Читать книгу The Girls of the Abbey School - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 5

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‘Look at that silly kid!’ Joy Shirley’s voice rang out in horrified dismay.

Joan lost no time in words; she merely acted. Darting across the hall she caught Jen by the arm. ‘You naughty child! Where are you going? Didn’t you hear what Miss Macey said about going straight home at once?’

Jen stared at her blankly. ‘But I can’t!’ she expostulated. ‘This is home for me just now! Where do you want me to go?’ Her indignation rose. ‘I must live somewhere, dip. or no dip., and I’m supposed to be living here! I can’t stop out in the street.’

Joan’s face relaxed, and she laughed. ‘I beg your pardon, kiddy; I forgot you were a boarder. Yes, that’s jolly awkward.’

Jen’s heart warmed to her at this frank apology. ‘I don’t a bit want to go and catch anything. But is there anything else I can do?’

‘Couldn’t you go back to the aunt you’ve been spending Sunday with?’

‘She’s gone away for a fortnight; I went with her to the station before coming to school. And I don’t know anybody else in the town.’ Jen looked anxious and downcast.

‘Perhaps one of the girls—well, why not us, for that matter? I expect we’ve more room than most,’ Joan began.

It sounded incoherent, but was plain enough to Jen. ‘Oh, would you? You couldn’t be so kind!’ she gasped, and looked breathlessly from Joan to Joy, as the cousins held a hurried consultation.

‘Room!’ Joy laughed. ‘Room for that scrap? How much room does she want? I mean how many rooms? We can spare her a dozen and never miss them! We’d better take her right along back with us now, Joan. Aunty won’t mind.’

‘No, but I’d rather have given her warning. Still, she won’t mind; she’ll be pleased. It’s only that I feel it’s hardly fair to take her by surprise. But I guess it’s our job, Joy, or what’s the good of being Queens? We can’t let the kiddy go into the way of infection, and she must stay somewhere. It’s up to us, any way you look at it.’

‘But, I say!’ Jen had been thinking quickly, and now spoke up bravely. ‘Suppose Cissie didn’t bring it from home? Suppose she got it here?’

‘Well?’ Joy asked, impatient to be gone.

Joan understood. ‘You mean you might have taken it when she did, and go and begin it at our house?’

Jen nodded. ‘That would be awful! I’d better stop here. Perhaps I’ve got it now, but it hasn’t begun coming out yet.’

Joy’s laugh rang out. ‘You don’t look very bad!’

Joan saw further, however, and knew that it had cost Jen an effort to be honest and speak out her sudden thought. ‘I don’t think you’ve got anything very serious yet,’ she said gravely. ‘Don’t you see, kiddy, it’s the same for all of us? We were all here till Friday evening. If it’s drains, it may affect any of us quite as much as you.’

‘Oh!’ Jen’s face lit up. ‘Do you really think so? Oh, I’m awfully glad!’

‘Wait here while I explain to Miss Macey. She’s forgotten all about you in the worry of all this,’ and Joan sped away to find the head mistress, while Jen said hurried farewells to the envious Jack.

‘It’s all right!’ Joan was back in a moment. ‘She’s awfully relieved, Joy, and we’re to thank mother very much. Now, kiddy, you’ve got all you need for a night or two in that case, haven’t you?’

‘Just my week-end things, and one extra blouse. I haven’t lots of clothes to change,’ Jen said dubiously.

Joy laughed. ‘I guess you haven’t, in that wee thing! Oh, don’t worry! We don’t dress for dinner unless we’ve a big house party!’

‘Joy! you’ve never dressed for dinner in your life. In fact’—to Jen—‘we have dinner at one o’clock, except when we’re at school all day. Don’t try to scare her, Joy; you’re only teasing. You won’t want much, and Miss Macey can send you more,’ Joan said comfortingly to the anxious Jen. ‘Dip. isn’t carried in clothes. Come along! What’s your name, by the way? You did tell me, but I’m afraid in all the excitement of last Friday I forgot it again,’ she laughed, as they wheeled out their cycles.

‘Jen. I’m sorry it’s so like yours,’ Jen said demurely. ‘At least, I’m glad, really; but it makes it awkward just now, doesn’t it?’

Joan laughed. ‘We’ll try not to get tangled. Joan—Joy—Jen! It is rather bad, isn’t it?’

‘And I’m friends with some one called Jack,’ Jen laughed.

‘Jacqueline Wilmot? Yes, I saw you with her. Oh, then you’re all right. I’m glad; she’s quite a jolly kid. I guess you’d rather have gone home with her, but she’d have had to ask her mother first, you know.’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Jen said swiftly, and coloured as she realised the impossibility of explaining in words that not even the thought of going home with a chum could be as fascinating as this invitation from a senior to whom she had already begun to look up, not only as Queen, but for her own sake. One could not quite put that into words, however.

‘Hop on to my step!’ said Joy. ‘I’m glad I’ve got a step; it’s awfully useful for giving rides to kids. I’ve carried dozens; half the lower school, I guess! Joan will carry your case. Now we’re all right!’

Jen felt they were very much all right, as they spun down the high street and along the road to the hills. It was the most exciting Monday morning she had ever known. She was very sorry for Cissie, of course, and glad her case was a slight one; and she sympathised with Miss Macey, who was no doubt feeling very much annoyed—which was stating the case very mildly. But to go home on a visit to a big interesting country house, with the girls she had been admiring from a distance for some days, was very much better than sitting over algebra and analysis and geography! Jen felt her school life was beginning very pleasantly, and had no fault to find with circumstances at the moment.

‘Now you get off and walk!’ Joy commanded, when the road began to climb the hills, and they all walked and pushed the cycles till a level mile at the top allowed them to spin along the Ridge.

‘Oh!’ cried Jen suddenly, as the end of a line of fir-trees showed them the country beyond.

The elder girls laughed. ‘It is sudden, isn’t it? We’re on the very edge of the Chilterns, and that’s all Oxfordshire lying spread below us,’ Joan explained, as they looked out over a wide stretch of hazy blue country, eight hundred feet below.

‘And how do we get down? It stops so suddenly! Or do you live up here?’ Jen asked eagerly.

‘No, we go down. There are paths and steps through the woods, but with bikes we take the winding road. You can see our village. Those trees hide the abbey and the Hall.’

‘Oh!’ said Jen again, when they had entered by big iron gates, and the great house at the end of the drive came into sight. She looked at Joy. ‘What a lot of things you’ve got!’ she said, without a tinge of envy, but in frank admiration.

Joy laughed. ‘Have I? Such as——?’

‘It’s all yours, isn’t it? All the miles of gardens, and this gorgeous house? And then being Queen—and the girls say you’re a musical genius—and you’re pretty——’

Joy gave a ringing laugh. ‘Do they? It’s very nice of them! But I’m not so sure about the genius part of it! That’s only because I make up tinkly tunes to please them. I used to think they were good, but now I’m finding out just how bad they are, and how good they ought to be. As for the rest, Joan’s got them all too, only the abbey instead of the Hall, and she’d far rather have the abbey! She’s cracked about the old thing! And she’s got something more; she’s got brains! I never pretend to have brains!’

‘You silly kid!’ Joan said brusquely.

‘True, all the same, Lady Queen! You supply the ideas for this family! Wait till you pass matric next month!’

‘Matric’s off, unless the school can carry on somehow. I’ll be awfully sorry if we have to miss the exams! I wonder if Miss Macey will come here if mother asks her?’

Joy made a face. ‘Bother the exams! I’m supposed to be going to try to take junior,’ she explained to Jen. ‘Joan’s taking real matric, and yet she’s only a month older than I am. But she’s two years ahead of me, and I shall never catch her up. I slacked for a year when we came into the country, and spent days and weeks exploring; that’s why they call me Traveller’s Joy, or the Wild Cat that walked by his Wild Lone. Joan had to be at home, because of the abbey, you know, so she swotted, and now you can see the result.’

‘Because of the abbey?’ Jen ventured. ‘But why? I don’t quite see——’

They both looked at her quickly; then Joy, looking across at Joan, made a queer face. Joan laughed. ‘I’ll show you the abbey—my abbey—this afternoon, and tell you all about it. But come in, and let’s explain you to mother.’

‘Aunty! Aunty, dear!’ Joy left her cycle and rushed into the big square hall to meet the little lady in black, who came hurrying out to know the meaning of their early return. ‘The school’s got dip., so Miss Macey sent us home, and we’ve asked them all to come here for classes, so that we won’t have to miss the exams, and there won’t be more than twenty boarders, and Miss Macey and the mistresses, and they’ll bring some of the maids, I guess, so that will be all right, won’t it? Oh, and we’ve brought the first instalment along with us, because we couldn’t let her go and catch it, but there’s not very much of her. We knew you wouldn’t mind, and there’s heaps of room. And can we have lunch early? For we’ve cycled there and back, and we’re hopelessly starving, all of us!’

‘That’s what Joy calls breaking it gently!’ Joan laughed to Jen, who was hanging back with a touch of shyness, but laughing at Joy’s torrent of words. ‘I knew she’d do it, but I knew, too, that I couldn’t hope to get in first! That’s the way she dashed at mother to tell her she’d been chosen Queen. Mother will need me to explain.’

‘Joan, dear, what is it all about?’ Mrs Shirley was asking quietly. ‘What has happened?’

Joy collapsed on a wide window-seat, and laughed. ‘Squashed, as usual! Now, Joan, you tell her nicely!’

The big square entrance hall was wide and roomy, with long high windows filled with coloured glass, the walls hung with old oil paintings, chiefly portraits of famous Court beauties of the days of Charles II., with here and there some of Joy’s ancestors among them. ‘These’—and Joy pointed to the ladies with a comprehensive sweep of her arm, later on when she was showing Jen over the house—‘are a very famous collection of old portraits, nearly all by Lely. I think some of them are hideous, but they’re supposed to be very beautiful. You can see they think they are! Some of them were awful rotters, but if they were beautiful that didn’t matter a scrap.’

When Mrs Shirley understood the situation, her welcome to Jen was very hearty. ‘The girls were quite right to bring you here, dear. I am glad they thought of it. It would never have done to leave you there. I am sure we can make you comfortable here.’

Joan had a different description of the big hall to give. As they sat on a window-seat in the sunshine, after lunch, and Joy talked of Lely’s Court beauties and her own forefathers, and showed the beautiful piano which was her own especial treasure, Joan said gravely, ‘I always remember that first afternoon we came here, Joy. It’s not a year ago yet; it was in June, you know.’

Joy sobered. ‘To dance; yes, I remember. And didn’t he enjoy it!’

‘It was while Joy’s grandfather was alive,’ Joan explained. ‘He was very old and ill and lonely, and wouldn’t have anybody here but servants. But one day he went into the abbey, where we were living, and saw us dancing a minuet on the cloister garth—that’s the green lawn in the middle of the monastery, where the monks and abbots used to be buried.’ Joy laughed. ‘We had no right to be dancing there, of course, and we weren’t dressed for it, either; I had been dusting, and Joy was doing her homework, and we had on old green and blue pinafores! But it was sunny, and the garth looked so smooth and newly rolled and cut, that we ran out there to practise our minuet. He watched us, and later on asked mother to send us up here to dance it to him. So we asked Miss Lane to come and play for us, and, of course, we wore our dancing frocks; Joy’s is bright green, and mine is gray; and he sat huddled up in a chair just there, and we danced to him! It felt awfully queer, but he seemed to like it, for he asked for something else. We were only just beginning dancing, but we managed ‘Princess Royal,’ that lovely morris jig that they danced last Friday night.’

‘For two? With bells and handkerchiefs? And high jumps in the middle?’ Jen asked eagerly.

‘Capers—yes!’ Joan laughed. ‘He liked that, and asked to see it again. Then we sat and told him all about the club, and school, and about Joy being Queen, and he came to watch the next dance evening.’

‘And just loved it,’ Joy added. ‘It was his last night.’

‘He was taken ill that night, and died two days later,’ Joan said gravely. ‘I often see him sitting there watching us, when I come into this hall. I’m glad we got to know him before he died, and I’m very glad we were able to do one thing to please him.’

‘Yes, he loved the dancing.’ Joy’s merry face was grave also.

‘Would you——’ Jen began hesitatingly. ‘But I haven’t the cheek to ask you!’

Joy laughed. ‘What do you want us to do?’

Jen looked at Joan, confident that she would understand, and her trust was rewarded. ‘Do you want us to dance to you?’ Joan laughed.

‘Would you? I haven’t seen you dance. You were sitting on your thrones all the time.’

‘Just after lunch?’ Joy remonstrated. ‘Must we? You might have asked a little sooner, before I’d taken that second helping of pudding!’

‘Poor old thing! You shouldn’t have been so greedy!’ Joan mocked. ‘You sit still, and I’ll fetch your shoes and bells. You’ll have to hum the air.’

‘Coo-oo! That’s hard work!’ Joy moaned. ‘I’ll hum the minuet, but I don’t know about the morris. Jigs are another matter!’

‘Oh, you’ll do it, once we start! You can’t help it!’

In the window-seat Jen sat entranced while they danced in the sunshine, first Joan, then Joy, advancing to meet the other with outstretched arm and handkerchief, ‘capering’ round the room in high, graceful springing movements, each pausing to allow the other her turn, and ending at last in the middle of the floor facing one another, arms and one leg thrown up to a final jingle of the bells below their knees.

‘That’s “Princess Royal,” ’ Joan remarked, as Jen applauded vigorously. ‘I don’t know how much morris there was about the step when we did it to Sir Antony. We hadn’t had very long of it, and I know my morris step was apt to vanish suddenly at times. It doesn’t now, of course.’

‘Oh, well, he didn’t know! He thought it was just ripping,’ Joy laughed.

They followed the jig with a slow, silent minuet, every movement graceful, and Jen sat leaning forward, chin on hand, to follow it intently. ‘That’s lovely! But how jolly different from the other one!’ she exclaimed at the end.

They both laughed. ‘More different than you know, my dear infant!’ Joy informed her. ‘One was a folk dance, t’other wasn’t. That’s all. Now Joan’s going to show you her abbey!’