Читать книгу The New Abbey Girls - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 7

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The big lounge hall of Joy’s house was a very attractive place, with its oak-panelled walls and family portraits, big stained-glass windows, polished floor, big rugs, Joy’s beautiful piano, and daffodils on each of the old tables in big blue bowls and vases. Mrs. Shirley was resting after the excitements of the last few days, and preferred to stay in her own little sitting-room upstairs, but the girls loved the hall and used it whenever they were indoors.

Each annexing a wide window-seat, they spread their papers on little tables at their sides, and tackled their letters in earnest, with many a sigh from Joy, and the silence of absorbed concentration from Jen, who dearly loved to tell a story, and in Joan’s wedding found one greatly to her mind.

“Yes, Ann? What is it?” Joy’s voice roused Jen to sudden interest.

She laid down her pad. “Is it business, Ann? Shall I go away?”

“Sit down, Ann. Pull up that big chair. Now tell me all about it. Jen said you wanted to see me.” Joy had laid aside her writing with relief. “No, don’t budge, Jenny-Wren. I may want your support, if the worst comes to the worst. Ann, put me out of my misery, do! You aren’t going to say you want to chuck up the abbey? I thought you liked the job so much!”

“It’s about Maidlin, Miss Joy,” Ann began nervously.

“Oh! Well, I guess I can stand it! What’s the worry, Ann? How can I help?”

“There’s a letter from her father, miss, and—and I don’t right know what to do.” Ann’s nervousness increased as she went on.

“Oh? Well, I’m sure you’ll be very glad to hear from him,” Joy said vaguely. “That’s very nice, Ann. Why has it worried you so?”

“He do say, Miss Joy,” and Ann’s correct English forsook her in her excitement, “he do say as how his old father and mother be both dead of the ’flu, it being very bad in them Italian parts just now. And all the money, what they wouldn’t let him have any of, because of him getting married to our Mary—you’ll remember the story, Miss Joy?”

“Yes, Ann, I know all about it,” Joy assured her impatiently. “Well, what about the money?”

“Oh, Ann, dear, do go on!” wailed Jen. “Did they disinherit him, or has he got it all now?”

“It’s all to belong to our Maidlin, the money, and the houses, and the horses and carriages and the motors, and the pictures, and all,” and Ann gazed at Joy with incredulous, half-frightened eyes. “ ’Tis all written in the letter, Miss Joy. I’ve read it a many times these last three days, but ’tis all there, as plain as print.”

“To Maidlin!” gasped Joy. “But why? What did the funny old things do that for? I thought they didn’t love Maidlin so awfully much!”

“The novelette!” Jen murmured ecstatically. “Oh, how priceless! It’s going on just like a book! Oh, I do hope nothing will spoil it now! Of course, Maidlin had to turn out to be an heiress in disguise! How simply tophole!”

“ ’Tis some old will,” Ann was fumbling in her pocket for the letter. “I’ll show you what he says, Miss Joy. I thought you’d tell me what to do.”

“It would be an old will!” Jen chortled happily. “Was it hidden in a loft, or something? Does the property have to skip a generation once in every hundred years? Quite an original idea! Another romantic story for Joan’s abbey! How pleased she’ll be! As Madam says, aren’t we unexpected people?”

“ ’Twere written when he’d been and married our Mary,” Ann was explaining breathlessly. “His father said he’d leave him out of the money altogether, so he made it that every mortal thing must go to his grandchildren, for he’d got two, a boy and a girl, as he were bringing up, their parents being dead; and our Maidlin not being born then, nor thought of, you understand. But the girl, she died at school; and the boy were killed in the war; and there aren’t any more, nor any one left to say it isn’t fair.”

“And the will was never changed! They’d never seen Maidlin, of course, and they were getting very old, and they forgot her existence,” Joy said excitedly. “Probably they hardly realised she did exist! Very likely the old man was never quite the same after the shock of the grandson’s death in the war; and so he never made a new will!”

“And so it all comes to the pretty housemaid’s kid!” Jen murmured, and sat clasping her knees and gazing happily at Ann. “What a perfectly gorgeous story! It’s simply priceless! And how it jolly well serves them right! For they were pigs about the marriage!”

“Well, Ann, what are you going to do now?” Joy asked briskly. “Is he coming to fetch Madalena? For if she’s a great heiress, she’ll want educating, and all kinds of things. She’s not ready to take her proper place in society yet!” and a vision rose of the wild, untidy little figure, shaking with rage and sobs, who had almost met a sudden death under Belinda’s wheels a few hours before.

“No, Miss Joy, that she be not! And that be my trouble,” and Ann’s strange nervousness returned, and she stammered and hesitated. “Her father, he writes as he can’t come home all at once, for he’s away in Chiny, and the folks there, what give him a job when he needed it bad, they be in the middle o’ some work o’ some kind, and sort of depending on him, and he says ’twould ruin it if he come away just now, and he can’t chuck things up all at once. He’ll come just as soon as he can get away, he says, but things is difficult and unsettled in that part o’ Chiny, and he don’t know quite when ’twill be.”

“I see. It is awkward for him,” Joy agreed. “He won’t let them down, of course. He always does seem to have done the decent thing and stood by people properly. Well? What does he want done with Maidlin in the meantime? Are you to send her to Italy?”

“That would be awfully hard on the kiddy!” Jen urged. “She can’t speak a word of French, let alone Italian, for I asked her. And she wouldn’t know a soul.”

“That’s what he says, Miss Jen,” Ann spoke eagerly. “He says ’twould be too hard on the child to send her there alone. No, he says, will we keep her till he can come and take her home himself; and if anything should happen to him out there, ’tis all written to a lawyer-man in London what’s to be done with her then, and the name’s in the letter here. And he says, could we send her to a good school for a little while, or—or get her a place to live with—with nice people, who’d know what she ought to learn, and teach her, so’s she’d be ready when he comes.”

“That’s a very good idea,” Joy said warmly. “Yes, that’s quite the best thing to do. Not a school, though, I think. She wants people who will take more interest in her than that. In a school she’d only be one of a crowd of girls. But a nice family, where they knew the story and understood just what she needed—yes, that’s what you want. How will you find the right place, Ann? You must be very particular where you send her. Everything depends on that. Advertise? It’s hardly good enough. Could I make any inquiries for you? Miss Macey might——”

“Joy, don’t you see?” Jen spoke softly. To her eyes, gifted with insight which Joy had never learned, it was plain enough. The pathetic pleading in Ann’s eyes spoke for itself. Her helpless bewilderment was obvious, and so was the way out of the difficulty, as it had presented itself to her. Jen saw plainly what was in her mind, but how Joy would take it she was not sure. “Joy, she wants you to have Maidlin here. It’s a frightful compliment, really, if you look at it in the proper way.”

“My hat!” gasped Joy. “I hadn’t thought of that! I say! What—what thundering cheek!” and she stared aghast at the caretaker.

“I—I know I hadn’t ought to think of it, Miss Joy,” Ann faltered. “But ’twould be the making of the child, and—and I don’t know what to do. I ain’t fit to look after her now!”

That was obvious. Joy sat biting her lips and staring out at the lawn. Jen watched her anxiously.

“Well, neither am I!” Joy burst out at last. “Fit to look after her, I mean. I’m about the last person you ought to choose, as Madam said this morning! But that—Miss Macey’s girl—was only a question of letting the kid live here and go to school every day. This is quite different. You want me to take your kid, who knows absolutely nothing, and train her for you till she’s fit to take her proper place——”

“No, only till her father comes home!” Jen put in quickly. “He’ll come quite soon, Joy. It’s only to start Maidlin properly. But I’m not saying you ought to do it. Of course, it would be a gorgeous thing for her, and all that, but there’s no reason why you should fag to do it, if you don’t want to. If you could help Ann to find some other place, wouldn’t that do just as well?”

“I could do that, of course. I know heaps of people. I’d make all the inquiries for you, Ann. But I really don’t feel I’m the proper person to bring Maidlin up for you!” Joy spoke eagerly and hopefully.

“I do ask your pardon for thinking of it, Miss Joy. I hadn’t any right to say it. ’Twould be a trouble to you, I can see,” Ann faltered apologetically. “But I’m wanting to do my best for the child, and I’d ha’ liked her to come to you better’n to anybody else in the whole world. I can’t bear to think o’ sending her to strange folks. Her be a queer child, and sometimes I’m that worried by her odd ways I don’t know what to do. How she’ll get on wi’ strange people I don’t know. I doubt they won’t have patience with her.”

Ann’s eyes wandered over the beautiful hall, and she sighed wistfully, with thoughts of all the empty bedrooms and corridors upstairs. A whole school had slept here once for two months! There was room and to spare for one small girl. It was such a beautiful house; and Joy, who had known what it was to come into an unexpected inheritance, had seemed such an ideal guardian for the ward who had suddenly become a person of such importance! Joan and Joy had always been ideals to Ann, fairy-tale girls, with their gifts, their wealth, their beauty; she had admired and adored them humbly, and she could have hoped for nothing better for Maidlin than to be cared for by one of them for a time. It had seemed such a good idea! But apparently it had been too much to hope for. She sighed regretfully again, and began another apology for her presumption.

Joy cut her short. “I’ll think over all the likely people, and see if any of them could help, Ann. What about the aunt who has been mothering her, by the way? Won’t she expect to be consulted now? Or is she still too ill?”

“Her be still very bad, Miss Joy, and they do say ’twould ha’ been months before Maidlin could ha’ gone back to her, in any case. ’Twere a stroke, and a bad one, and have left her all helpless like.”

“I’m sorry it’s so bad. We mustn’t worry her, then. I’ll come down and see you about it all in a day or two, when I’ve had time to think. In the meanwhile you’d better keep an eye on your heiress. I suppose you know I nearly killed her this afternoon? It wasn’t my fault! She ran right out and into my bike. But I’d have been sorry. She couldn’t have inherited her Italian estates if she’d been a mangled corpse under my wheels. What was the matter with the silly infant? Does she often get in fits like that? You’d better chain her up. What had you done to set her off?”

Ann, very red, would or could give no explanation. Maidlin was a silly child; she did not know what was good for her. She had a very bad temper; her mother had never had a temper, so it must have come from her father.

Jen watched the woman keenly, and Ann shrank under her penetrating eyes, and escaped with relief as soon as she could, leaving the letter from China for the girls to read.

As the door closed behind her, Jen burst out again, “Joy, don’t you see? Maidlin doesn’t want to be sent here. That’s what she was so mad about this afternoon. She knew Ann was going to ask you to have her.”

“Oh!” Joy said slowly. “Well, that settles it, of course. I wouldn’t dream of having her if the very thought of coming here could put her in such a rage. But why, Jenny-Wren? Why should she hate it so? You see through people pretty well. What’s the matter with her? Why won’t she come here? Isn’t the house good enough?” with a touch of indignation, as she in her turn looked round the hall.

Jen sat staring at her, her eyes very thoughtful. “I don’t know. I don’t know her well enough to say. But I know how I should feel in Maidlin’s place. I might not rage as she does, for I’m not half Italian. But I know I’d feel bad.”

“Oh? And why? Because you’d come into a fortune?” Joy raised her eyebrows. “I don’t see why. I didn’t! It’s quite a jolly feeling! Why would you feel bad about it?”

“Not about that. She won’t realise that yet; she can’t understand it, anyway. But if I thought some one was going to be asked to have me; if I were Maidlin, and knew my aunt was coming up here to ask you to take me in; well, I should simply hate it, that’s all.”

“Oh, I see!” Joy said slowly, and stared back at her with knitted brows. “You think that’s what was up with her? Well, if I say I won’t have her—can’t have her! That sounds better!—she’ll be quite pleased, and it will be all right.”

“I suppose so,” Jen spoke doubtfully. “That depends on whether she really wanted to come or not.”

“I thought you just said she’d hate it!”

“I never did! I said she’d hate knowing her aunt had asked you to have her. She might be dying to come all the time. That would make it all the worse. If she felt you didn’t want her, and she’d been shoved on to you, I should think she’d feel simply sick.”

Joy pursed her lips, and stared out into the garden. “It’s awfully hard on the kid! You can’t wonder if she’s all worked up. And she has nobody who can really help her. Ann isn’t a bit of good. Fancy going to Ann for help, when everything seems to be collapsing about you, and your whole world has crashed, and everything is going to be different! I had aunty and Joan, and they pulled me through, but I remember still how lost I felt. It is rough on the kiddy! And she’s only an infant. She hasn’t even got the aunt who’s been like her mother to go to. She jolly well needs somebody,” and she sat staring out at the lawn, and the almond blossom over the old orchard wall, the glimpse of the abbey ruins behind.

“Of course, I could do it.... Joan would have done it,” she said at last.

“Yes, I think she would,” Jen agreed. “But she wouldn’t have taken on the job unless she’d meant to do it properly, Joy. I mean, if she’d agreed to have the kid here, she’d have done an awful lot for her. It’s a very big thing to ask. And you have other things to do. I really wonder Ann had the cheek to suggest it. I never could have done it!”

“Oh, Ann! She never sees beyond the end of her nose. Any one can make a fool of Ann. She’d only think how nice it would be for her and Maidlin. She’d never feel it was cheek.”

“It was cheek, all the same. And I believe Maidlin feels it was cheek, and that’s why she’s been so funny about it.”

Joy lapsed into worried silence again. At last she spoke, and very definitely. “We’ll tell aunty, of course; but she’ll say I must do what I think right. She won’t say I must do what I like, you notice! I think I ought to have the kid here, and do the proper thing by her, but I don’t want to do it. And I’m not sure if I really ought to, after all. It’s only the horrid feeling of being able to do something for somebody, and refusing because it’s too much trouble, that worries me. I’m always coming up against it. It’s the same about Miss Macey’s girl, Rosamund; but Maidlin’s a much bigger proposition. Much more work and worry for me!—There’s nothing else for it! I’ve made up my mind! I’m going up to town to-morrow; you can come too, if you like! I’m going up to town to have a heart-to-heart talk with the Pixie!”

“Oh!” Jen gave a subdued shriek of delight. “Oh, Joy, of course! Why didn’t I think of it? What a gorgeous idea! She’ll talk some sense to us!”