She lit the candles and put them on the writing-table at the foot of the bed, and then she sat by the writing-table and pulled out a sheet of paper and began to write. She wrote rapidly, with scarcely a pause.
Whenever she stopped the voice kept saying louder and clearer, louder and clearer, "Refuse the Evil and choose the Good."
Florence went on writing. At last she had finished. She folded up the sheet of paper and put it into an envelope. Then she hastily opened the drawer which contained the silver wreath and the ruby locket and the purse of gold and the parchment scroll. She collected them hastily, scarcely glancing at them, wrapped up in tissue-paper, then in brown, tied the little parcel with string, slipped the note inside the string and laid it on the table.
The voice which kept speaking to her was now quieter; it ceased to say, "Refuse the Evil," but once again through the silent room she seemed to hear the echo of the words, calm, great, all knowing, "_Choose the Good, choose the Good_," and then she hastily, very hastily got into her clothes, for it seemed to her that there was nothing else worth while in all the world but the following, the obeying of this voice.
To choose the Good was greater than to choose Happiness, greater than to choose Ambition, greater than to choose Wealth. It was the only thing.
So she dressed herself in her everyday clothes, and, taking the little parcel, she softly unfastened the door, and then she slipped down through the silent house and entered Sir John Wallis's study, and laid the packet which contained all the symbols of her success and her letter of confession on his desk. Having done this, she turned away, came upstairs softly, and, going down another corridor, opened the door of her mother's room and went in.
Mrs. Aylmer was lying sound asleep; it was not yet six o'clock. She was very tired and she was sleeping heavily; she was enjoying pleasant dreams in her sleep, dreams of Florence, her dear, her darling, the success Florence had won, the happy future which lay before her.
Mrs. Aylmer's dreams were all one glow of great bliss, and in the midst of them she felt a cold, small hand laid upon her own, and, opening her eyes, she saw Florence bending over her.
"Mummy," said Florence, "I want you to get up at once."
"My dear, dear child, what can be the matter?" said Mrs. Aylmer the less. She started up in bed, rubbed her sleepy eyes and stared at her daughter. "What is it, Flo?"
"I cannot tell you just yet, mother, but I want you, if ever, ever in the whole course of your life you really loved me, to stand by me now.
Something fearful has happened, mother dear, and I cannot tell you at present, but I want you to help me. I want to go back to Dawlish with you; I want to go back by the very first train this morning with you alone, Mummy; I will tell you on the way home what has happened, and then--but I cannot say any more; only come, mother, come. No one else would stand by me--but you will, won't you?"
"You frighten me dreadfully, Florence," said Mrs. Aylmer; "I cannot imagine what you are talking about. Have you lost your reason, my poor darling? Has this great, great triumph turned your brain? Oh, my child, my child!"
"No, mother," said poor Florence, "I am quite sane; I have not lost my reason. On the contrary, I think I have got it back again; I never felt saner than I do now, but--but you must help me, and there is no time to lose. I have done what I could; you must come away with me, mother, and we must go at once. I have looked up the trains. I'll go myself and wake up one of the servants and get a trap ordered, and we will go. Have you got a little money--that's the main thing?"
"I have got five pounds left out of Sir John's cheque."
"Then that will be splendid. I only want just enough to get back to Dawlish, to the little old house and to you. Oh, come, Mummy! oh, come!"
Florence's words were very brave and very insistent, and Mrs. Aylmer roused herself. She got out of bed, feeling a dull wonder stealing over her. Florence now took the command, and hastened her mother into her clothes, and herself packed her mother's things.
"Oh, my dear child, my best dress! don't let it get crushed," said the little widow.
Florence's trembling hands smoothed out the rich folds, she placed the dress in the top of the trunk, and before half-past six that morning Mrs. Aylmer was dressed and her things packed.
Then Florence went down again through the house and awoke one of the servants, and got her to wake a groom, who put a horse to a trap and brought it round to a side door, and so it came to pass that before seven o'clock that morning Mrs. Aylmer and Florence had left Cherry Court Park forever.
When they got into the train poor Mrs. Aylmer turned to Florence and begged for an explanation.
"I guess something dreadful has happened, but I can't imagine what it is," she said. "What does this mean, Florence?"
"It means, Mummy," said Florence, "that I have done that which no one but a mother would forgive. Listen, and I will tell you."
And then she told the whole story, from the very beginning, and Mrs.
Aylmer listened with a cold feeling at her heart, and at first a great anger there; but when the story was finished, and Florence timidly took her mother's hands and looked into her eyes and said, "Are you a true enough mother to love me through it all?" then little Mrs. Aylmer's heart melted, and she flung her arms round Florence's neck and whispered through her sobs, "Oh, my child! oh, my child! I had a dreadful feeling last night when your Aunt Susan said that you were my daughter no longer; but this--this gives you to me forever."
"Of course it does, Mummy; Aunt Susan will never speak to me again.
Oh, Mummy, what it is to have you! What should I do without you now?"
The rest of this story can be told in a few words. It would be impossible to depict the astonishment, the consternation, the amazement which Sir John felt when he read poor Florence's confession. After thinking matters over a short time, he sent for Mrs. Clavering, and he and that good woman had a long conference together. The upshot of it was that the guests were allowed to depart without knowing what had really happened, Sir John saying that he would write to them afterwards.
Bertha Keys was sent for, severely reprimanded, and dismissed from her post with ignominy. She never returned to Cherry Court School, leaving Cherry Court Park for a distant part of the country that very day.
This history has nothing further to do with her. Whether she succeeded in the future or whether she failed, whether she turned from the evil of her ways or not, must all be matters of conjecture.
The main fact which concerns us is the following: Kitty won the Scholarship, after all, for the very next day Sir John visited Cherry Court School and told the bare outline of poor Florence's sin and confession. To Kitty was given the purse of gold, and the ruby locket, the crown of bay-leaves and the parchment scroll. They were given to a very sad Kitty, for the thought of Florence's sin completely overpowered both her and Mary Bateman, and indeed every girl in the school.
Sir John returned to his own house a sadder and a wiser man.
"After all, did I do right to offer this great temptation?" he said to himself, and this thought so affected him, and occurred to him so often, that a week later he went down to Dawlish and had an interview with Mrs. Aylmer and Florence, and the result was that Florence was sent to a good school and had a chance of educating herself. She was not too proud to take this help from Sir John, for it relieved her from all claims on her Aunt Susan in the future.
As to Mrs. Aylmer the great, never from the day when Sir John, in a few words, told her what her niece had done, has that worthy woman mentioned the name, Florence Aylmer. She still gives Mrs. Aylmer her fifty pounds a year, but, as she herself declared it, "I have washed my hands of that wicked girl once and forever."
THE END.