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.