Stowaways in the Abbey

by Elsie J. Oxenham

  Jen’s chuckles subsided. “It’s vile,” she admitted. “They’ll be like sheep without a shepherd. Who’s vice-captain? It’s a chance for her. They’ll have to manage without you. But it is funny, Jacky-boy! You don’t know yet!”

  “You might tell me, then! I suppose you see that I can’t come to the Hall, and our week-end has gone to bits?”

  “Oh, I knew that! That’s what I rang up to tell you.”

  “If I could get hold of you I’d shake you!” Jack shouted.

  “You’d better try. I’m a lot bigger than you. I’ll tell you, Jacky-boy; you’ll see why it’s funny. Joan and Joy have begun it. The doctor’s just been; I wish they had your dad, but they used to have Dr. Brown before they came to school, so they didn’t know Dr. Wilmot.”

  “Measles, do you mean?” Jack interrupted. “Jen, truly? But they were at school—oh, no, not yesterday! They weren’t there, were they?”

  “They both felt seedy in the morning, so Mrs. Shirley kept them at home. But nobody dreamt it was serious; Joan had a touch of headache, and Joy had a little cold. That was all, so they didn’t put me off. They expected to be quite fit to-day. But they were worse by night, and this morning Mrs. Shirley wouldn’t let me see them, and now the doctor’s been, and I can’t go back to school.”

  “Gosh, no, of course you can’t! It’s the same for you as for me! We’re both in quarantine.”

  “If the Abbey girls had waited one more day before coming out in spots, you’d have been here, and you’d have had to stay,” Jen said wistfully. “We’d have been company for one another.”

  “Daddy wouldn’t have wanted me at home,” Jack agreed. “It would have been marvellous! Our week-end would have lasted a whole fortnight. But we couldn’t have expected Mrs. Shirley to keep me.”

  “She seems quite willing to keep me. But that’s only natural,” Jen jeered. “You’re quite another matter.”

  “You’re almost one of the family. Mackums would hate to have you back at school. You’ll be all right, but it’s fearfully stale for me, stuck here in town.”

  “I suppose we couldn’t—no, of course we couldn’t.”

  “Of course not. Out of the question. What are you talking about, anyway?” Jack asked sarcastically.

  Jen laughed. “We couldn’t ask Auntie Shirley to invite you here to cheer me up, could we?”

  “My hat, no! There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be together; we’re both under suspicion! But Daddy wouldn’t want two cases in the house, so you can’t come here; and we couldn’t suggest it to Mrs. Shirley.”

  “But if she happened to think of it——!” Jen began. “What a marvellous time we’d have!”

  Jack sighed into the telephone. “No such luck! She’d be too good to be true.”

  “We can ring up and talk every day. I’d better go now; I’m sure I’ve had my full time of this thing. Cheerio, husband! It’s worse for you than for me. Sorry!”

  “I’m glad you’re parked in such a jolly place,” Jack responded, dolefully but with much generosity.

  “Poor old chap!” Jen said to herself. “I shall go into the Abbey and write to Joan, and tell her about Jacky-boy. They can’t write to me, without masses of disinfecting, I know; but they may like to have letters. I can do that for them anyway.”

  She went back to her place beside the sunny wall, but was greatly hampered in her writing by the Mother Superior, who insisted on creeping into her lap, so that she had nowhere to rest her pad, and by Grey Timmy, who was anxious for a game with her pencil. Jen gave up the attempt at last, and sat thinking over the new situation.

  “If Jack had been here I could have told her my idea. Perhaps Joan wouldn’t quite have approved! She’d have understood all right, but she might have said it wasn’t the thing to do.”

  She pondered this thought. “Jack wouldn’t have any awkward scruples. If only she could have been here! It’s rotten for us, in separate places and both quarantined! We seem to have managed things horribly badly this time. Down you go, old lady! I want to write to Joan.”

  She removed the disappointed Mother Superior and retreated with her pad to the cloisters, to finish her letter there.

  At the midday meal Mrs. Shirley took it and promised to give it to Joan. “She’s better already. Nurse agrees with Dr. Brown that it is a slight attack in Joan’s case, but that Joy will need to be watched carefully. Would you be too lonely if I left you to have tea by yourself, Jen? Although I’m not in charge I’d like to be with the girls, and I have to disinfect if I come back to you.”

  “It must be a fearful nuisance! Oh, please don’t bother to do all that just for me! I’ll be all right,” Jen exclaimed. “I’ll take my tea out on to the lawn.”

  By tea-time she was beginning to feel bored, however, and the prospect of a fortnight of lonely days and solitary meals filled her with foreboding.

  “If only Jacky-boy could have been here!” she groaned, as she sat on a rug below the terrace, with a tray beside her. “I shall go off my head in about three days, and they’ll have to shut me up in another part of the house. I wish I could produce just one measle! Then they’d let me be with Joan. But I haven’t even a headache.”

  “Jen!” Mrs. Shirley came out to the terrace an hour later. “Nurse insists that I must have a walk, even if it’s only in the garden. Suppose you come too? I want to talk to you. Have you been feeling desolate?”

  “Well, a little quiet,” Jen said tactfully.

  Her hostess smiled. “That’s kind of you! You don’t want me to feel I’ve been neglecting you, do you?”

  “You can’t help it just now. How are they?”

  “Joan has slept a good deal and feels much better. Joy’s temperature is high and she is rather uncomfortable. But we all like the nurse, who is being very kind.”

  “That’s important, isn’t it? It would be dreadful to have to put up with a nurse you didn’t like.”

  “It’s very important indeed,” Mrs. Shirley agreed. “Now, Jen, about your letter to Joan. She was delighted to have it and she sends you many thanks.”

  “I’m glad. I’ll write every day—twice a day, if I can think of anything to say. She’d like to hear about the cats, wouldn’t she?”

  “We’re sorry to hear of Jack’s trouble,” Mrs. Shirley went on. “Joan made a suggestion, which seems to me an excellent one.”

  Jen stood in the middle of the lawn and gazed at her. “What did Joan say?” she asked breathlessly.

  “That Jack ought to come here to keep you company. It wouldn’t make matters any worse for either of you.”

  With a wild whoop, Jen turned head over heels on the grass. “Too good to be true! I said it! Oh, Auntie Shirley, you couldn’t be so frightfully kind!”

  “It would make things much easier for me,” Mrs. Shirley said, laughing and gazing down at the dishevelled person at her feet.

  Jen shook back her long plaits. “How? Why? Would it really?” Her words fairly tumbled out. “Oh, you mean because you wouldn’t have to think about me, at meals or anything? If I had Jack, you could stay upstairs and not bother with disinfecting?”

  “That’s what I mean. It would be easier to have two, who would entertain one another, than one lonely girl.”

  Jen gave another whoop. “Oh, marvellous! We wouldn’t be a scrap of bother to you! Jack could sleep in my room, as she did last year. We talked about it, but we said you’d be too good to be true, if you thought of it.”

  “The idea had occurred to you, then?”

  “I thought of it, but we both knew we couldn’t ask you to do it. May I phone to Jack at once?”

  “I hardly think Mrs. Wilmot would be satisfied with an invitation by phone. I’ll write to her.”

  “But they won’t get a letter till Monday!” Jen protested.

  Mrs. Shirley smiled. “Dr. Wilmot won’t let Jack come until he is sure she is safe from measles for a fortnight, and Dr. Brown won’t feel certain about you for a day or two, though there doesn�
��t seem to be much the matter with you! You’ll have to wait, Jen dear; but you may tell Jack and say I am writing to her mother, and I’ll consult Dr. Brown to-morrow.”

  “Oh, whoops!” Jen shouted. “May I tell her now? We’ll look forward to it all the week-end!”

  Mrs. Shirley nodded, and Jen dashed into the house and seized the telephone.

  CHAPTER IV

  JEN GOES TO CHURCH

  “What’s the matter? You’re panting like a dog that’s chased a rabbit,” Jack remonstrated.

  “I am a bit breathless,” Jen admitted. “Oh, Jack, it’s happened! She is too good to be true; they all are! Joan thought of it first, when she heard about you—I wrote her a letter. But Auntie Shirley likes the idea awfully much——”

  “What idea?” Jack demanded impatiently. “You’ve begun at the end.”

  “No, in the middle. The end is that Auntie Shirley’s writing to your mother, to ask if you may come here to keep me company and take me off her hands.”

  “Oh, glory!” Jack gasped. “Jen, you aren’t rotting?”

  “Dear chap, no, I’m not. It can’t happen at once, so don’t go all thrilled. There are heaps of formalities to be gone through.”

  Jack snorted. “Drop the grown-up stunt, you ass! What do you mean? Disinfecting?”

  “There’s nothing to disinfect in me—or in you, I hope! I may have taken measles from Joan, of course, and you may have taken it from your Mary, but that won’t show for a fortnight. All that matters is whether either of us is going to start it now. We’ll have to wait till they’re sure about that. Your dad has to be consulted, and our Dr. Brown. It will take a day or two, I’m afraid. But if you keep all right till Dr. Wilmot’s certain you aren’t going to start it too, and if I keep all right till they’re sure I’m not, then—whoops! I believe they’ll let you come. What a time we’ll have, husband!”

  “Mother will let me come,” Jack said with conviction. “She said this morning that she wished she could send me to the seaside or the country for a week, so that if I’ve caught the thing from Mary, I’ll be in a better condition to stand it when it starts.”

  “We’ll get you into good condition!” Jen chuckled. “Live out of doors, my dear; woods and hills as much as you want! Perhaps they’d let us sleep out; I’ve always wanted to try. Cheerio, Jacky-boy! Something to look forward to next week, after all.” And she put down the receiver and danced away into the Abbey to tell the good news to Grey Timmy and his mother.

  “What will you do this morning, Jen?” Mrs. Shirley came down to breakfast on Sunday, explaining that she would go to Joan and Joy presently, but that she must see her visitor occasionally.

  “Oh, please don’t bother about me! How are they to-day?”

  “Much the same. Joan has slept well and seems better, but Joy still has a high temperature. I am going to relieve Nurse while she sleeps; Joan is sure that in a day or two she will be ready to relieve me.”

  “She’ll want to help as soon as she can be out of bed. I wish you’d let me do something!”

  Mrs. Shirley smiled. “That would only make more trouble for everybody. I’m afraid you can’t go to church, dear.”

  Jen looked up. “Oh, but I can! I’m going to the old church in the Abbey, all by myself.”

  “In the crypt? Do you think that will feel like going to church?”

  “It was a church for hundreds of years, and the first Abbot’s tomb is down there, and the holy well. It ought to feel like a church,” Jen said sturdily.

  “The right atmosphere,” Mrs. Shirley agreed. “It’s a fine idea.”

  Jen looked suddenly troubled. “I say, Auntie Shirley! I’m afraid it isn’t a fine idea, in the way you mean. I won’t pretend I’m going because it’s a church. It’s Ambrose I’m thinking about.”

  “More romantic than holy, in fact!”

  “That sounded just like Joan!” Jen exclaimed. “It’s what she would have said. Yes, that’s what I mean exactly.”

  “But what about Ambrose, Jen dear?” Mrs. Shirley’s eyes filled with amusement. “I thought you knew all his story now?”

  “I want to think about him in the place where he used to be. We had something in history that reminded me of him; about the priests being hunted in Elizabeth’s reign. Perhaps Ambrose escaped by hiding in the old church,” Jen explained.

  “Quite likely. Will you promise two things before you go?”

  “Three, if you like; or as many more as you want,” Jen said seriously.

  Mrs. Shirley smiled again. “Wear your coat and take a cushion to sit on. Although the sun is so hot, it will be cold in the crypt.”

  Jen nodded. “It’s always cold underground. Is that one thing or two?”

  “That’s one. The other is to promise not to open the door that leads to the cellar with the chest. That must have been where Ambrose lived; don’t think about him so hard that you’re tempted to go through the tunnel again.”

  “Oh, I won’t! That’s the place I’m—not scared of, but not very fond of, you know! But the church is all right. I won’t open that door; I promise faithfully.”

  “I know you’ll keep your word. Run along then, and spend an hour with Ambrose.”

  “I broke my word once,” Jen mused, as she fetched her coat. “But it was because I simply had to do it. That isn’t likely to happen again!”

  By way of an ancient door behind the chapter-house and a flight of steps, and then several more steps, she came, torch in hand, to the beautiful little crypt which was the oldest part of the Abbey. There had been a church here before the great Abbey church had been built, and when the “new church” had been destroyed by Henry the Eighth, the old one had remained underground, buried and forgotten, until its discovery by two inquisitive small boys had restored it to the Abbey.

  The roof was low and the pillars were short and round, with Saxon carving. In one corner was the well, which was older still, for it was round the hermit’s well that the whole Abbey had been built. In another corner was the low door by which the old monk, Ambrose, had come to the church, from his refuge in the gate-house; the door Jen had promised not to open, because it led to tunnels and cellars in which she must not wander alone.

  “Not that I want to go along there!” she said to herself, arranging her cushions on the steps of the Abbot Michael’s tomb, which had a carved stone canopy supported by four pillars. Jen put on her coat and sat down, her back against the tomb, and nursed her knees.

  “I might have brought the Mother Superior for a hot-water bottle! But Timmy would have had to come too; he won’t be left out of anything. Nobody could think with Timmy about!”

  Her thoughts went to her old friend, Ambrose, the lay brother, who had lived in the gate-house beside the ruins for fifty years. How had he escaped the persecution of the priests under Elizabeth?

  “I wish she hadn’t done it,” Jen thought. “I always liked Elizabeth. It’s the one horrid thing about her. I know in those days they thought they had to burn and behead people who didn’t agree with them, but I wish Elizabeth hadn’t done it too. Perhaps Joy’s ancestors protected Ambrose; they knew all about his living here. We don’t know much about the family; only that they were at the Hall in those days, and the Marchwoods were at the Manor. Somebody took care of Ambrose, I suppose.”

  She sat dreaming of olden times; of beautiful Jehane, who had loved Ambrose; of their meetings in the Abbey and in London, and of her death from smallpox; of Ambrose, wandering lonely to France and at last back to the Abbey again, because it was where he had known Jehane; of his long life in the gate-house, a kindly gentle saint, loved by all the countryside, helping every one with advice and sympathy. She twisted the plain gold ring on her finger, the ring Ambrose himself had made, which Jehane had bidden him wear for her sake; and she whispered the words he had written after her death—“Now I have her in my heart and she is mine for ever.”

  “I’d like to know more about Peregrine Abinger, Joy’s ancestor, who was so kin
d to Ambrose and buried him so nicely, with his book and my ring,” Jen said to herself. “It’s a pity Joy hasn’t any family records; she says there aren’t any. Peregrine! Ambrose called him ‘my falcon.’ There’s no portrait of him at the Hall, among the other old people. They’re all later—Charles the Second’s time and after that. I’d have liked a portrait of Ambrose’s ‘falcon’! I wonder what he looked like?”

  Her thoughts jumped to the plan which had been in her mind before she heard about the measles. “I shall tell Jack. But it won’t be any help about Peregrine. Still, it will be something to do——What was that?”

  She stiffened into attention. “I heard something! It sounded like something moving. There couldn’t be rats, I suppose?” Her light swept hurriedly round the crypt. In the past she had joked about rats in the tunnels. Her own words came back upon her now and she shivered.

  “Where was it? There’s nothing here. I mean, I can’t see anything, but—there it is again! Something did move somewhere.” She started up, her eyes wide and startled. “There—it’s behind the old door—on the stair! Something’s going down the steps! Gosh! What a fright I had! I wonder what it was? It can’t come through the door, and I wouldn’t open it for worlds. Besides, I promised I wouldn’t. Must have been a rat! It was only a tiny sound. All the same, I think I’ll go up to the garth. I’ve been here long enough all alone.”

  She picked up her cushions and ran by the steps back to the sunshine. There, with everything looking just as usual and the cats sleeping in the sun, she wondered if it had been all a mistake.

  “Perhaps I’d been there too long and I was imagining things,” she said, as she lay on the grass and stroked Grey Timmy’s long hair. She fetched an old brush and comb from Joan’s little room and began to groom him, and he stretched and yawned and showed a wide grin, and rolled over to display his soft underneath to her admiring gaze.

  “It must have been my imagination,” Jen decided. “I don’t see how even rats could have been there. We’ve been through those tunnels often enough and never seen a speck of rat. I shan’t tell anybody I was scared. They’d laugh. There wasn’t anything there. I’m an ass!”