Schoolgirl Jen at the Abbey

by Elsie J. Oxenham

  Schoolgirl Jen at the Abbey

  by Elsie J. Oxenham

  First published in 1953

  This edition published by Reading Essentials

  Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

  For.ullstein@gmail.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Schoolgirl Jen at the Abbey

  by ELSIE J. OXENHAM

  CHAPTER I

  THE TRAGEDY OF A TREE

  “What a good thing Jandy Mac didn’t come back while you were having measles!” Jen had seen the writing on the letter as she handed it to Joan. “It would have been jolly awkward, wouldn’t it?”

  Joan looked at her in amusement. “Do you really think we left it to chance, Jenny-Wren? Of course Mother wrote and told Jandy about the measles.”

  “Oh, I see! She told Jandy to stay in Scotland till you were all right again?”

  “She didn’t put it that way. She said, if Jandy had to go back to Australia on the day she’d planned, we were afraid we shouldn’t see her again, as Joy and I would still be in quarantine. Jandy wrote that she must see us once more, so she would put off her journey and stay with her aunts till we could have her here to say good-bye.”

  “Because once she goes to Australia and marries her cousin, it may be years before she comes back,” Jen agreed. “Is she coming now?”

  “She’d like to come, but it’s awkward.” And Joan looked worried. “Mother wants to take Joy to the sea for a few weeks, to get braced up before the winter. She really had a very bad time, with pneumonia on top of measles. I know!” as Jen began to speak. “It was her own fault, but that doesn’t alter the result. She isn’t very fit, and Mother thinks it would do her good to go away.”

  “Won’t you go with them? You had measles too.”

  “Even if mine was only a very little measle!” Joan laughed. “I wasn’t really ill. Mother meant us both to go, but it isn’t necessary for me; I’m quite well again. If Mother thinks Joy should go at once, I shall stay to entertain Jandy Mac.”

  “Don’t they want to see her?”

  “Terribly much! I’m to keep her here till they come back. Jandy will want to see them too. But Joy really ought to go away.”

  “I want to see Jandy quite as much as Joy does,” Jen argued. “Do you think she’ll come before I have to go home?”

  She had been caught by the measles quarantine while on a week-end visit to the Hall. Escaping the infection, she had had a glorious mid-term holiday, and had only gone back to school in time to pack for the journey home to Yorkshire. Then a letter from her mother had told of new plans.

  “Father and I have to go to Glasgow. Harry’s wedding has had to be hurried on; he is going to the States on business for his firm—a sudden arrangement—and he wants to take Alison with him and make it an extra honeymoon. So they are being married at the end of July, instead of in September, and Father and I must be there. It has all been decided in a hurry, and there is no time for you to come home to go with us; we shall be in Glasgow when you get this letter. But we shall stay only for a very few days. I hope you won’t be lonely at home for a long week-end! Father wants to look up some old friends in Scotland, as he will be there anyway.”

  Jen had shown the letter to Joan and Joy rather dolefully. “It doesn’t sound too good for me! I’ll have nobody to talk to, except the maids and farm people.”

  “Why not come to us for the long week-end, and go home when your people will be ready to welcome you?” was Joan’s instant and natural response, with a quick look at Joy, to whom the house belonged.

  “Would you? Oh, would you? But you’ve had such a lot of me this term!”

  “Could we ever have too much of you?” Joan asked gravely.

  “I should think you could! Much too much.”

  “Not of Jenny-Wren,” Joy said. “Never too much of Mrs. Wren! Of course she must stay with us.”

  “I love you, Joy Shirley!” Jen proclaimed.

  “I thought it was Joan you loved,” Joy teased.

  “Joan most, but you too,” Jen told her. “You’re so frightfully decent about inviting people to your lovely house.”

  “Can’t keep it all to myself,” Joy said lightly. But she looked pleased.

  The Hall, where Jen was to spend her long week-end, had come to Joy from her grandfather, Sir Antony Abinger, two years before, but the beautiful Abbey ruins, in the grounds of the Hall, had been left to Joan, her cousin. Joan’s mother, Mrs. Shirley, was Joy’s trustee and guardian till she came of age; she was not strong, and the anxiety, when Joy’s attack of measles developed into pneumonia, had brought on a heart attack which had frightened everybody but Joy, who was too ill to know anything about it. Mrs. Shirley was better now, but Joan felt strongly that her mother, as well as Joy, would be helped by a while at the sea.

  So rooms were taken in a big hotel in Bournemouth, and Joy and her aunt made their preparations, Joy keenly excited about this first experience of hotel life, for until she had come into her inheritance their way had lain in very quiet places. Joy was thrilled and delighted, but she promised Joan earnestly that she would take care of Mrs. Shirley and not let her do too much.

  “Don’t overtire her, trying to see everything in the first few days! I know you, Joy,” Joan warned her.

  She and Joy were seventeen and had just left school. With their beautiful dark red hair drawn back into long plaits, they looked much more grown-up than fourteen-year-old Jen, who was blue-eyed and had two thick, yellow pigtails. All three were close friends, in spite of the difference in age, and Jen had spent much time at the Hall since coming to the Wycombe school the year before. Her aunt who lived in the town had died during the winter, and Jen had no relatives nearer than Yorkshire. She had promptly adopted Joan’s mother as “Aunty Shirley”; she was maid-of-honour to Joan in the May Queen procession, though Joan’s reign was now over.

  Janice Macdonald, or “Jandy Mac”, was a connection of the family, though there was no real relationship. She had come from Australia to make friends, and had spent the summer at the Hall the year before. Returning for a second visit, wearing a ruby engagement ring, she had gone to stay with old aunts in Scotland, but had promised to spend some time with Joan and Joy before going back to Sydney to marry her cousin. The measles quarantine had put off her return, but now she felt she ought to be on her way again.

  Jen arrived for her week-end just as Joy and Mrs. Shirley were starting. She stood with Joan on the terrace waving good-bye; then she whirled round, wild excitement in her eyes.

  “Now we’re all on our own, just you and me, Joan-Queen! Isn’t that super? When does Jandy Mac come?”

  “To-morrow evening, Jenny-Wren. We’ll have one lonely night.”

  “Not lonely—not you and me! We’ll find something lovely to do. You can teach me a new jig. Joan, what did Joy mean by what she said just now?”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said: ‘I’m glad I’m going away. You and Mrs. Wren can face the tragedy together.’ There’s nothing wrong, is there, Joan?”

  Joan’s face was grave. “Not wrong, but very distressing. We have to say good-bye to something—to somebody—whom we love rather a lot.”

  Jen looked startled. “Who? Oh, Joan, not one of the cats? Not the Mother Superior? She’s getting rather old! Or the Curate, or Timmy? Tell me, Joan!”

  “Not one of the cats.” Joan smiled at her. “I hope—oh, how
I hope!—that when they have to die they’ll go naturally and easily, without having to be put to sleep. I’d hate to need to do that.”

  “You couldn’t do it! Not one of our dear Abbey cats!”

  “We might have to do it, if it was better for them. But it isn’t a cat this time; they’re all extremely well and flourishing. You know the big tree near the gate-house—the great elm?”

  “The tree!” Jen exclaimed. “I love that big tree. It shades the gate-house so nicely, as if it were protecting it. I’m sure Ambrose used to sit under it! What about the tree, Joan?”

  “If Ambrose sat under it, it was a very much smaller tree,” Joan observed. “Ambrose lived four hundred years ago.” And her thoughts went to the lay-brother, who had come back to the Abbey after its destruction by Henry the Eighth’s men and had lived in the gate-house to a great age, close to the ruins of his monastery, and whose grave Jen herself had discovered far below, in the tunnels under the Abbey.

  “Trees live to be hundreds of years old. I’m sure Ambrose sat under our elm,” Jen insisted. “What about the tree, Joan?”

  “It has to go. Men are coming to cut it down to-morrow morning.” Joan told her the bad news quickly.

  “Oh, no! Oh, Joan, no! You mustn’t let them!” Jen cried in anguish. “It would be murder! Who wants you to cut it down? They can’t make you do it! It’s yours!”

  “I feel terribly bad about it,” Joan said heavily. “But there’s no help for it, Jen. There’s something wrong with the tree: a disease that elms have. It’s dying, though we hadn’t noticed anything wrong. It isn’t safe. It might fall suddenly, and some of our tourists might be killed—or one of the cats, or us. It may infect other elms; there are several at the farm next door. We can’t keep it when it may do harm.”

  “Who told you?” Jen had turned away from her and was staring across the lawn with eyes that did not see the beds of glowing asters and marigolds and late roses.

  “Mr. Edwards, from the farm, came to see me—old Matthew Edwards.”

  “The horrid man who quarrelled with Joy, when she went in his fields, and wouldn’t say it was all right when she apologised?”

  “And so we don’t go near the farm,” Joan agreed. “He has several fine elms and he doesn’t want them to catch the disease. He told me the tree wasn’t safe and must come down. I said all I could, but I knew he was right. If you like, we’ll go out for the day, up on to the hills, and only come back when it’s all over.”

  “When the murder has been done,” Jen said unhappily. “No, it seems mean. If the tree’s going to be killed, we ought to stay with it. We might be some comfort to it.”

  “Oh, Jen!” Joan half-laughed, in spite of her distress.

  “I’m sure it’s fond of us. It would seem so unkind to go off and have a picnic. The meadow will look awfully bare without it,” Jen added.

  “We shall get used to it. You know, Jen, it really is too big,” Joan urged. “It shadows the gate-house and hangs over the fish-stream. The gate-house is beautiful, although no one pays much attention to it, because they’re in such a hurry to get to the Abbey itself; we shall see it much better when the elm has gone. I’d never have said the tree must go, just to give us a better view, but if it has to come down, for safety reasons, I believe once we’re used to it we shall find it’s an improvement.”

  “I don’t! It will look simply ghastly—so naked!”

  “We could plant another, a sapling,” Joan began.

  “It would be centuries before it was a real tree. Ambrose’s tree! It’s a horrible idea!”

  “You don’t know that it was there in Ambrose’s time.”

  “I’m sure it was. It’s quite five hundred years old.”

  “Mr. Edwards said it was probably five or six hundred,” Joan admitted. “He thinks it has been there long enough.”

  “Old pig!” Jen said bitterly. “Why did he need to come interfering with our tree? It’s nothing to do with him.”

  “I’m afraid it is. He wants to save his own elms,” Joan explained.

  “To-morrow, did you say? I’m going to say good-bye to our tree. Don’t come, Joan!” And Jen rushed off across the lawn and down the narrow shrubbery path, through the Abbey ruins, and out to the meadow, where the gate-house stood astride the carriage drive, protected by the giant elm.

  CHAPTER II

  VINNY MILES

  “I can’t see anything wrong with it!” Jen said resentfully, as she walked round the doomed tree.

  “Who’s there? Who are you?” she cried suddenly, and stood staring in amazement.

  A small girl in a red frock was huddled against the massive trunk, in a corner between two big roots. Dark curls hung untidily on her shoulders, which were shaken by bitter sobbing.

  Jen stood gazing at her. “I’d better fetch Joan, I don’t know what to do for the kid! Who is she? And what is she doing here? Of course, anyone can come in as far as this—it’s not like the real Abbey.”

  The road to the gate-house was open to the lane; the door at which tourists had to pay was farther on, in the wall that enclosed the garth and the ruins. Village folk did not use the gate-house meadow, but there was nothing to prevent them, if they wished to enter.

  “I say!” Jen stooped over the child. “What’s up? Has somebody been unkind to you? What’s your name?”

  Dark, tear-filled eyes looked up at her in startled dismay. “I’m sorry, Miss Joan—oh, it’s not Miss Joan!” as she saw the yellow plaits and blue eyes.

  “Rather not! Do you know Joan? Do you want to see her? She’ll help, if there’s anything the matter.”

  “We used to come here. Her used to teach us. But I was one of the littler ones. Her won’t remember me.”

  “You’re not a very big one yet, are you? What did Joan teach you? I haven’t heard about that.”

  “Drill. Sometimes here and sometimes on the garth. I liked coming to her class.”

  “I bet you did! I’m sure it was fun. I shall make Joan tell me about it. But who are you? And what’s the matter with you?”

  The child turned to the tree again, and her thin arms reached up the trunk. “They be a’goin’ to cut her down. I heard ’em say it. ’Tis a shame!”

  “Oh!” Jen said slowly, and stood staring at her. “I feel just like that myself. But how awfully nice of you to care so much!”

  “Miss Joan used to sit here and tell us stories and talk to us. And we had games, touch-last and things like that, and the tree was ‘home’. I doesn’t want the men to take her away.”

  “Neither do I, and neither does Joan. But it can’t be helped. Mr. Edwards says it isn’t safe,” Jen explained. “You wouldn’t like it to fall on you, you know.”

  “Mr. Edwards, he told Mr. Jaikes. I heard ’im.”

  “And you ran away to the tree and howled,” Jen said, with quick understanding. “I felt like that, too. But it’s no use; we can’t save the tree. We can be sorry, but we can’t do anything about it.”

  “How sensible!” she thought ruefully. “I didn’t feel sensible when I rushed away from Joan. It’s terribly odd! Finding this kid crying her eyes out has made me see how silly it is. What’s your name?” she asked again. “I shall have to tell Joan about you.”

  “Lavinia Miles, please, miss.”

  “Lavinia!” Jen grinned. “The whole of it, all the time? I’m just Jen; there couldn’t be a much littler name than mine. What do they call you? Vinny?”

  “Mrs. Jaikes, she calls me Vinny. The boys calls me Lav. I hates it!” And Lavinia flushed resentfully.

  “I should think so! But Vinny is rather nice. Vinny Miles, did you say? You don’t come from Miles’s farm, up in the hills, do you?”

  “King’s Bottom Farm. I comes to village for school.”

  “King’s Bottom Farm!” Jen said slowly. “I’ve heard something—yes, I remember. It was John Miles, of King’s Bottom, who gave the old maps to Jandy Mac’s Uncle Tony, and Jandy showed them to us, and we found the tunn
els and the highwayman’s treasures and dear old Ambrose’s grave. But the Miles people went to America ten years ago, Joy told us, and the farm was sold to Mr. Jaikes. Did they leave you behind when they went?”

  “Yes, miss.” Lavinia sat and stared at her. “My mum died, and I were only two; I’m twelve now. My dad didn’t know what to do ’bout me; the rest were boys and could look arter themselves. My aunty didn’t go to ’Merica, and she said as how she’d keep me here till they got settled down and dad found a job. She went on living at the farm to help Mrs. Jaikes. Then she died, and my dad di’n’t want me; he’d got married to somebody in ’Merica. And Mrs. Jaikes, she don’t want me neither, for she’s got kids of her own. But I hadn’t anywheres to go, so I lives at the farm. I helps her quite a bit.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Jen said warmly. “I expect you’re very useful to her. But your new mother in America ought to have you. Does she know you’re stuck here, left on Mrs. Jaikes’s hands?”

  “I d’n know, Miss Jen. Mrs. Jaikes said as how she were goin’ to write, but I d’n know if she done it.”

  “You couldn’t do it yourself. Not without help,” Jen said thoughtfully. “But somebody could help you. Your father ought to send for you. I shall talk to Joan. Are you so frightfully fond of our tree, Vinny?”

  “I loves her,” Vinny said simply. “Because of Miss Joan sittin’ under her, like.”

  “Joan could sit somewhere else, if that’s all. I expect you’ve been missing her class, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, miss. But she hasn’t no time for us now.”

  “I don’t suppose she has. She’s been terribly busy at school. But she might make time now. Are there other girls who want her classes to go on?”

  “No,” Vinny said bitterly. “They doesn’t care: it’s on’y me. They says as how we gets enough lessons at school. We got a new teacher, and she gives us drill, and they says it’s plenty.”

  “They would,” Jen agreed. “If it’s only you, Vinny Miles, I’m afraid Joan can’t have a drill class for one.”