Читать книгу Stowaways in the Abbey - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 8

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Jen’s face was alight with joyful anticipation as she carried her little case through the garden, down the tunnel, and into the Abbey. She had had her supper as usual, but she was to have breakfast with Ann Watson in her rooms within the Abbey walls—the rooms which had once been the quarters of the lay brothers, who were not proper monks, and in which Joan and Joy and Mrs. Shirley had lived, before the death of Joy’s grandfather, Sir Antony Abinger, had given the Abbey to Joan and the Hall to Joy.

“It really does feel like being alone in the Abbey,” Jen said to herself, as she lit a candle and unpacked her case in the little room. “Mrs. Watson’s on the other side of this wall, I suppose, but there’s no way through to her place. I’d have to go out to the cloisters and along to her door, if I wanted her. This wee room is quite on its own, shut off from all the rest. It is an adventure! Jack will be jealous!”

The Mother Superior was curled up on the bed, with her adopted child, Grey Timmy, tucked into her on one side, and her tall slim son, the black Curate with the white collar under his chin, keeping her back warm on the other.

Jen shook her head at them. “The whole family! Not much room for me in that bed! I’m not ready for my share yet, children, but when I want to come in somebody will have to move. I won’t shift you for a little while. I’m going to wander round by moonlight; and then I must have my picnic.”

She arranged her possessions with as much care as if she had come to stay for a fortnight. Waiting on the table were the goods Mrs. Watson had brought from the village; a packet of chocolate and one of biscuits, a small piece of cheese, two apples, a pot of honey, a plate of ripe yellow gooseberries, and some slices of bread and butter. Ann had added a jug of milk and a plate and glass, and Jen nodded gratefully.

“Old sport! How jolly decent of her! I’m glad she’s given me a glass; I don’t like milk out of a cup—it never seems quite right. This will be a marvellous feast! But I’m not ready for it yet. There’s something missing—I know!”

An empty vase and two little dishes stood on a shelf. Jen went to ask for a jug of water from Mrs. Watson, then called a cheery good-night, and ran to the Abbot’s garden. She brought blue pansies for the small dishes and yellow roses for the vase, and arranged them by the light of the candle.

“I ought to have thought of them before. Joan likes to keep flowers in here; I shall see that there are always some now. She’ll be pleased, when she comes back. That looks better!” and she surveyed the effect of her decorations against the old grey wall.

Regretfully she put the chocolate and biscuits into her case. “Those are for to-morrow, unless I’m really fearfully hungry. I’m sure Ambrose and Jehane didn’t have chocolate, and if they had biscuits I expect they were different from these. But the rest of the stuff is all right. The monks must have had bread and butter and cheese; and they kept bees, so they’d have honey; and apples and gooseberries are safe, I think. Just for to-night I want to have only things they could have had. Good thing dear old Ann gave me milk, not ginger-beer! I suppose the monks had ale, but that doesn’t appeal to me!”

Her meal, when she had spread everything on small plates on the step of the cloisters, was certainly such as the monks might have enjoyed, and she looked at her choice with much satisfaction.

“I can easily think I’m a lay-brother, eating bread and honey, and cheese and apples, and drinking milk! I shall have my picnic on the stroke of midnight. I wonder if the Abbey had a bell, that was heard all over the woods and hills? I expect it had a lovely deep sound. Joan says Cistercians were allowed one bell on their churches, but they mustn’t have more than one. Now I’ll go for my moonlight prowl! It might be sensible to put the milk on the shelf, just in case Timmy goes for a walk too.”

She lifted the jug into safety and covered the bread and butter and the cheese. Then, taking her torch, she set out on the expedition to which she had been looking forward, wandering through the ruins to see them from every point in the strange white light.

The refectory threw a black shadow across the garth. Jen climbed the stone stair to the great hall and found it lit up in brilliant radiance, as the moon streamed through the southern windows. Entranced, she gazed and wandered round; then went cautiously down the dark steps, which always seemed more difficult to go down than to go up, and crossed the garth to the dormitory stair.

This was dark also and rather risky, as the steps were winding and worn away. But Jen used her torch and went carefully, and felt repaid when she stood in a window niche and gazed down at the garth in its flood of silver light.

“I never saw it look so lovely before. I suppose Joan has seen it often like this. How marvellous the cloisters are by moonlight! But it’s all marvellous to-night. My supper looks silly, spread on the steps!” She laughed, and went to the end of the dormitory—very warily, because here the window and the skew-door were unprotected—to look across the site of the great church to the wooded hills beyond, and then came back to glance into the monks’ day-room, into which the moon was shining, before returning to the garth.

At last, satisfied that she had visited every corner above-ground, and not at the moment interested in tunnels and passages, she brought cushions and settled down to her midnight supper.

“My frugal monkish meal! Not so frugal, either. I’m going to do jolly well, with cheese and honey and fruit and milk!”

She shared the milk with the Curate, who was setting out on his nightly pilgrimage to the village; and then had to give some to Timmy and his mother, who heard the Curate lapping and came to say they were hungry too.

“Share and share alike!” Jen said gravely. “But the most for me, children, because I really am much bigger than you all put together. Good-night, Curate! Good luck!”

The Curate stalked across the garth and into the shadows. Jen, suddenly possessed by a great desire, sprang up, laid two sticks on the garth in the moonlight, in the form of a cross, slipped rings of bells on her ankles, and began to dance “Bacca Pipes,” heel and toe placed neatly in the angles. Laughing at herself and at the puzzled face of the mother cat, she put the sticks away and brought two handkerchiefs from her suitcase, and danced across the grass, with arms waving in circles above her head, in “Old Mother Oxford,” and finished with “Jockie to the Fair.”

“Wish I had some music! How weird the bells sound! There! I had to have a few jigs, just to work off my feelings! Joan would understand; I’m sure she’s done it herself. Now I’ll tidy up, and then I’ll be ready for bed.”

When everything was neat she carried the cats into the little room and settled them at the foot of the bed, both purring in bliss as they realised that to-night they were to have company.

“Oh, yes, I’m coming too. Joan always says you’re like two hot-water bottles. Just a moment longer, my dears!”

In pyjamas and dressing-gown she stood in the doorway and took a long last look at the quiet Abbey, all lit up and shining. Then she crept into bed and lay listening to the ecstatic purring of her companions.

It was very quiet. The Abbey seemed so empty, save for herself. She did not feel ready for sleep, so she lay thinking of the old monks, and of Ambrose and Jehane; of Joan and Joy, living in the Abbey—this little room had been Joy’s bedroom in those days.

“It’s gorgeous to think I’m having it all to myself,” she said drowsily, half aloud. “Mrs. Watson doesn’t count. There’s only me in the whole Abbey, and all those old people who used to be here—what was that?”

A human sneeze from the cloisters; no ghost.

Jen, with frightened eyes, sat up and stared wildly at the door.