Читать книгу Maid of the Abbey - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 3

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“It’s a rapturous prospect!” Lindy sighed, as she lay in bed on the first morning of the holiday—holidays which meant a new beginning for her, for she was just seventeen and she was not going back to school. “But I wish Nan had told me more about it. Things seemed such a rush last night.”

She looked at her sleeping sister in the other bed. Anne was eight years older than herself, and she had been working for some time. The question was—what work was Lindy going to do? Some job would be necessary, and she knew what she wanted to do—what she would give all the world to do. But Nan was sure it was impossible.

“We’ll see about that!” Lindy vowed. “If you want a thing badly enough—and I do!—you ought to be able to get it!”

She had come home late the night before. There had been supper and some hurried unpacking. Anne had spoken of a strange invitation for these holidays, but had put off full explanations till the morning and had insisted on bed, saying she was too tired to tell more.

“She looked tired, too,” Lindy said to herself, gazing at Anne’s brown head, so unlike her own fair curls. “She’s frightfully white. She hasn’t got over that bout of ’flu, in spite of this fortnight she’s had on the moors. And she coughed a lot. I don’t like it; she’s not well. I expect it was a shock when her shop went flop, and she hates having no job; but she’d find a better job if she was more fit to look for it. Perhaps this new idea will put her right. I wonder when she’ll tell me? I know!”

She slipped out of bed and, in dressing-gown and slippers, made for the tiny kitchen. The flat was very small, just two rooms and the bathroom and kitchenette, but it had been big enough while Belinda was at school and Anne was out all day at her cake-shop.

“But if neither of us finds a job, we shall be bumping into one another all the time,” Lindy groaned, as she put a kettle on the gas-ring. “It’s horribly pokey, after school!”

A vision of long dormitories, airy classrooms, wide corridors, breezy sands and playing-fields, and the naughty juniors to whom she had been a stern but much-loved prefect, swept before her eyes. She squared her shoulders and prepared a tray for early tea.

“School was all right while I was a kid, but now I’m grown up. I’ve left; I’m going to find a job, and some day I’ll make everybody talk about me!”

She did not look grown up, with short fair curls round her face and a frank boyish grin. Beaming with pride, she carried the tray to the bedroom.

“Nan! Wake up and talk to me!”

Anne turned over and lay staring up at her. “Lindy! I’d forgotten you were here! Oh, how nice of you to make the tea! But what a surprise, Belinda!”

Lindy laughed. “I’m not usually the little angel in the house, am I? But I must make you talk somehow, and I thought tea might do the trick.”

“Oh, I see! Now I understand,” Anne mocked, as she sat up. “Clever of you, Lin!”

“Put this round you.” Lindy arranged a red dressing-gown about her sister’s shoulders. “You were coughing last night. You’re not very fit yet.”

“No, my cough won’t quite go. I enjoyed the time on the moors, but it was very cold. Perhaps I was hardly ready for it.”

“Tell me about everything!” Lindy curled up on the bed and took her cup. “You were too seedy to write much. It was that typist girl downstairs who wangled the holiday for you, wasn’t it?”

“She’d been to this big house on the edge of the moors, The Grange. It’s run as a hostel, for giving country holidays to working girls, by some awfully decent people who live in the south and don’t need it themselves. It belongs to Lady Marchwood; it was her home as a girl, and she had the idea of inviting people from Sheffield and Manchester to have holidays in the house. It’s looked after by Miss Rowney, and when she heard my name she said it was the same as hers, only her Ann has no ‘e’ on the end and she’s called Nancy. She was very kind, but she was busy getting the house ready for painters and I didn’t see a great deal of her. Nell Jones, the typist, had stayed there, and when she found how seedy I was after ’flu, she wrote to Miss Rowney and asked if I could go. I was sorry to have a holiday without you, but I had to go when I was asked. She only just managed to fit me in before the workmen arrived.”

“The moors would be a bit bleak in March,” Lindy observed.

“Yes, it was very cold and I was unlucky; I didn’t have much sunshine, and I was craving for sun. Miss Rowney saw that; she’s very understanding.”

“And she proposed this other rapturous plan for both of us?” Lindy pleaded for the part of the story which concerned herself. “You told her about me?”

“When she invited me she asked if I had any sister or friend who could come with me, so I told her you wouldn’t be home till the end of March. The night before I left she had a talk with me. She said she was sorry she couldn’t ask me to stay on, and have you too, because she felt I needed more holiday, in better weather than I’d had, but with painters coming in it just couldn’t be done. And then she told me of another hostel of the same sort, in a village in Oxfordshire, belonging to friends of Lady Marchwood, and said she had written asking if they could take both of us for two or three weeks. The spring flowers will be out in the south and there’s much more likely to be sun and mild weather. It sounds perfectly heavenly!” Anne shivered and sighed.

“But what perfectly heavenly people!” Lindy exclaimed. “Do they all spend their time giving people holidays?”

“It’s a lovely thing to do. I’d do it if I had the money. I don’t like taking holidays from people I’ve never heard of,” Anne owned, “but this sounds so entirely delightful that I couldn’t say anything but—a thousand thanks.”

“I should think not! Except perhaps a thousand million thanks! Oh, glorious!” Lindy sighed in ecstasy. “Two—perhaps three—weeks in the country—primroses—violets—hawthorn—cowslips! It’s too good to be true! And to-night there’s my birthday treat! Oh, what a mass of thrills!”

“We ought not to spend money on concert tickets,” Anne said. “Your birthday present ought to be something useful, like a new summer coat. But I knew nothing would do for you but the music.”

“Coat!” Lindy cried scornfully. “I’d go about in rags rather than miss Gerontius!”

“You wouldn’t like it if you had to do it,” Anne observed. “It’s all right; I’ve bought the tickets. But next year’s treat you must earn and pay for yourself.”

“Nan, darling, isn’t there any hope?” Lindy asked wistfully. “My training, Nan! Can’t we afford it somehow? I can’t go into an office!”

“Not the training you want, Lin. It just can’t be done. Only the very best would satisfy you,” Anne said firmly. “It seemed impossible before, but it’s still more out of the question now. We must wait till I’ve found another job and till you’ve earned something to help.”

“But it will be too late! Oh, Nan dearest, find some way to manage it! I can’t waste my life! Every one says I’ll do well! I’ll pay you back!”

Anne shook her head. “No good, Lindy. We simply haven’t got the money. Don’t keep on teasing. Think about to-night instead!”

“To-night will only make me feel worse,” Lindy groaned.

“It’s a pity I took the tickets, then.”

“Oh, Nan, I didn’t mean it! I’m dying for to-night!”

“Well, don’t upset the tray. Better take it away and let me dress. We’ve a lot to do, if we’re to be ready to start on Saturday.”

“The day after to-morrow?” Lindy gave a shout. “I didn’t know it was to be so soon.”

“The sooner the better,” Anne retorted. “We both have to find work, but we can’t do it till after this holiday.”

“What’s the place called?”

“Whiteways. It’s a village, beyond Princes Risborough, between High Wycombe and Oxford, with beechwoods all round.”

“Whiteways is a pretty name. I wonder if the roads are all white? I say, Nan, if you’ll swear not to think about having no job—not once, till we’re home again—I’ll not say a word about my career and my training. We’ll have a holiday and forget all our worries. Will you?”

“I’ll try,” Anne promised. “It won’t help either our holiday or our future jobs for us to keep on bothering about them.”

“It will help the holiday if we don’t,” Lindy said vigorously, as she carried away the tray. “Saturday! I can hardly believe it! And to-night, there’s the Free Trade Hall! I must hear that girl sing again; she was marvellous at Christmas, in The Messiah.”

For two years now her choice of birthday and Christmas treats had not been a theatre but a concert, and she had heard—from cheap gallery seats—the best singers and the best music. Always she tuned in the portable wireless to hear London, and in this way she had listened during the Christmas holidays to The Messiah in the Albert Hall and had been fascinated by the singing of the contralto, a young half-Italian girl who was taking the solos for the first time. When Lindy had heard from Anne that this same girl was coming to Manchester to take the part of The Angel in The Dream of Gerontius, on the very day after her return from school, there had been no doubt of her choice of her birthday treat. Nothing else would satisfy her; she must see Madalena di Ravarati, not merely hear her as a voice; and she must hear the rich deep contralto sing the beautiful music of The Angel.

Lindy went about all day in a happy dream, and as she helped Anne to look over clothes, and mend, and pack for the trip to the country, her thoughts were not on her work but in the Free Trade Hall, where no doubt preparation for the evening performance was in progress. Dr. Robertson was the conductor; he would certainly insist on a rehearsal. And no doubt Miss di Ravarati would want one too, to get used to the hall. Did you say “Miss,” with a name like that? Or should it be Signorina?

“Some day,” Lindy said firmly, “I shall sing in the Free Trade Hall! And the Albert Hall and Queen’s Hall in London too. Somehow I’ll get that training; I will! I must! Some day Dr. Robertson will conduct the orchestra for me! But I shan’t be The Angel, and that’s a fact.”

Her voice was a strong and clear soprano. She had sung all her life and had always been called on to take the solos in school productions. Her music mistress and singing master had promised her a great future, if she worked hard and had good training. She would pay for first-class teaching, they had assured her.

But where was the training to come from? Anne was firm and unyielding. They had only their earnings to live on; Lindy’s school had been expensive and had swallowed up most of their small capital. It was necessary that she should begin to earn at the earliest possible moment. Singing could wait; she was only just seventeen.

Lindy felt it could not wait. Every week spent in any other pursuit would seem wasted. She had argued fiercely during the Christmas holidays, urging that when she left school at Easter she should, somehow, be trained as a singer.

Anne had been determined. Lindy, bitterly disappointed, had been difficult; had at times been almost impossible to control. Anne had dreaded her next return from school, with the problem immensely deepened by the fact that she was not to go back and must now decide what she was going to do. Her own difficulties had been increased by the failure of the cake-shop for which she had worked and in which she had had a small share. It had closed its doors; her share had vanished and she had no job. She had very little capital behind her, after seeing Lindy to the end of her schooldays. No doubt another job would turn up; she was well trained in every sort of cooking and there were always posts to be had. But at the moment her future was uncertain, and she was not feeling able to face its difficulties. All through her time of ’flu and convalescence, as she struggled to keep on working while still unfit to be up and about, and all through the fortnight’s holiday in the rather bleak moorland hostel, which would have been so lovely in the summer, she had been burdened by the approaching return of Lindy, and the knowledge that the argument, the pleading, the tears, would begin again.

“Miss Rowney thought me odd; I could see it by the way she looked at me,” she had said to herself in the train, on the way back to Manchester. “But she didn’t know what a load there was on my mind. I’d have liked to talk it over with her, but I couldn’t discuss Lindy with a stranger, however kind she was.”

So, dreading the struggle with the little sister, she had welcomed more than ever the unexpected invitation to the hostel at Whiteways. It meant not only a longer holiday, with in all probability sunshine and spring flowers and the warmth for which she craved, but also a postponement of their difficult decisions. For Lindy, in new and delightful surroundings, would be thrilled by the novelty and beauty into which she would be plunged, and would be happy and easy to handle. So Anne hoped, and was intensely grateful to the unknown friends who had made the second holiday possible.