Читать книгу The Girls of the Abbey School - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 9

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Much enjoying the sensation of being an old resident, Jen led Jack over the big house and showed the arrangements made for the comfort of the school.

A number of big guest-chambers, fitted with huge old four-poster beds, but with ample space for more, had had one or two single beds added, thus making small dormitories for three or four; and that first night there was much noise and laughter and discussion, till the difficult question was settled as to who should have the single beds and who should sleep with whom. After cubicles in a long corridor, these separate rooms were very exciting, and the mistresses had to intervene before the girls would calm down.

The big entrance-hall, the large breakfast-room, the music-room, and the library had been arranged as classrooms, leaving the dining-room for meals, and the big drawing-room as a sitting-room for the mistresses. A small drawing-room made a very pleasant lounge for the girls when not in classes, and Sir Antony’s old smoking-room had been turned into a study for Miss Macey. Mrs Shirley had kept a little boudoir upstairs for her private use, with her bedroom, which Joan always shared, next to it. Joy chose to join the boarders and sleep in a ‘foursome dorm,’ with several of her friends, but Joan remained with her mother, and laughingly declared that they felt like lodgers in a corner of the house.

‘How did you get on with the Queens? Are they jolly out of school?’ Jack asked enviously, when their tour of inspection was completed, and she was unpacking in the little room she was to share with Jen. It was a very dainty little room, over the big hall, looking out across the lawn towards the abbey.

‘Topping! Joy teases dreadfully, of course, and never means all she says; or half of it, for that matter. Joan’s sporty, and I like her awfully,’ Jen said warmly. ‘I’ll take you to see the abbey now. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind—oh, bother! There’s the tea bell! Perhaps there’ll be time after.’

After tea, however, there was too much to do in the way of helping to unpack and arrange books, so that no time should be lost when the day-girls arrived next morning. The shelves in the library had been cleared and their books packed carefully and stowed away up in the attics, and each girl was given a definite corner for her belongings and told she would be expected to keep it in order. ‘I shall find out now who are the untidy ones!’ Miss Anskell laughed. ‘There will be no lids to hide the condition of your desks here!’ and the girls groaned in chorus. ‘If you are wise,’ she continued, ‘you will keep your books upstairs, and only bring down each morning those which you know you will require during the day. Then you will have no difficulty in keeping your shelves in order. But it will demand some forethought, as we cannot possibly allow running up and down stairs during class hours. Any girl who forgets books will lose order marks.’

‘It’s a blue look-out for some of us!’ Joy murmured.

‘Oh, it won’t worry you! You’ll be able to do just as you like!’ her friends said enviously.

‘I shan’t! Not if I know anything at all of old Ansky! Besides, we must play the game. It must be the same for everybody. But I know I’ll forget things every single day.’

‘You can’t lose order marks for going upstairs in your own house! That would be simply silly.’

‘Officially ‘tisn’t my house at present. It’s school, my dear, and unless I’m mistaken we’ll find The Ant and Madam will see that we know it.’

It was not till after morning school next day, when the boarders had begun to feel at home and were gleefully conducting the envious day-girls over the lower parts of the house and round the garden, that Jack and Jen managed to slip away by themselves.

‘I must show you the abbey! It’s simply gorgeous!’ Jen spoke with whole-hearted sincerity and quite unconscious inappropriateness. ‘I’ve been there heaps of times with Joan. She’s awfully keen on it. I think I know enough about it to tell you a good deal. I know where she keeps the key.’ She brought it, and they ran off together, unnoticed by any one.

‘Will she mind?’ Jack asked doubtfully.

But Jen was serenely confident in Joan’s good nature. ‘Not a scrap, she won’t! She’s too awfully jolly. Perhaps I’d have been better to ask her before taking the key, but I’m sure she wouldn’t really mind. We’re only going to look.’ She was fitting the key to the iron-studded door as she spoke. ‘We’ll shut it behind us; then none of the other girls will come. She might not want a crowd in here, unless she came too; but she wouldn’t mind you and me.’

She left the key on the inside of the gate, and they set off to explore, Jen acting as showman with great glee.

‘The abbot’s house was over there. Here there was a hospital for old and sick people. Now come down this wee passage—there!’ pointing triumphantly to the green cloister garth and ruined gray walls and beautiful arched doorways.

‘Isn’t it absolutely topping?’ Jack whispered, her tone full of reverence if her words were not.

Jen might have owned the abbey, so great was her pride as she led her friend from cloisters to sacristy, from chapter-house to refectory, and explained how each had been used. Her story of the dormitory fascinated Jack, who declared she could see quite plainly the rows of simple pallet-beds and the old monks sleeping on them. ‘Just like a dormitory in a boarding-school! What did they put on at night, do you think? I suppose they took off the white robes and black head things? They’d get so crushed!’

‘I don’t know.’ Jen was rather staggered by this delicate question. ‘We’ll ask Joan! She’s sure to know,’ she added happily, and enlarged upon the night stairs, now vanished, down which the monks had gone piously to prayers at two o’clock in the morning.

‘Every night? They must have slept in their clothes, I guess!’ Jack cried, in horrified dismay.

‘Now come and see the rose window. Don’t slip in the dark. The steps are so narrow at the turn.’

‘What was that?’ cried Jack, as, dazzled by the sunshine after the shadowy winding stair, they reached the garth again.

‘What? Where? Who?’

‘I don’t know. But I saw something. Is the abbey haunted?’ and Jack shivered and looked round fearfully.

‘Not at this time, on a sunny day,’ Jen said seriously. ‘What did you think you saw? Wasn’t it just that your eyes were blurry?’

‘Perhaps. I thought something dark vanished off the green as we came down—in that direction!’ pointing towards the arched door of the chapter-house.

‘Perhaps Mrs Watson’s got a dog. I don’t think it could be a ghost. We’ll keep a look-out for it. Sure you didn’t dream it?’

‘No, I’m not a scrap sure,’ Jack confessed, which was not very helpful. ‘But I did think I saw something!’

‘Well, keep a good watch!’ and Jen, unbelieving but polite, led her to the sacristy to see the great rose window.

‘Now where shall we go?’ They stood out on the garth again, while Jen gave a laughing account of her dancing lessons and the interruption of ‘Bacca Pipes’ by the motoring party. ‘It goes like this!—you must imagine the crossed sticks. Toe in the right, heel in the left!—and then round the sticks, this way!—but the step’s very difficult at first.’

‘But you aren’t going in for dancing and chucking cricket and hockey, are you?’ Jack asked apprehensively, as she watched Jen’s struggles with the morris step.

‘There may not be much cricket this summer. Other schools won’t come so far for matches—what on earth was that?’ This time the cry came from Jen, but was echoed by Jack, as a shower of something small—was it pebbles? Gravel? Seeds of some kind?—fell pattering on their heads and shoulders.

With one accord they swung round wrathfully to find the criminal. But before them were only the three beautiful pointed arches of the chapter-house, looking as innocent as usual.

Jack and Jen made one swift, indignant rush for the entrance, sure that their assailant must be hiding here. But the little room was empty. They stared at one another blankly and listened, holding their breath, for the sound of retreating footsteps.

Then, as they heard nothing, Jen cried swiftly, ‘They must be hiding somewhere else! There’s no door here. You look in the sacristy again, Jack, and I’ll hunt round outside.’

Neither hunting inside nor out gave any satisfaction, however. They found no trace of any intruder, and though common sense told them some one must be hiding somewhere, they could find no sign of any one.

‘Shall we go and tell the woman who’s supposed to be in charge?’ Jack suggested. ‘Perhaps she’s got some children, and they’re having a game with us. It must have been one of them I saw.’

‘No, she hasn’t got any. Joan said so most particularly. I would, but I think we ought to go back. It must be getting late, and there’s dinner-time. We’ll tell Joan instead. I say!’—she picked up a handful of the pellets which had rattled about their shoulders, and, giggling, held them out for Jack to see.

‘What is it? Shot? It felt like it. Gracious, rice!’

‘They must have known we were a newly-married couple!’ Jen laughed. ‘How awfully smart of them! Come and tell Joan; she’ll know what to do. She ought to know her abbey’s haunted by ghosts who throw rice at respectable people!’

‘Oh, shall you tell her? Suppose she doesn’t like us having come here?’

‘Of course I’ll tell her,’ Jen said sturdily. ‘She must know about this—this outrage!’

They hurried back to the door in the wall. Then a cry of dismay broke from both, for the key was not in the lock.

‘I left it there!’ Jen wailed.

‘Perhaps Joan came and saw it, and thought she’d forgotten it last time she was here. I suppose the door is locked?’ Jack sprang to it and tugged valiantly at the handle. ‘Yes, I can’t move it. What shall we do, Jen? We must get back! It must be dinner-time!’

Jen stood back and surveyed the wall. ‘We could never get over that,’ she said gloomily. ‘It’s too smooth to climb, and anyway, look at the glass on top! We couldn’t possibly.’

That was obvious. Sir Antony had taken good care of that. The bits of broken bottles which crowned the wall so thickly were extremely modern and very sharp, and the wall itself had been newly repaired and pointed, and had no crannies nor ledges for clinging fingers. A more hopeless wall it would have been hard to find; and it was very high.

The girls looked at it and then at one another hopelessly.

‘Could the key have fallen down among the flowers?’ Jack ventured.

This led to a hasty, ruthless search among the pansies, but all to no purpose. The key was not there, the wall was impossible to climb, and the minutes were racing along past dinner-time. Jack and Jen grew more hungry and more desperate every moment.

‘Isn’t there any other way back?’ Jack pleaded.

‘I haven’t seen one. We’ll have to ask Mrs Watson to let us out, and go round by the road, that’s all. She knows me,’ Jen said valiantly. ‘She’s quite nice, Jack.’

‘But isn’t it miles and miles by the road? And it’s late already!’

‘And we’re so close! It’s simply beastly. It is a good way, but we’ll run, Jack. I don’t see what else we can do.’

‘But we’ll look so funny in these things! And we haven’t any hats!’

They were both wearing very short blue gym. tunics, with white sleeves and green girdles. The Hall had no gymnasium, of course, but gym. dress was the popular wear among the juniors for games and garden, and while both girls certainly wore their tunics very short from choice, Jen’s long legs stuck out of hers in a way which even Jack eyed askance, when it was a question of going down the road with her in it.

Jen laughed. ‘It’s dinner-time; we shan’t meet anybody.’

‘I know it’s dinner-time. I’m dying of hunger. Come on, then, if we must. You must talk to the old woman,’ and they set off rather apprehensively to find Ann Watson and confess their plight.