Читать книгу Maid of the Abbey - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 6

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“Nan, come and look!” Lindy whispered. “Such a nice man! He and Miss Angel make a lovely couple!”

“Dr. Robertson? Be careful, Lin; and don’t stay there and watch. It’s rude. Just look at your musician, and then come and help me to unpack.”

“I didn’t mean Dr. Robertson. He looks much nicer than he does on the platform—quite human and jolly. He’s rather stern when he’s conducting. But I mean the other man.”

“The boy?” Anne glanced out at the group by the car. “He’s very good-looking, but he’s too young.”

“Why shouldn’t he be young? He’s not a boy!” Lindy protested. “He ought to marry Miss Maid. They look so nice together.”

“He’s too young for her,” Anne repeated, her eyes on the handsome lad, who was obviously chaffing his hostess about her very large hat.

Maidlin, laughing and flushed, whipped it off and tossed it on the grass. She pointed to the pile of garden hats, and he selected a bright blue one and clapped it on his head and laughed down at her. He was tall and fair and sunburnt, and about the same age as Maidlin.

“I bet Miss Angel had forgotten she was still wearing hers!” Lindy laughed. “Doesn’t Dr. Robertson look a dear, Nan?”

“He has a kind face, and thoughtful; he looks like a student, and an artist. Now, Lin, that’s enough! You’ve seen him; now come and help me.”

Lindy turned from the window reluctantly. But her delight in the two pretty bedrooms, one looking over the lawn and garden, the other on an orchard with a sheen of gold under the bare trees, was so great that she had no time for regrets. Her next glance down at the terrace, when the unpacking was finished, showed that the group round the tea-table had disappeared.

“They’ve gone into the ruins. I shall go and look at that orchard. Coming, Nan?”

“No, I’ll sit here in the sun. We’ve come a long way to-day.” Anne sank into a chintz-covered chair by the window. “How beautiful that lawn is!”

“And this morning we were in Manchester and it was raining!” Lindy sighed ecstatically.

She ran down to the terrace, seized her huge green hat, and raced off towards a gate in a south wall which opened into the orchard. Here were sheets of wild daffodils under bare apple and pear trees, and she stood entranced. On the old walls were peaches and nectarines, covered with deep red blossom.

“What a gorgeous place! It makes me want to dance,” and Lindy did a few steps of an Irish jig which she had learnt at school. She curtsied to a budding cherry tree and turned back into the garden.

“I want to see those ruins. I won’t disturb Miss Maid, if she’s still there. I wonder if this little path is the way she went?”

The narrow track between bushes led to an ancient gate, studded with great nails and crossed by bars of iron. It was ajar, so Belinda pushed it open and stood gazing at a tiny garden, gay with brown and golden wallflower. Looking down on the carpet of flowers was a high grey wall, with wide windows which appeared to be very old. The path led through the garden to an arched doorway, and Lindy tiptoed down a dark tunnelled passage towards a gleam of sunlit grass.

“Oh, what a marvellous place!” She gazed about at a small square lawn, very green, and enclosed by grey walls. Low doorways with sharply-pointed arches seemed to lead to rooms inside the walls; on one side there was a sort of arcade with a covered walk—the remains of the cloisters, but Lindy did not know that. One wall, opposite where she stood, had a great gap in it, and what seemed to be a field lay beyond.

“Nan will love this,” Lindy thought. “The orchard made me want to dance; perhaps because all those flowers were dancing! But here I feel like being in church. There’s a holy sort of spell about it. I suppose it was a holy place long ago. I’d like to sing! But those people are somewhere about. Oh, horrors, here they come! I promised to keep out of the way!”

At the sound of voices, and Maidlin’s deep happy laugh, Lindy shot into the nearest doorway in panic. It proved to be the beginning of a stone staircase with wide uneven steps; she darted up and found herself in a long light room, all of stone except the oak roof.

On one side there was a row of window-slits, each reached by a step. She climbed into the first and looked out, and found the green garth below her. Maidlin and her party had come from a doorway close to the entrance to the stair which Lindy had found; they stood talking on the lawn and then crossed to another ancient door, below wide beautiful windows, and went out of her sight.

“Those people do look nice!” Lindy leaned from her window to survey the Abbey from this vantage-point. “The young man’s awfully handsome, and anybody can see he admires Miss Angel by the way he looks at her. Dr. Robertson looks kinder and less alarming every time I see him. His face is terribly nice when he laughs. I’d better not stay; they may come up here next and I’d be caught. There’s no way out of this big room except by the steps, unless I leap out of one of the windows.” She crept very carefully to the unfenced openings at the end of the dormitory, and drew back hastily. “No, thanks! Too many stones down there. I’ll come back and explore another time, when I won’t interfere with Miss Maid. It’s a lovely old place. Fancy having it as part of your garden!”

She slipped unseen into the tunnel again and back through the wallflower-garden to the lawn. Waving her hand to Anne at her window, she wandered down another winding path through a shrubbery.

“I don’t suppose it leads to more ruins, but it must go somewhere. Here’s a gate, and a lane, and gate number two on the other side. Does it all belong to Lady Quellyn, I wonder?”

She leaned on the gate, looking at a stretch of parkland and a small lake, with an islet which held one big tree. Beyond were bare orchard trees, reached by a gate in a fence.

“I think it’s a different house. Didn’t Miss Maid say something about next door? What’s that?”

It was a shriek of terror; there was no doubt of that. Another shriek—a scream of rage—an urgent call for assistance. “Help! Oh, help!”

Lindy looked round wildly. Then she dashed across the grass, past the lake, and towards a clump of trees, from which those agonised shrieks came steadily.

A woman was struggling with a red-haired girl of almost nine, who was fighting to get away from her. From a tree above them came another wild scream, and the child fought more fiercely than ever. “Let me go! Must help Marg’ret!”

“Get me down! Get me down! I’m stuck!” wailed someone in the tree.

Lindy rushed to help. “Can I do anything? What’s the matter with this one?”

“Want to get Twin down,” sobbed the child on the ground.

“She’ll dash up into the tree and then there will be two to rescue,” Mary Devine panted. “Elizabeth, if you’ll wait here I’ll try to get Margaret down.”

“She’s stuck! She’ll be there for always! Let me go, Mary!” Elizabeth’s struggles grew more frantic.

Lindy grasped the situation. “What a little ass you are!” she said frankly. “Is she called Elizabeth? Hang on to her! She’ll only make more trouble. I’ll try to help the other one. Where is she?”

“Twin’s stuck in that beashly tree. And I’m not a little ass,” Elizabeth sobbed.

“You’re just a silly baby,” Lindy retorted. “Is Number Two called Margaret? Hi, Margaret! Where are you?”

“Here!” Margaret wailed. “And I can’t get down. It was easy coming up! It’s a beashly tree, like Twin said.” A tear-stained face in a mop of dark-red curls peered down at Lindy.

“Gosh! You are in a pickle! How am I going to get at you?” Lindy exclaimed. “I say, kid, keep still—quite still! Don’t wriggle or try to come down. That branch doesn’t like having a thing as big as you on it. Don’t bring it down or you’ll come down with it.”

“Want to come down!”

“I want Twin to come down!” Elizabeth shouted.

“Yes, but not that way,” Lindy said sharply. “Keep still, Margaret!”

The branch was rotten and was bending under Margaret’s weight. A fall from that height might have serious consequences. Margaret, in a reckless fit, had run on ahead and had climbed the trunk without difficulty, because her boy cousins had said girls could not climb; she knew Elizabeth could be trusted to give a vivid account of her triumph to Andrew and Tony. She had wormed her way along a branch, which had grown suddenly slim and had begun to sway dangerously. Margaret had lost her nerve and screamed for help, clinging to the bough with arms and knees, and Elizabeth’s one thought had been to rush up the tree after her.

Lindy eyed Margaret’s position with some alarm. The weight of another person would certainly bring down the branch. But could the child be trusted to keep still until help could be fetched? Certainly not with Elizabeth in this distraught condition just below her.

“Elizabeth, you’ve heard of kittens climbing trees and needing to be brought down?” Lindy spoke quietly. “Well, your Margaret is the kitten up the tree. We need a ladder, and a man; you always need ladders and men when there’s a kitten up a tree. Sometimes the fire-engine has to come. Couldn’t you run to the house and bring a man and a ladder? Which house is nearest?”

“Home!” Elizabeth shouted, and shot off through the park to the little gate and the lane.

“Fetch Frost, Elizabeth!” Mary Devine called after her. “She’s right, though she didn’t stop to think,” she added. “It would take longer to go to the Manor, and Sir Kenneth is out, I know.”

“It will be easier now she’s gone.” Lindy looked up into the tree again. “Margaret, play at being the kitten in the tree. Cling to that branch with your claws and don’t move; you’re too frightened to move, you know. You can call ‘Meaow’ if you like.”

Realistic and terrified cat-wails came from Margaret. “Is that right?” she asked anxiously. “I’d like Twin to hear me. I won’t really fall off, will I?”

“Not if you keep still and hold on like a kitten.” Lindy turned to Mary. “She’s the wrong way round. If I climb up I’ll only be able to grab her feet, and she can’t possibly turn without falling off. If she’ll keep still I think she’ll be all right. Don’t move, kitten! Meaow some more to call the fire-engine!”

“Oh, it’s going to break!” Mary cried in terror.

The branch had given an ominous crack, and Margaret’s meaow became a shriek once more.

Lindy leapt for the tree, hurled herself up the trunk, and crept along a stout branch, just below the one to which the child was clinging. She had had her eye on it for some moments.

“I may break her fall anyway,” she muttered. “Hope she doesn’t break my neck at the same time!”

The rotten branch gave way with a crash. Lindy braced herself for the shock.

Margaret, with a wild scream, hurtled down upon her. Lindy flung out one arm, clinging to her bough with the other. She caught Margaret by the shoulder and was dragged from her perch by the sudden strain. They crashed to the ground together, Lindy underneath.

With a shout two men came rushing from the direction of the Hall. The younger, running like the wind, reached the group first.

“What’s the row? Can I help? Are they hurt?” he cried.