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.