Читать книгу A Dancer from the Abbey - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 3

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“Are you my little Pirouette?” The man jumped from his car and addressed the girl who sat on the low wall of the Abbey garden.

“I shouldn’t think so,” she retorted. “I’ve never been called a pirouette. What makes you think I might be yours?”

“I don’t think so, now.” He was looking at her carefully. “No, I’m sure you’re not. Where is she?”

He had been told to look for a girl with a riot of yellow curls. This girl’s hair was so fair as to be almost white—lint-white; and it curled demurely and very neatly round her neck. She wore a smock of khaki-coloured linen, with breeches showing below, and a soft hat lay on her knee.

“It sounds to me as if you want Mary Damayris,” she remarked. “I’m merely Benedicta.”

“Benedicta is a good introduction to an Abbey! Weren’t strangers always welcomed with a blessing?”

“I believe they were. I shall have to sit here for ever.” Benedicta’s eyes gleamed.

“To bless strangers,” he agreed. “Perhaps you could begin with me. I do want to see Mary Damayris. Is she here?”

“She’s in that corner, making a bonfire. This is her garden; she made it. I’m her assistant.”

The visitor’s eyes roved over the flowery stretch that lay round the old gate-house and reached to the Abbey walls. “Made it, did she? She’s done a good spot of work. You aren’t assisting very hard at the moment, are you?”

“I’m tired. We’re all tired to-day,” Benedicta said, with dignity. “We went to a Coronation last night. The new Queen—May-Queen, at her school—lives here and we went to see her crowned. She’s Queen Lavender.”

“Most suitable, if she lives in a garden,” he responded. “But perhaps you mean she lives in this Abbey?”

“No, at the Hall. The Abbey is in the garden of the Hall. She’s really Lady Rosalind Kane, but we forget all that. She’ll be called Lavender now.”

He raised his brows. “And watching her crowned exhausted you and Mary Damayris?”

“It was more than that. When we came home we talked and were all rather excited. I don’t think any of us slept much. If we hadn’t talked you wouldn’t be allowed to ask about Mary Damayris,” Benedicta remarked.

“That’s a cryptic saying! May I ask why?”

“Because she wouldn’t talk about her dancing. Strangers weren’t supposed to know she had ever been Mary Damayris. She was Damaris Ellerton, or just good old Damson, the Abbey Gardener.”

“I’m coming in to talk to you,” he announced, and went along by the wall and entered the garden by the gate.

Benedicta sat waiting for him. “Who are you?” she asked. “Did you know Damaris in town? No, you can’t have done, for you mistook me for her. But you know about her and you came to find her?”

“I’m Brian Grandison. My dad wrote the music for some of her ballets. I’ve been in South Africa for seven years, and though, of course, I have come home to see my people at times, I never happened to see Mary Damayris dance. I heard of the accident that broke her career and of her disappearance to live in the country, and I’ve met some of her former friends, since I came back to London. I want to meet her, even if I can never see her dance. I was greatly moved by the story of her wild leap to save her friend, which ruined her own life. So I came to look her up.”

“I see.” Benedicta gazed at him with interest. “It’s a good thing you didn’t come yesterday. She didn’t want to talk about those times. But everything’s different to-day.”

“Another mysterious remark! Won’t you explain?”

“She’s going back, to be a dancer again,” Benedicta said simply. “That’s what she told us last night. That’s why we talked, and why we couldn’t sleep.”

“So!” He stood looking down at her. “But I thought she couldn’t dance?”

“She found yesterday that she could get the position she’d found impossible; in her hip, you know. She’d been trying for months, but she couldn’t do it. Yesterday things came right, and she knows she’ll be able to dance again.”

“That’s marvellous news!” He drew a long breath. “I’d like to congratulate her. May I tell her friends in town? They’ll be overjoyed.”

“She may let you tell them. It will take a long time; she expects to need all sorts of treatment and then heaps of exercises and practice. It won’t come back all at once. But she’s sure now she will be able to dance as well as ever.”

“I don’t wonder you didn’t sleep! It must have been a very great moment when she told you.”

“And after the crowning and the country dancing! It was midnight when I went home; my landlady wasn’t a bit pleased.”

“Don’t you live here, then?”

“No, I put up in the village. Ray and Dammy haven’t room for me in the Abbey.”

“Ray and Dammy?” he asked doubtfully.

“Rachel and Damaris. Rachel is Damson’s sister, and she takes care of the Abbey; she’ll show you round. She’s the Abbot.”

“I begin to understand,” he smiled. “We seem to have begun at the end, but things are coming clear. Do you think I could see our little dancer and give her my congratulations and good wishes?”

“I’ll call her. I say, you know, it’s not quite fair; she can’t help being in a frightful mess. Bonfires always make one dirty. She’ll want to clean off the smuts.”

“Ask her to forgive me. Tell her I don’t mind smuts in the least.”

Benedicta grinned. “No, but Mary Damayris may mind—if she thinks about it. Come and look at our garden! The rockeries are called Wirral and Windermere; those are where the stones came from. Don’t you like our hyacinths? We’re rather proud of them.”

Beside the red-rocked Wirral she paused and shouted towards the column of smoke rising in a corner, behind a privet hedge. “Damson! Mary Damayris! You’re wanted!”

“Who wants me?” A slim figure appeared at a gap in the hedge, wearing khaki shorts and a green pullover, her hair covered with a green scarf, wound round her head and tied at the back, with the ends hanging over her shoulder. Her hands were dirty and there were undeniable smuts on her cheeks, where she had drawn her fingers across her face.

“He calls you his little something-or-other; pirouette, I think it was.”

“What’s that?” There was a sudden sharp note in the gardener’s voice. “That was what Bernard called me—my dancing partner, you know. I made an ass of myself, putting in extra pirouettes, and Bernard never stopped teasing me. He can’t be here, surely?”

“No, it’s someone else. He’d heard you called the little pirouette.”

“Please forgive me, Miss Damayris.” Brian Grandison came forward. “I had no right to use Bernard’s name for you. Somehow it just happened.”

“He thought I was you, at first,” Benedicta remarked. “He’s decided now that I’m the Abbey Blessing and I’m to sit for ever at the gate, blessing people as they come in.”

“Oh, no, you’re not! You’re going to weed that tulip bed,” Damaris retorted. “There’s no time for sitting at gates. But first you can take on this job and damp down my fire. Don’t let it get out of hand! We don’t want to burn the ilex trees.” She pushed back a strand of yellow hair, adding another smudge to her cheek.

“You’d better wash before you talk to anybody,” Benedicta said. “You don’t look exactly beautiful.”

“I wasn’t expecting visitors.” Damaris glanced at the tall guest defiantly. “Will you see me with a dirty face or will you wait while I go and clean up? Have you ever made a bonfire?”

“Several,” he laughed. “If I really may choose I’ll do both. I don’t want you to go away, but I was told to look for a girl with a lot of curls, and I don’t suppose——”

“Oh, you can see them!” Damaris whipped off the scarf and shook her hair loose about her face in a yellow shower. “Is that better? Who are you? You seem to know Martin Bernard?”

“I’m Brian Grandison,” and he repeated the explanation he had given to Benedicta, his eyes gazing at her in delight.

“I’ve heard of you,” Damaris announced. “I’ve had tea with your people and they talked about you. You gave up a valuable art scholarship, to take your sister to South Africa, because she was ill and couldn’t live in England, and your dad and mother didn’t want to leave London. You took on the job and gave up your hopes of a career, and stood by your sister. I thought it was a frightfully noble deed.”

“They needn’t have said anything about that,” he protested. “What else could I do? Someone had to go, and Dad’s place is in town.”

“All the same, it was rather marvellous of you. What happened? Did your sister die?”

“No, she recovered.” He smiled down at her. “She’s well, so long as she lives out there. She’s married. So I’ve come home, to pick up threads and find a job.”

“Oh, good! Will you be able to have the scholarship and go on studying?”

“No, that’s ended. I shall do something else.”

“Rather rotten to lose the career you’d set your heart on. They told me how keen you were.”

“That’s something you know all about, isn’t it?” he said quietly.

“Well—yes. But I’m going to have my career, after all. Did Benedicta tell you?”

“She did. May I say how glad I am and how I hope to see you dance? I thought there was no chance of it.”

“There wasn’t, till yesterday. It will be a long time before I’m ready, but I shall dance again some day.” There was an exultant ring in her voice.

He smiled in sympathy. “My hearty congratulations! May I be the bearer of the good news, to my dad, and to Georges Antoine, and to Martin Bernard?”

“You may tell them,” Damaris conceded. “They’ll know what a long time of preparation I shall need. I wrote to Madame Roskova, my teacher, this morning.”

“Do go and wash, Damson!” Benedicta urged, coming from a glance at the fire. “You look simply frightful. Mr. Grandison can help me here. And tell Rachel; he’ll want to see the Abbey.”

“It’s quite a good idea,” Damaris mocked. “I know I’m a ghastly object. I’ll come back!” she shouted, as she sped towards the Abbey entrance.

Brian Grandison laughed as he watched her go. “How marvellously she runs! Look at that leap over the tulips! She’s beautiful!”

“She is,” Benedicta agreed. “We’re dying to see her dance again. Come and look at the fire!”