Читать книгу Secrets of the Abbey - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 7

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It was a proud and happy day for Jen when, wearing her violet girdle and embroidered frock, she went into the dressing-room to see that her queen was ready for the May Day ceremony.

The elder queens were there, already in their robes and crowns, each with her maid-of-honour wearing her colours on her frock and girdle. Miriam, the first queen, was in white, with forget-me-nots on her train, and was attended by her little sister Barbara. Cicely, the gold queen and the President of the Hamlet Club, had Peggy Gilks to wait on her. The strawberry-pink queen, Marguerite, had Edna Gilks as her maid, and Joy, in bright green, had Carry Carter.

“You know your duties, don’t you, Violet Maid?” the President smiled down at the new maid-of-honour’s radiant face.

“To take care of Joan,” Jen said promptly.

“You’ve a high ideal!” Marguerite said laughing. “Most maids would have said—‘To carry my queen’s train,’ or something like that.”

“Oh, I shall do that! But my job’s to take care of Joan and see that everything’s all right for her. Is your crown comfortable, Joan?” Jen asked earnestly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to put it on for you, but Miss Macey stopped me, and I knew you had Joy.”

“It’s all right, and anyway I shan’t be wearing it for very long,” Joan said, laughing.

“I hate to see you wearing those faded old flowers! But Joy will put on your forget-me-nots and then you’ll look quite marvellous.”

“I don’t expect to do that! Is everybody ready? Don’t collapse with nerves, Muriel!”—sternly, to the new queen, who was looking white. “Your robe’s lovely and the blue suits you. Jen and I will come to fetch you in about two minutes, when I’ve done my bit and got rid of my old wreath. Sorry we have to leave you alone; it’s always a trying moment for the new queen. Shall I lend you Jenny-Wren, to take care of you?”

“Nesta will hold her hand,” Jen said, gathering up the violet train. “I’m getting scared, Joan! Couldn’t we start? It’s rather awesome to have to lead the procession!”

“Some day perhaps you’ll be queen, and then you’ll have to do it yourself, Mrs. Wren,” said Joy, preparing to follow.

Joan, crowned with dying flowers, led the way up the long hall, her train carried carefully by Jen, who, suddenly and most unusually shy, did not raise her eyes from the violet robe. A small girl followed, carrying the forget-me-not crown on a white cushion, and then came the former queens, led by Joy. The dancing girls had made two lines, and were kneeling and clapping and shouting their welcome. Jen’s knees were shaking, as she thought how odd it was to be out here, a part of the procession and no longer one of the crowd. It was a nervous position but a glorious one.

“It was marvellous of Joan to choose me!” the thought rang in her mind. “What a long way it is to the platform! The hall never seemed so big before. Suppose I drop the train—or my stockings come down—or—or suppose I laugh, or sneeze, or something awful?”

The hall was not so very big, after all, and before Jen had time to laugh or sneeze Joan was stepping up on to the platform. While the rest of the queens took their places, with Joy on the left hand of the central throne and an empty seat on the right, Jen knelt and arranged the violet train in beautiful folds.

Joan smiled down at her maid. “Don’t bother too much, Jenny-Wren. We’ll be going down again in a moment, to fetch Muriel.”

“Oh, but it must look nice,” Jen argued, rising to stand behind the queen.

Joy stepped forward as Joan knelt, and lifted off the faded crown and laid the thick circle of forget-me-nots on Joan’s red hair. As the dancers sprang to their feet and cheered, and the girls in the gallery shouted, Joan rose and stood bowing, and then begged for silence with a wave of her hand.

“I do thank you all very much,” her voice rang out bravely and clearly. “It’s been a very happy year for me, and I haven’t noticed that any one else has been particularly miserable, so I hope we can say all has gone well——”

There was a laugh from the hall, for her reign had already been voted one of the best the school had known.

“Thank you all again. I’m sure the new queen will have a happy time too, if you’re as nice to her as you’ve been to me.”

Then, with a warning look at Jen, Joan came down the steps and went to fetch her successor.

Jen lifted the train again and followed, down the long hall and up again, as Joan led Muriel to her throne. With Nesta, the new maid-of-honour, she knelt on the dais when the crowning was over, and arranged the folds of the violet train while Nesta spread out the blue one; then both maids sat at the feet of their queens to watch the plaiting of the maypole and the morris and country dances which followed.

“Are you sorry you aren’t dancing, Jenny-Wren?” Joan bent and spoke to her attendant, who seemed to be in a dream.

Jen’s thoughtful face lit up and she smiled back at her queen. “Not to-night. I’ll dance another time. Nesta and I are frightfully bucked to be here. We’ve both promised old Beetle that if she isn’t the queen and one of us ever happens to be it, Beetle shall be the maid-of-honour.”

“That’s nice of you, though it’s looking rather far ahead.”

“Oh, I know! I shan’t ever be chosen, of course, but I do think Nesta ought to be queen some day. She’s been in the club a long while and the girls like her, and she’s jolly pretty. She’d love to be queen, and she’d have Beetle for her maid.”

“Is that what you were looking so sober about?”

“No, I was thinking. Shall I tell you, Joan?”

“Please do! I wondered if you were criticising ‘Chestnut!’ It was very good, I thought.”

“It was terribly pretty,” Jen exclaimed. “But I wasn’t really watching; not carefully, I mean. Joan-Queen, I’ll tell you. I was thinking about ‘gate.’ ”

Joan’s eyes widened. “Jandy Mac’s hint? What put that into your head just now?”

“When they did ‘If all the World were Paper,’ I remembered how Cicely teaches the second figure—‘Lead through the gates!’—and I began to wonder what Jandy could have meant. I’ve thought about it a lot.”

“So have I,” Joan admitted. “What does your thinking come to?”

Jen shot a quick look up at her. “Could it be something to do with the Abbey gate?”

“I’ve wondered if it could be. But the Abbey gate looks very innocent, Jen. What could there be to write down on a bit of paper about it?”

“It looks so very much all right that we’ve never taken much notice of it; at least, I never have,” Jen pondered, a far-away look in her eyes again. “It’s just the gate into the Abbey, and we go through it to get to the Abbey. We don’t even look at it—I mean, I never do. If it’s got any secret we should never notice it.”

“That’s true enough. But what secret could the Abbey gate be keeping from us, Jen?”

“Oh, dozens!” Jen cried. “More secret passages; ways of escape from the Abbey out to the gate-house! Shall we search, Joan?”

“Not till Jandy comes and tells us what she thinks,” Joan said firmly. “We may be wrong; it may be some other gate. We can’t pull our gate to pieces looking for we-don’t-know-what, which may not be there! But I do agree that the gate-house has probably been examined less carefully than the rest of the Abbey, just because it looks so obvious and natural. I shall be more interested in it now, thanks to your hints and Jandy’s!”

“You won’t make discoveries without me, will you?” Jen pleaded. “Even Joy said I must be there!”

“Oh, you must be there! We won’t leave you out. But we’ll wait for Jandy’s papers. They may give us some idea what to look for.”

“It’s very mysterious!” Jen sighed. “But I like it; I like mysteries, and things to find out. Oh, grub! Come on, Nesta! We must look after our queens. Will you have coffee or lemonade, Joan-Queen?”

“The club will wait on us, Jen. Some of them always bring refreshments to the platform.”

“They won’t wait on you,” Jen was firm on that point. “It’s my job to take care of you, and nobody else is going to do it. The club can wait on the visitors, and the other queens, and—and me, if they like. But they aren’t going to do things for you. Come on, Nesta! Old Beetle promised to be one of the first in the dining-room and to bring tuck out to us. She knew we’d not have a chance, stuck up here!”

With Beetle’s help refreshments for the reigning queen and the ex-queen were procured with unusual ease and quickness, and Beatrice rushed off to worm her way through the crowd again, while Jen and Nesta waited on their mistresses. Sandwiches and lemonade were thrust into their hands by the triumphant Beetle as soon as they were ready for them.

“There! Can I get you anything more? Does Muriel like her coffee? Is Joan ready for cakes?”

“Very good, Beetle! You’ve been splendid,” Jen thumped her helper on the back. “I shall tell Joan you’re really her assistant maid. You’re better at fighting through a scrum than any one I know.”

“Oh, I can always get through a crowd!” Beetle, who was short and stout and extremely good-natured, pushed back her hair from her hot face. “I go underneath, and I’m there before anybody’s noticed me. I was afraid I’d spill the drinks, but I said—‘Make way for the Queen’s coffee!’—and somehow everybody did.”

“They didn’t want it spilt on their dancing frocks! You’ve been a brick, Beetle, and we’ll tell the queens. Are you having a nice dance-party?” Jen asked, in a maternal tone induced by her promotion to the high places.

“Oh, marvellous! The music’s better than ever.”

“I know. I felt myself jumping to it all the time, and Joan laughed at me. I watched you, Beetle; you were dancing very nicely. Your step’s lovely; I don’t know how you do it, when you’re so round. Joan says you’re very good.”

Beatrice was proud and radiant. “Topping of her! Shall I get you some more cakes?”

“Had enough, thanks. You’d better crawl under the legs and get some for yourself, or there’ll be none left.”

“Good old Beetle! She’s a jolly good sort,” Nesta said, beginning to collect cups and glasses.

“It’s been a lovely crowning, Your Majesty!” Jen looked up at the new queen.

Muriel was a quiet girl, who had been greatly astonished by her election. She answered Jen’s remark with real pleasure.

“I’m so glad, Jen. I thought you might feel sad because your queen’s abdicating. I know I can’t take Joan’s place, either in the club or the school.”

“Oh, but nobody wants you to! Nobody would like it, if you did. You’ll be different, of course, but you’re sure to be a good queen. You’ve been Joan’s maid, so you must know all about how to do things.”

“You think the queen should train her maid to be her successor?”

“No, not exactly, for she might not be chosen. But it must be a help to have been maid to the queen. Nesta will know all about how to be queen by this time next year, whether she ever has to do it or not.”

“And what about you?”

“That’s different. Joan won’t be queening any more—reigning, I mean.”

“I expect you know a good deal about it, all the same. Perhaps we’ll have you as queen some day.”

“Not a bit likely. I’m so much newer than most of the girls. I’ve only been here a year; some of them have been in it from the beginning. They’re going to dance again. Oh, it’s morris! There are the sticks; it’s good old ‘Rigs.’ Watch Beetle, Your Majesty! Her step’s jolly good,” and Jen turned to arrange her queen’s robe in its beautiful folds again—for Joan had gone to speak to her mother during the interval—and then settled down at Joan’s feet to watch the dancing.