Читать книгу Secrets of the Abbey - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 8

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“Now, Jen Robins, we want to talk to you!” Nora and Jack arrived at school together next morning and sought Jen before classes began. Nora’s face was determined, but Jack looked troubled.

Jen’s heart thumped and then fell like a lump of lead. She had heard a rumour the night before, but had resolutely refused to pay any attention to it, and as usual, as soon as the music had begun, she had forgotten everything but the dancing, even though she was only an onlooker.

“What’s up?” she asked anxiously.

“Doreen’s sold her house; well, her people have. They’re going north at once. Doreen leaves school at the end of this week.”

“That’s quick work!” Jen stubbornly refused to see Nora’s meaning. “But what has it got to do with me?”

“Just this. St. Anne’s College Juniors have sent a challenge to our junior team. It came yesterday, but we didn’t say anything to you until the crowning was over. They’ve never challenged our juniors before; they’ve never been good enough to risk it. But we always play their seniors, and we’ve beaten them for the last three years. We can’t accept this challenge unless we’ve a real chance of winning; can’t have the juniors letting down the school. Now what about it?”

“Well, what about it?” Jen asked desperately.

“Are you going to let down the school?”

“I’m not the only person who can play!”

“You’re the only one who can stiffen the junior team’s bowling so that it’s fit to play the College. Isn’t she, Jack Wilmot?”

Jack looked unhappy. “Yes,” she admitted. “But I don’t feel we ought to ask her to leave the Hamlet Club. Nobody’s ever been asked to do such a thing before. It isn’t my idea, Jen.”

“Then what would you do?” the games-captain demanded. “Refuse the challenge? Wouldn’t that let the school down?”

“No, I should play,” Jack said sturdily. “But I should tell them that our team had lost its best bowler unexpectedly and we couldn’t hope to win till we’d trained another. Then I’d tell the team to buck up and play their jolly old hardest, and then I should hope for the best.”

“That’s what I call sporting!” Jen cried.

Nora turned on her. “Quite so. It’s a very sporting attitude. But what about yours? You belong to the school; you could help the school; the school would win, if you played. You won’t play, because it would interfere with your own selfish pleasure. As you said just now—what about it?”

Jen had grown white. “I couldn’t give up the dancing!” she cried. “Jack, you don’t feel like that about me, do you?”

“No, I don’t. I’ve said so. I wouldn’t give up cricket, if your club needed me. We can’t ask you to do it.”

“Nora wouldn’t give up cricket either,” Jen raged. “You haven’t any right to ask me, Nora!”

“You could help the school to win,” Nora pointed out. “Jenny-Wren, I don’t mean to be a brute. I’m sorry about it. But it is such a big thing, and such a chance for the school. It’s a big thing for Jack, too; a challenge from the College Juniors! Jack would be so awfully bucked if we could win, in her first term as captain.”

Jen looked at Jack, whose wistful face betrayed her real feelings. “I couldn’t! Oh, I couldn’t!” she caught her breath. “Joan needs me, Nora!”—with a vain hope that this might carry weight. “I’ve only just begun being her maid!”

“Joan can get a dozen kids to carry her train. We let you have last night, because we knew how keen you were,” Nora urged. “We didn’t worry you till it was over. But now—why, Joan may not need you as her maid again until the autumn! It’s not as if she was the queen any longer. If we were trying to take Nesta away, I could understand Muriel grousing a bit. But Joan’s out of it now; you’ve nothing to do for her unless there’s a procession of queens, and there isn’t likely to be another before the fête in the autumn.”

But Jen took her new duties more seriously. “It isn’t only carrying her train. I meant—I mean!—to help her in all sorts of ways. And there are the summer parties; we always dance in Darley’s Barn and on the lawn at the Hall. I’d miss all those. It means being out of the club for the whole summer term. Nora, I couldn’t bear it; really, I couldn’t!” she pleaded.

There was a strict rule in the school that none but seniors could belong to both the Sports Club and the Hamlet Club. Juniors were expected to choose between games and dancing, and seniors usually found that their work took up too much time to allow of more than one big outside interest. The two clubs mingled to a certain extent; the dancers held open evenings, when outsiders might come and try how much they could do and be helped and pulled through easy dances; and a certain amount of play was expected at school even from the Hamlet girls. But juniors might not be members of both the clubs and were not allowed to take both games and dancing seriously.

Jen had come up against the difficulty very early in her school career, when her friendship with Jack and her own love for cricket had drawn her in one direction, while the fascination of the music and figures of the country dances and all the colour and romance of the crowning of the Queen had pulled her irresistibly in the other. Romance and colour had won, but she had kept a secret hope that if her cricket did not fall too hopelessly below standard she might as a senior be able to make time for both. It was partly with this idea and partly from sheer interest and enjoyment that she had practised so hard with Janice during the last summer holidays, when chance had thrown them together at the Hall for some weeks; but she had never dreamed of the difficulty in which she was going to place herself, and she regretted bitterly the impulse that had led her to betray her prowess to Jack.

“I’m not asking you to give it all up, Jenny-Wren,” Jack said hurriedly, conscience-stricken by the look in her friend’s eyes. “It would be rotten for you, and we couldn’t expect it. I’ll try to buck up one of the others; I’m no good as a bowler myself, but one of them must have a shot at it.”

“There’s no time,” Nora retorted. “By the end of the term you may have trained somebody, but for the match with the College that’s not a scrap of use.”

“Perhaps Mary’s wrist will keep all right.” But Jack did not sound hopeful.

“You told me yourself you could never depend on Mary. Well, Jen, I can’t say any more. You know how I feel. You’d better think it over.”

She went off to join a group of seniors who were just coming in. “I say! Have you heard about St. Anne’s? They’ve a junior team this year, and they’ve sent a challenge——”

Jen and Jack looked at one another. “I’m terribly sorry, old chap!” Jack began.

Jen bit her lips for one moment. Then her head went up. “As Nora said, I shall have to think it over. And I must talk to Joan. Just now it seems a perfectly horrible idea and quite impossible. I shall ask Nesta what she’d do; she’ll know how I feel. No, I shan’t, because I know already. Nesta would say: ‘Oh, what rot!’ And that’s how I feel too. But—there’s something ugly in my mind. Jack, Nora said, ‘Selfish—your selfish pleasure.’ That was a simply beastly thing to say to anybody!”

“Yes, it was.” Jack tucked her friend’s hand under her arm. “But Nora doesn’t understand. She doesn’t care for anything but games. I know how you feel, Jen, and I don’t think you ought to do it. You’re so fearfully keen, and—and it means such an awful lot to you! I expect you feel it doesn’t matter so very much if we lose the match, so long as we’re sporting enough to take up the challenge and do the best we can?”

Jen squeezed her arm. “It was when you said that to Nora that I began to wonder if I could bear to do it. I’d like to be in a team with you for captain.”

Jack reddened. “I haven’t said a word about how much I want you, because it didn’t seem fair. I think it’s brutal to ask you. But if we could have you, it would be the most marvellous term of cricket I’ve ever had, and we should win every match.”

“You are a good chap, Jacky-boy! We do understand one another; it’s a good thing we got married,” Jen exclaimed. “Don’t say any more about cricket just now. I’ll have to talk to Joan, and I don’t know when she’ll have time. You don’t think the whole school will stare at me accusingly because I’m being selfish, do you?” she asked anxiously, as they went indoors.

“No, I don’t. They’ll understand. And if any of them don’t, I’ll talk to them! If anybody says ‘selfish’ to you, you can send her along to talk to me!” Jack said.