comfortable chat.

“That’s a fine girl of poor Jane Whittaker’s, but she don’t seem to have no manners at all,” said Granny.

“She hasn’t,” said Mrs Warren. “She don’t seem to know how to behave to anyone, except as if they were girls like herself. Liza Stroud wants to get her into good service, but she ain’t anyhow fit for it. No lady, nor no lady’s housekeeper, would put up with her for a week with them manners. But I’m in hopes to stroke her down gradually and unconscious-like, for she’s very like her poor brother, and ’tis no manner of use driving her. Miss Geraldine’s a fine young lady too, and favours poor Mr Alwyn remarkably.”

“Yes, there it is again,” said the old lady. “Miss Geraldine’s kept so strict in the schoolroom that she don’t know what to do when she gets out of it. She ought to be with ladies in the drawing-room, as would bring her on to receive company like her dear mamma, and sit down nice with her needlework. Oh, dear! that was a sore time, that there unlucky night at Ravenshurst.”

“Granny,” said Mrs Warren, “I’ve often wondered what you thought became of the jewels.”

“My dear, I’ve thought of they jewels day and night, nor never could give a guess about them. I knew the young gentlemen had some mischief on hand, laughing and plotting, and Mr Edgar told me some of the tricks as they played on each other up at Ravenshurst – which I told him weren’t such as young gentlemen and ladies should condescend to. But there, they all went off on their visit, and only the master and Mr Edgar came back.”

“I was sitting here,” pursued Granny, “in the dusk that next evening, when Mr Alwyn came rushing up the stairs – dear, dear! Miss Geraldine do fly up them just as he used – and told me to fetch Edgar to wish him good-bye, as he’d never see or speak to his father again. So I found Mr Edgar, and he came, but slow, and looking as white as that handkerchief. But they joked and laughed, and tried to be the one as fierce as the other. Then Mr Alwyn turned round to me, and swore Harry Whittaker never saw the jewels. ‘And you don’t think I’ve got ’em, Bunny?’ said Mr Alwyn, laughing. But they wouldn’t say not another word, and they was both awful hard when they spoke of master. But they made believe to laugh and make a mock of it when they was wishing each other good-bye, only I could see poor Mr Edgar was half-choking all the time, and when his brother was gone he near fainted. But never did I think when he laughed again, and said he’d had a slip and twisted his back, and the pain took him sudden, of all that was to come of it, and that he’d never come running up they stairs again.”

“Well, then,” said Mrs Charles Warren, “all we ever knew was that there was that bit put in the paper about a foolish and unjustifiable trick had been taken advantage of by dishonest people – valuable jewels, hidden in play, had disappeared. The person who hid them had owned that it had been done without the connivance of the young men whose names had been mentioned. But who were that person?”

“Well,” said Granny, “I don’t know, and I don’t know as even Mr Edgar knows. But there, the fact’s against them, and ’twas a terrible ending to a foolish trick.”

“Ravenshurst is full again this summer,” said Mrs Warren. “Sir Philip and Lady Carleton are coming down, and if Florrie were a sensible girl I might get her a temporary place under the housekeeper there; but it do go against me to have anything to do with that house.”

“Well, I’d not send her there,” said Granny; “she’s a deal too bouncing now for any lady’s house.” Mrs Warren saw no occasion for some time to change this verdict. Florence “bounced” more as she became more at her ease. She did not mean to misbehave herself, but her notions of behaviour were so very unlike Mrs Warren’s. The kindest thing that could be said of her was that she meant well, but unfortunately she did very badly. Moreover, she did not appear to have a single aspiration after better things. She had lived the life of a little animal, bent on nothing but on pleasing herself; but as she was not a mere animal, but a human soul, with human powers for good or evil, evil was getting terribly the upper hand. It was not so much what Florence did as what she was that was the pity. Girls are refined and softened, sometimes by intellectual tastes and a mental power of choosing the better part, and more often, in Florence’s rank of life, by the many self-denials, the care of little ones, the constant unselfishness born of the hard struggle of life in the working class. Florence had no intellectual tastes, and had never known any struggle. She had been ignorant and comfortable all her life, and her mind was full of silly common thoughts and fancies, and thoughts and fancies worse than merely silly. She was vain and selfish, saucy and curious. She did not love anyone very much; she had no wants or wishes except to please herself. She was so much bolder than other girls that she attracted more notice, but she was not at all exceptional, unhappily. As for religion, what religion can a creature have who never felt a superior and never knew a need? And religion had not come much before Florence except in the form of respectable observance. Mrs Warren, who in a still and quiet way was a religious woman, wondered how to teach her better, before, as she put it to herself, “the poor thing was taught by trouble.”

There was teaching of an unusual kind coming to Florence, and the absence of irritation caused by Mrs Warren’s quiet management was laying her open to new impressions. But the attraction she felt to Geraldine Cunningham was really the only new idea that at present touched her, and it took the form of an intense curiosity. She stared at her whenever she had the chance – at school, in church, wherever she met her; she tried to find out what the young lady did; she questioned Wyn, and at last was suddenly struck by a connecting link. Both their brothers were missing. Florence had never cared a straw about Harry, nor, indeed, had Geraldine for Alwyn; but the idea was quite pleasant. They each had a strict father and a lost brother. The odd touch of romance was Maud Florence Nellie’s first awakening and softening.