Читать книгу The Abbey Girls - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 3

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‘I don’t see why they need choose such an out-of-the-way place to ramble to!’ grumbled a fair-haired girl, toiling along in the rear.

‘What’s the matter?’ and an elder girl turned to look back at the juniors. ‘Who’s grumbling? Carry Carter again?’

‘Carry Carter as usual, you mean,’ laughed sturdy brown-faced Edna.

The elders had paused at the top of a long hill, and the juniors, toiling after, had caught them up. There were only a dozen of them to-day, for an important hockey practice had kept several members at home. Miriam and Cicely, the leaders, were among the eldest girls in the school. Miriam was eighteen, with her fair hair wound round her head in thick plaits; Cicely was a year younger, but already looking nearly grown-up, with her dark brown hair tied back and her skirts well below her knees. The rest of the party were younger, sturdy Edna and grumbling Carry being fifteen, and the others ranging between them and the seniors.

‘Carry Carter always grumbles on rambles. I don’t know why she ever joined,’ and Cicely slipped her hand through her friend’s arm and turned to go on her way.

‘Don’t you? I’ve a fair idea myself, and I know Marguerite thinks so too.’

‘You mean May-day?’ and Cicely frowned. ‘They’re going to run a candidate? Then we shall have trouble. What a nuisance! It’s always gone so well!’

Miriam laughed. ‘Because you’ve always had your own way. You simply ran things through last time. I think Miss Carry rather fancies herself—well, we’ll see!’

‘That kid! Then we shall have trouble! I hope you’re wrong. I rather thought Edna Gilks would do.’

‘So did I. She’s a favourite with our girls. But we won’t be asked to arrange it. Go on! You were telling me about Margia.’

Cicely continued her story, and the discontented juniors were forgotten. Carry and her friend, Agnes Mason, had fallen behind again, and were talking in low tones. Edna Gilks and her cousin Peggy and several others were asking riddles to pass the time on the long stretch of road.

‘I don’t suppose the silly place is worth going to, anyway,’ Carry raised her voice deliberately. ‘Nobody knows anything about it but Miriam Honor. Why couldn’t we go somewhere nearer home?’

‘Because we went to them all last year, silly,’ Edna retorted over her shoulder. ‘But this old abbey is new to us. It’s out of the way——’

‘It is!’ jerked Carry.

‘We never come round this way; even Mirry hasn’t been for two years. But she says it’s awfully fine, and we ought to have been before.’

‘How much farther is it?’ demanded Carry gloomily.

‘A mile and a half,’ answered Cicely unexpectedly from her place in front. ‘At it again, Carry?’

‘I wasn’t speaking to her,’ muttered Carry, secretly somewhat afraid of Cicely’s sharp tongue. ‘Well, I don’t care a scrap for old abbeys, and I’m tired. I’m not going any farther,’ and she halted at the cross roads.

‘Oh? What are you going to do? Sit there till we come back?’ asked Peggy Gilks, while Edna looked unutterable scorn.

‘Tired! You’re always tired, Carry! You’ve no right to be a member. You can’t walk ten miles. I don’t believe you could qualify, if Cicely was strict about it.’

‘I could, then! But it’s silly to tramp when we could cycle in quarter the time.’

‘All right! Sit on the mile-stone till we get back. I hope it’s a soft one.’

Carry, with a word to Agnes, turned and walked away down a lane at right angles, while Agnes joined Edna and Peggy.

‘Carry has an aunt living in Saunderton. She’ll meet us on the way home. She says if the abbey is really worth anything, Miriam and Cicely won’t come away till they’ve seen every corner of it, so it will take them some time.’

‘An aunt? I don’t believe it! She’s going to a cottage to have some tea, lazy thing! She wanted to go and see an aunt that day we went to Stoke! She can’t have aunts in every village!’

‘She has heaps of aunts and cousins!’ said Agnes indignantly.

‘They come in jolly handy, just when she wants to slack,’ and Edna sounded sceptical.

‘She isn’t a bit keen on rambles,’ Peggy remarked. ‘Well, let’s get on, or we shan’t have time to see the abbey.’

They had come from Wycombe along the Bledlow Ridge, with keen wind sweeping across from Hampden, constant glimpses of the Saunderton valley four hundred feet below, and wide views of the opposite hills, where lay the homes of many of them.

Their road swung downwards, and a great wood hid the hills. Presently they stopped with one accord at a gap in the trees to look out over the level country lying at their feet, many miles of wooded plain, with farms and fields and villages, and deep blue shadows veiling the horizon.

‘Jolly fine!’ murmured Edna Gilks.

‘Ripping!’ agreed Peggy. ‘About a thousand miles of it, I should say.’

‘It is beautiful!’ Miriam said softly. ‘I do like the way we suddenly come to the edge of the world—our world of hills and woods—and look out over a new one. It’s just the same at home, on the other hill.’

‘Above the Cross,’ Cicely added. ‘Now for the abbey!’ and they followed Miriam as she led them by footpaths through the woods and down an open hill-side. At the bottom they turned along a grassy track, between high hedges of bramble and beech, still bearing last year’s red leaves, though it was late in February. The way was rutty and wavered up and down along the uneven foot of the hills, but ran very straight across country.

‘Is there a caretaker at the abbey?’ Cicely asked. ‘Can’t we stifle him somehow? I’d heaps rather poke about by myself.’

‘A funny old chap went round with Margia and me, and told us what ’Enery the Heighth had destroyed, and so on.’

‘I’ll give him sixpence to stop outside,’ said Cicely fervently.

‘This way,’ and Miriam led them by a footpath across the ploughed fields.

The abbey stood buried in great beech-trees. A tiny gate gave entrance to a footpath, and a short beech-path, soft with ruddy leaves, led them through the wood, till they paused to gaze across a lawn at an ancient gray building with pointed roof, the walls upheld by massive stone buttresses. A magnificent beech-tree stood at one side, its great branches bending lovingly towards the old gray stone of the walls and the green and brown and gold of the moss-covered roof.

‘This is the gatehouse,’ Miriam explained quietly, for the peacefulness of the scene hushed all their voices. ‘See the carving over the door. Here’s St Bernard. He founded the Cistercians, you know. This’—showing a much-damaged figure in a niche—‘is the Abbot Michael who founded the abbey. He’s rather dilapidated, but you can just make him out.’

‘There’s not much left of him, poor old chap!’ Cicely murmured. ‘And you say this is only the gate?’

‘There’s the real entrance, where people can drive in from the road. Our path was a short cut.’

They wandered through the wide archway, and found before them another lawn, and beyond it a long gray building, ruins and broken round arches above, a row of narrow lancet windows below.

‘But where does the old chap live?—not Michael, I mean the caretaker?’

‘This way,’ and Miriam knocked at a low door. ‘This is the back, of course. The buildings open on to a quadrangle, with another lovely lawn.’

‘Here comes the old one!’ as they heard a bolt withdrawn. ‘Can’t we bribe him to leave us alone, Mirry? I know he’ll have asthma and wheeze at us.’

‘That would seem in keeping with the old place, anyway,’ Miriam laughed. ‘I think we shall want him to explain things. I know I can’t remember all the dates and stories.’

‘Hel-lo!’ murmured Cicely, as the door opened, for it was held by a pleasant-faced little lady dressed in black.

That she was a lady no one doubted for a moment. It was written in the refinement of her face, the taste of her dress, though this was of the simplest. It was in her voice, also, as she said, ‘Will you please come in?’ and held back the heavy door.

Lively interest was in Cicely’s eyes as they met Miriam’s in a merry challenge. Where was the asthmatic old man? But the little lady was saying, ‘If you will wait just a moment some one will come. We do not have many visitors in winter.’

They went forward, looking round with eager eyes. The low stone passage had doors of old oak studded with great nails; beyond, in the pointed archway, was a glimpse of green lawn. Everything was very hushed and still. Their hostess disappeared through one of the old doorways, and the girls, longing to explore, passed on and stood in the archway.

‘Is she your old man’s daughter? But she can’t be, Mirry! She’s a lady through and through. What a pretty soft voice she has! But where is the old chap, then?’

‘He may have retired. It’s nearly two years since I was here, and he was very old and shaky.’

‘I wouldn’t mind if she’d go round with us! It would be rather jolly. I’d like to hear ancient history in that pretty voice. I wonder who or what she’ll send?’

‘I say, this is jolly decent!’ murmured Edna, her voice hushed almost to a whisper by the prevailing stillness. ‘Isn’t Carry a donkey to go and miss it?’

They faced a square green lawn. On each side were long gray buildings, richly ornamented windows, ancient doorways leading to winding stone passages or up flights of irregular steps. To the left stretched the cloisters, their roof upheld by old oak beams, long narrow windows with richly moulded arches allowing views of the green inner lawn.

A small black kitten with a square of white below his chin was prowling about, and Edna dropped on her knees and called him.

‘Puss! Kitty! Come here, then! I wonder what they call you?’

‘The Curate,’ said a laughing voice, and they turned to see their guide.