L. Meade - A Very Naughty Girl

It was a day of great excitement, and Audrey Wynford stood by her schoolroom window and looked out. She was a tall girl of sixteen, with her hair hanging in a long, fair plait down her back. She stood with her hands folded behind her and an expectant expression on her face.

Up the avenue a stream of people were coming. Some came in cabs, some on bicycles; some walked. They all turned in the direction of the front entrance, and Audrey heard their voices rising and falling as they entered the house, walked down the hall, and disappeared into some region at the other end.

“It is all detestable,” she muttered; “and just when Evelyn is coming, too. How strange she will think it! I wish father would drop this horrid custom. I do not approve of it at all.”

Just then her governess, a bright-looking girl about six years Audrey’s senior, came into the room.

“Well,” she cried, “and what are you doing here? I thought you were going to ride this afternoon.”

“How can I?” said Audrey, shrugging her shoulders. “I shall be met at every turn.”

“And why not?” said Miss Sinclair. “You are not ashamed of being seen.”

“It is quite detestable,” said Audrey.

She crossed the room, flung herself into a deep straw armchair in front of a blazing log fire, and took up a magazine.

“It is all horrid,” she continued as she rapidly turned the pages; “you know it, Miss Sinclair, as well as I do.”

“If I were you,” said Miss Sinclair, “I should be proud – very proud – to belong to an old family who had kept a custom like this in vogue.”

“If you belonged to the old family you would not,” said Audrey. “Every one laughs at us. I call it perfectly horrid. What possible good can it do that all the people of the neighborhood, and the strangers who come to stay in the town, should make free of Wynford Castle on New Year’s Day? It makes me cross anyhow. I am sorry to be cross to you, Miss Sinclair; but I am, and that is a fact.”

Miss Sinclair sat down on another chair.

“I like it,” she said after a pause.

“Why?” asked Audrey.

“There were some quite hungry people passing through the hall as I came to you just now.”

“Let them be hungry somewhere else, not here,” said the angry girl. “It was all very well when some ancestor of mine first started the custom; but that father, a man of the present day, up-to-date in every sense of the word, should carry it on – that he should keep open house for every individual who chooses to come here on New Year’s Day – is past endurance. Last year between two and three hundred people dined or supped or had tea at the Castle, and I believe, from the appearance of the avenue, there will be still more to-day. The house gets so dirty, for one thing, for half of them don’t think of wiping their feet; and then we run a chance of being robbed, for how do we know that there are not adventurers in the throng? If I were the country-folk I would be too proud to come; but they are not – not a bit.”

“I cannot agree with you,” said Miss Sinclair. “It is a splendid old custom, and I hope it will not be abolished.”

“Perhaps Evelyn will abolish it when she comes in for the property,” said Audrey in a low tone. Her face looked scarcely amiable as she said the words.

Miss Sinclair regarded her with a puzzled expression.

“Audrey dear,” she said after a pause, “I am very fond of you.”

“And I of you,” said Audrey a little unwillingly. “You are more friend than governess. I should like best to go to school, of course; but as father says that that is quite impossible, I have to put up with the next best; and you are a very good next best.”

“Then if I am, may I just as a friend, and one who loves you very dearly, make a remark?”

“It is going to be something odious,” said Audrey – “that goes without saying – but I suppose I’ll listen.”

“Don’t you think you are just a wee bit in danger of becoming selfish, Audrey?” said her governess.

“Am I? Perhaps so; I am afraid I don’t care.”

“You would if you thought it over; and this is New Year’s Day, and it is a lovely afternoon, and you might come for a ride – I wish you would.”

“I will not run the chance of meeting those folks on any consideration whatever,” said Audrey; “but I will go for a walk with you, if you like.”

“Done,” said Miss Sinclair. “I have to go on a message for Lady Wynford to the lodge; will you come by the shrubberies and meet me there?”

“All right,” replied Audrey; “I will go and get ready.”

She left the room.

After her pupil had left her, Miss Sinclair sat for a time gazing into the huge log fire.

She was a very pretty girl, with a high-bred look about her. She had received all the advantages which modern education could afford, and at the age of three-and-twenty had left Girton with the assurance from all her friends that she had a brilliant future before her. The first step in that future seemed bright enough to the handsome, high-spirited girl. Lady Wynford met her in town, took a fancy to her on the spot, and asked her to conduct Audrey’s education. Miss Sinclair received a liberal salary and every comfort and consideration. Audrey fell quickly in love with her, and a more delightful pupil governess never had. The girl was brimming over with intelligence, was keenly alive to the responsibilities of her own position, was absolutely original, and as a rule quite unselfish.

“Poor Audrey! she has her trials before her, all the same,” thought the young governess now. “Well, I am very happy here, and I hope nothing will disturb our present arrangement for some time. As to Evelyn, we have yet to discover what sort of girl she is. She comes this evening. But there, I am forgetting all about Audrey, and she must be waiting for me.”

It so happened that Audrey Wynford was doing nothing of the sort. She had hastily put on her warm jacket and fur cap and gone out into the grounds. The objectionable avenue, with its streams of people coming and going, was to be religiously avoided, and Audrey went in the direction of a copse of young trees, which led again through a long shrubbery in the direction of the lodge gates.

It was the custom from time immemorial in the Wynford family to keep open house on New Year’s Day. Any wayfarer, gentle or simple, man or woman, boy or girl, could come up the avenue and ring the bell at the great front-door, and be received and fed and refreshed, and sent again on his or her way with words of cheer. The Squire himself as a rule received his guests, but where that was impossible the steward of the estate was present to conduct them to the huge hall which ran across the back of the house, where unlimited refreshments were provided. No one was sent away. No one was refused admission on this day of all days. The period of the reception was from sunrise to sundown. At sundown the hospitality came to an end; the doors of the house were shut and no more visitors were allowed admission. An extra staff of servants was generally secured for the occasion, and the one and only condition made by the Squire was, that as much food as possible might be eaten, that each male visitor might drink good wine or sound ale to his heart’s content, that each might warm himself thoroughly by the huge log fires, but that no one should take any food away. This, in the case of so promiscuous an assemblage, was necessary. To Audrey, however, the whole thing was more or less a subject of dislike. She regarded the first day of each year as a penance; she shrank from the subject of the guests, and on this special New Year’s Day was more aggrieved and put out than usual. More guests had arrived than had ever come before, for the people of the neighborhood enjoyed the good old custom, and there was not a villager, not a trades-person, nor even a landed proprietor near who did not make it a point of breaking bread at Wynford Castle on New Year’s Day. The fact that a man of position sat down side by side with a tramp or a laborer made no difference; there was no distinction of rank amongst the Squire’s guests on this day.