Maud Florence Nellie Whittaker was standing before her little
looking-glass, getting ready for her afternoon Sunday school. She was a
fine tall girl of fifteen, rather stoutly made, with quantities of light
brown hair, which fell on her shoulders and surrounded her plump rosy
face with a perfect halo of fringe and friz. She had hazel eyes, which
were rather bold and rather stupid, a cocked up nose, and full red lips,
which could look sulky; but which were now curved in smiling
satisfaction at the new summer hat, all creamy lace and ribbons, which
she was fixing at exactly the right angle above her curly hair. She had
on a very fashionable cream-coloured costume to match the hat, and
altogether she was justified in considering herself as one of the best
dressed girls in her class, and one whose good looks were not at all
likely to pass unnoticed as she took her way along the sunshiny road
that led into the large country town of Rapley. Her fine frock, her big
girlish form, and her abundant hair seemed to fill up the little bedroom
in which she stood; which had a sloping roof and small latticed windows,
though it was comfortably furnished and had no more appearance of
poverty than its inhabitant. Florrie Whittaker lived in the lodge at
the gate of the great suburban cemetery, which had replaced all the
disused churchyards of Rapley. Her father was the gatekeeper and
caretaker, and as the cemetery was a very large one the post was
important and the salary good. Florrie and her brothers and sisters had
run up and down the rows of tomb-stones and played in the unoccupied
spaces for as long as most of them could recollect. They saw many
funerals everyday, and heard the murmur of the funeral service and the
toll of the funeral bell whenever they went out, but it never occurred
to them to think that tomb-stones were dismal or funerals impressive;
they looked with cheerful living eyes at their natural surroundings, and
never thought a bit more of the end of their own lives because they so
constantly saw the end of other people's. Florrie finished herself up
with a red rosebud, found her hymn-book and a pair of new kid gloves,
and then with a bounce and a clatter ran down the narrow stairs into the
family sitting-room below; where the din of voices betokened the
father's absence, and the bustle attendant on starting for school on the
part of a boy and two girls younger than herself.
"You'll all be late, children, and get bad marks from your teachers,"
cried Florence, in a loud gay voice.
"And what'll you be?" was the not unnatural retort of the next sister,
Sybil.
"It ain't the same thing in _my_ class," returned Florrie. "Teacher
knows that girls of my age can't be punctual like little ones. They've
to clear away, and mind the children, and all sorts of things to do."
"And what have you been clearing away?"
"And who have you been minding of?"
"And what have _you_ had to do but put your fine hat on?" rose in a
chorus from the indignant children; while another voice put in--
"When _I_ went to school the elders came punctual for the sake of an
example."
"Oh my! Aunt Lizzie, I didn't see you," said Florrie. "How d'ye do?
There's plenty of examples nowadays if one wanted them, which I don't."
"I'm sure, Aunt Lizzie," put in the eldest sister, a tall young woman of
nineteen or so, "there isn't harder work in the world than in trying to
set an example to _Florrie_."
"You don't set a nice one," said Florrie.
"It would be a deal better for you, Florence," said her aunt, "if you
did take example by some one. You're getting a big girl, and that hat
and frock are a deal too smart to run about the roads in. When I was a
girl, I had a nice brown mushroom hat and a neat black silk jacket, and
pleased enough I was with them as a new thing."
"And did _your_ aunts wear mushroom hats and black silk jackets?" said
Florrie.
"My aunts? no, indeed! Whatever are you thinking of, Florence? My
aunts were most respectable women, and wore bonnets, when bonnets _was_
bonnets. Hats, indeed!"
"Your hat was in the fashion then, and mine's in the fashion now," said
Florence saucily; but Aunt Lizzie, refusing to perceive that her niece
had made a point, continued, "Aunt Eliza Brown was married to a man in
the grocery way, and Aunt Warren, as you very well know, was housekeeper
to Mr Cunningham at Ashcroft Hall, and married the head keeper, which
her son has the situation to this day."
"I do tell Florrie," said the elder sister again, "that she'd look a
deal more like a real lady if she dressed a bit quieter than she does."
"I don't want to look like a lady. I want to have my fun," said
Florrie. "Come on, Ethel, if you're coming; I want to catch up with
Carrie and Ada. Good-bye, aunt; I like lessons best in school."
And off dashed Florrie through the summer sunshine, between the avenue
of monuments, her hair flying, her skirts swinging, and her loud lively
voice sounding behind and before her as she scurried along.
"Well!" said Aunt Lizzie, "she be a one, surely. That girl wants a
tight hand over her, Martha Jane, if ever a girl die yet."
Aunt Lizzie--otherwise Mrs Stroud--was an excellent person, and had
"kept her brother's family together," as she expressed it, ever since
their mother's death; but she was not invariably pleasant, and her
eldest niece disliked being called Martha Jane much more than Florence
disliked being scolded for her finery. When all the younger ones had
such beautiful names--Maud Florence Nellie, Ethel Rosamond, and Sybil
Eva Constance--it was hard upon her that she had been born before her
mother's love of reading, and perhaps her undeveloped love of the
beautiful things of life, had overcome the family traditions. "Martha"
was bad enough, and she did not know that the children's use of "Matty"
was a fashionable variation of it. But "Martha Jane!"
She was not, however, saucy like Florence, so she only sighed a little
and said:
"I do my best, indeed, aunt; but won't you lay off your mantle and sit
down comfortably? Father won't be in yet. He likes to be round, when
so many friends come to visit the graves and put flowers, in case of
mischief, and the children won't be back for near two hours."
Mrs Stroud was a stout comfortable woman, not very unlike what her
niece Florence might be after five and thirty more years in a workaday
world had marked and subdued her beaming countenance. She was glad to
sit down after the hot walk, take off her cloth mantle, which, though an
eminently dignified and respectable garment, was rather a heavy one for
a June day, and fan herself with her pocket-handkerchief, while she
inquired into the well-being of her nieces and nephews. Martha Jane was
of a different type--dark and slim, with pretty, rather dreamy grey
eyes, and a pale refined face. She was a good girl, and tried to do her
duty by her young brothers and sisters; but she had not very strong
health or spirits, and in many ways she wished that her life was
different from what fate had made it.
"That there Florrie," said Mrs Stroud, "ain't the sort of girl to be
allowed to _stravage_ about the roads by herself for two hours."
"Why, aunt, she must go to her Bible class," said Martha meekly.
"Well," said Mrs Stroud, "there's girls that aren't calculated for
Bible classes, in my opinion. Does she come in punctual from her work
on weekdays?"
"Oh, yes, aunt, and it's supposed that George meets her. Not that he
always does; but she has to look out for him. And Mrs Lee keeps her
very strict at the shop. She don't have her hair flying about on
weekdays, nor dress fine, and she's a good girl for her work and very
civil, Mrs Lee says. You wouldn't know Florrie when she's behaving."
"Pity she don't behave always then," said Mrs Stroud.
"That's just the thing," said Martha, "I tell her, aunt, constant. I
tell her to read the tales out of the library, and see what the young
ladies are like that are written about in them. And she says a tale may
be a tale, but she ain't in a book, and she don't want to be. Florrie's
always got an answer ready."
"Well, Martha Jane, I don't hold much with wasting time over tales and
novels myself. You read a deal too many, and where's the good?"
"I should waste my time more than I do but for some talcs I've read,"
said Martha, colouring.
"Well, `Waste not, want not.' Read your Bible, I say."
"That's not in the Bible, Aunt Lizzie."
"It might be," said Mrs Stroud; "there's a deal of truth in it. But,
bless you, Martha, it ain't talcs nor nonsense of that kind that
signifies. Florrie must be held in. She's that saucy, and that
bouncing and set on her own way, that there's only one in the family
she's like, Martha Jane, and that's 'Enery himself."
"Harry! Oh, Aunt Lizzie! But she's a girl."
"Well, Martha Jane, and if she is? There's plenty of ways for girls to
trouble their families. You wasn't more than eleven or so when 'Enery
went; but surely you can recollect him, ramping round. Why, when he
come to sit with his family he was like an engine with the steam up for
starting off again! And he went about that audacious!"
"I can remember his jumping me off the tomb-stones," said Martha.
"Ah! He jumped off tomb-stones once too often. It all came of ramping
about and reading, so there's lessons in it for you and Florence both.
Well, I promised a call on Mrs Taylor at the upper lodge, so I'll
stroll up quietly and meet your father, and come back for a cup of tea."
Martha made no objection to this proposal; for though she never
"answered back," nor asserted herself against her elders, she strongly
resented the connection between ramping about and reading, and between
herself and the troublesome Florence, and was very glad to get rid of
her aunt for the present.
She sat still when Mrs Stroud, having assumed her mantle and opened her
parasol, walked up the cemetery to meet her brother. She really wished
to be a good elder sister; but what could she do with a girl only three
years younger than herself, and with more "go" in her little finger than
poor Martha had in her whole body?
Surely Florence was not going to be like poor Harry! Martha called him
"poor Harry" in her thoughts--it is an epithet often applied half in
kindness and half in contempt to the family ne'er-do-weel; but she had
not a very pleasant recollection of this absent brother. If Florrie was
rude, inconsiderate, and bouncing, she was nothing to Harry at fifteen.
Martha recollected his utterly unscrupulous teasing and bullying
alternating with rough good-nature, which had made her hopelessly afraid
of him. He got situations, and lost them by practical jokes. He was
started in a good place at a large printing establishment in Rapley,
and, after sundry smaller feats, had sent the rector of the parish a
packet of playbills announcing the performance that night of "The
Corsican Brothers" and "Cut off with a Shilling;" while the manager of
the theatre received the rector's notices of a missionary meeting, also
being got up in a hurry on some special occasion. Neither the rector
nor the manager spared the printer, and as Harry Whittaker had been
heard sniggering with a companion over the exchange, it could not pass
as a mistake, so that situation came to an end. Then he had to content
himself with being errand-boy at a linen-draper's. There somehow the
ball dresses which should have been delivered to Lady Temple in time for
the county ball floated down the river instead, and were landed the next
afternoon mashed up in their cardboard boxes.
And worst of all, a dreadful night, which Matty never did forget, when
some poor people, coming in the dusk to one of those sad hurried evening
funerals which terrible infection sometimes necessitates, had been
frightened--how she did not know, but cruelly and unfeelingly by Harry's
means. Martha remembered her father's just annoyance and anger. Harry
had been sent away to his Uncle Warren's, where something else
happened--Martha never knew what--and that was the last she heard of her
eldest brother.
A little while before, mother had died, and father grew severe and
strict, and Aunt Lizzie bustled them about till a year ago, when, late
in life, she married a well-to-do ironmonger, and turned her energies on
to her step-children.
Since then Martha Jane had done her best for her three sisters, for the
brother, George, who had a good post as clerk on the railway, and for
Johnnie and Arthur, the youngest of the family, who still attended the
day school. The Whittaker girls had never been sent to a national
school, but had got, or were getting, their education at one of the many
"Establishments for Young Ladies" which prevailed at Rapley. It was
supposed that in this way they would be less likely to "make
acquaintances;" but acquaintances are very easily made by sociable
people, and Mrs Stroud had always thought it the proper thing to send
them all to Sunday school. Martha, however, had had very little of
this. She was a good girl, with a turn for church-going, and the
interest of most well-disposed girls of her day in varieties of church
services, church music, and church decorations; but she had no personal
tie to the church which the Whittakers attended, and she had not found
the connection between these tastes and the duties of life.
She was rather imaginative, and she read every story book she could lay
her hands on--religious domestic tales from the parochial library,
novels from that provided for the servants of the railway company, which
her brother brought home, and quantities of penny serial fiction. Very
little of it was absolutely bad. Martha would not have read it if she
had known it to be so, but a great deal of it was extremely unreal,
silly, and frivolous. Martha's taste and critical powers were so
uncultivated that she hardly knew that one book was of a higher tone
than another, any more than she knew that it was better written. There
were fine sentiments which she admired in all of them about love and
constancy and self-devotion, and perhaps Martha was not to blame if she
thought that people usually died in carrying out these virtues. Still,
the character of the books did make a difference to her; for she was not
one to whom a tale was nothing but a tale, and if she learnt from some
that ladies wore wonderful and ever-varying costumes, and spent their
time in what she would have called "talking about the gentlemen," she
learnt from others that they studied hard, and devoted themselves much
to the good of their fellow-creatures and the comfort of their families.
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.