Stowaways in the Abbey

by Elsie J. Oxenham

  “Have you been in the house before?” he asked sharply.

  “Oh, no, never! And we’ll never come again. We’ve found her, and now we know the worst. I suppose I’ll have to give the locket back to you? It’s my second dearest possession,” Jen said wistfully, still standing with her hands clasped behind her back.

  “Locket?” He stared at her from under dark brows. “You don’t mean—what locket are you talking about?”

  “Kitty—or perhaps she was Katharine—Marchwood’s gold locket, with her initials on it and a baby’s curl inside.”

  “You say you have found this locket?” He was gazing at her incredulously.

  “Yes, in the Abbey. I’m staying with Joan and Joy Shirley at the Hall, but they’re having measles so I’m in quarantine. I say, you don’t mind, do you?” Jen cried in startled dismay. “I forgot about the quarantine! But it’s silly, for I’m perfectly well. I can’t give you measles when I haven’t got it myself.”

  “I’m rather old for measles,” he said grimly. “And you don’t appear to be sickening for it at the moment. Where do you say you found this locket?”

  “In the Abbey, a month ago. We dug up an old wallet, and we think it had belonged to a highwayman, who hid it there when the Abbey was a heap of ruins, before Joy’s grandfather——”

  “I know about the restoration by Sir Antony Abinger,” he said impatiently. “But this locket—it has been lost for a hundred and fifty years. You say you were looking for a picture which showed it?”

  “We found it, low down near the floor; a very old portrait of a girl.”

  He nodded. “She was the first Katharine Marchwood. She married, and the locket was sent back, after her death, and was handed down to a Katharine in each generation. Then it disappeared—stolen by robbers, as you have guessed. And you say you have found it!” He sat staring at her and drumming with his fingers on the desk.

  Jen looked up at him anxiously. “You’ll want it back, of course. It serves me right. I was an ass to come; Jack said it was silly, for if I did prove it had belonged to you I’d have to give it back.”

  “I said you’d feel you had to, because you’ve such a hefty conscience,” Jack said from the background.

  “That’s Jack—Jacqueline, you know. She was quite right,” Jen admitted. “As long as I wasn’t sure, I could keep the locket. I’ve been frightfully bucked to have it and terrifically proud of it. But now that I know it’s yours, I can’t keep it, of course. I wish I hadn’t come to look! But once the idea had come into my head, I had to make sure.”

  “You came to-day to see if any of our portraits showed the locket?” Sir Keith asked, patiently trying to understand. “That was your only reason for coming into the house?”

  “Definitely the only reason,” Jen assured him earnestly. “We only looked for the pictures, and then we looked at them. We didn’t touch a single thing.”

  “Then we’ll say no more about breaking and entering the house, or about burglars. It won’t be necessary to send for the police.”

  “Thank you very much,” Jen said humbly. “I didn’t really think you would. I’m sorry we did it, and I apologise again. Here’s the locket, and Kitty Marchwood’s purse,” and she laid her treasures on the desk. “They were my share of the booty, when we divided the highwayman spoils.”

  Sir Keith was not listening. He had picked up the locket and was examining it curiously.

  “I’ve been very careful of it,” Jen urged. “I’ve only had it for a month. It is the right one, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes! It is certainly the missing locket. How does it open?”

  Jen touched the spring. “We didn’t find it at first. There! A Marchwood baby’s little yellow curl. Why is it yellow? You all have dark hair, don’t you?”

  “Not all,” he said absently, picking up the purse and looking at it. “One of my young brothers is as fair as you. We have had some fair ancestors. Yes, these are certainly mine.”

  “I know,” Jen said sadly. “That’s why I went to fetch them. I couldn’t possibly have kept them, once I knew they were yours.”

  “You mean, you couldn’t keep them now that I’ve discovered you have them. What would you have done if I hadn’t happened to come to-day?”

  “Sent them to you. And I don’t mean that!” Jen cried indignantly. “It’s nothing to do with you. I brought the locket back to you! You’d never have known anything about it. It’s what I said: it’s because I know it’s yours. I’m not a highwayman robber! It’s your property and I must give it back. You aren’t taking it from me! I’m giving it to you, because I know now that it’s yours.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Sir Keith said hastily. “Your version is undoubtedly correct. But wait a moment! What am I to do with a girl’s locket? There is no Katharine in our family now. What is your name, by the way?”

  “Jen Robins. I live in Yorkshire, but I go to school in Wycombe.”

  “She’s Janet really,” Jack came forward. “But she doesn’t like Janet.”

  Jen turned on her wrathfully. “What d’you need to come barging in for? You’ve kept out of this, because you were terrified of him. Just go on keeping out of it! Don’t come messing things up!”

  Sir Keith waved “Janet” and Jack aside. “Little Miss Jen, it is very surprising that our old locket should be recovered after so many years. But I can’t see that any one who is alive now has any desire for it. My young brothers are unmarried and are out of the country; they have boy cousins, but there are no Marchwood girls. The locket will only be locked up, if you return it to me. Let me think!” and he sat drumming on the desk again.

  Jen eyed him breathlessly. She shot a glance at Jack, asking a wordless question; Jack raised her eyebrows, but did not venture to speak.

  CHAPTER XVI

  JEN MAKES HER WILL

  “Yes, that would do,” Sir Keith said at last. “Suppose you wear the locket for us, for a time? But when you have done with it, it should be returned to us. Perhaps by then one of our boys may have married, and there may be a Marchwood girl who would like to wear it.”

  “In my will, do you mean?” Jen cried in delight. “I’d love to make my will! I never thought I’d have anything precious enough to leave to anybody! Oh, couldn’t I do it now? Then you’d be sure it was what you want. You and Jack could be witnesses; you need two, don’t you?”

  Sir Keith’s eyes gleamed in amusement. “If you will make your will, here and now, I will give you the locket for your lifetime.”

  “Oh, glory! Of course I will! Tell me how to do it!” Jen cried eagerly. “Have you a pen? It should be written in ink. Then you could keep it in return for the locket, couldn’t you?”

  Sir Keith grimly handed over a pen and some sheets of paper.

  “That seems an excellent plan. But any later will you may make would cancel this one, you know, so you must be careful to remember always to mention the locket.”

  “Every time I make my will. Yes, I see,” Jen nodded, settling herself at the big table. “This is a thrill! I never thought, when I set out to-day, that I should make my will before I went home!”

  “What are you going to say?” Jack hung over Jen’s shoulder.

  “Go away! You’ll make me nervous. We’ll tell you to come when we want you,” Jen retorted.

  “We shall summon you when the document is ready for your signature,” Sir Keith said stiffly.

  Jen chuckled as Jack retreated hastily. “How beautifully you put it! The document! I don’t know what to say,” she pleaded. “Won’t you tell me, please?”

  “Put it in your own words, my dear.”

  Jen sighed. “Has anybody a pencil? I shall need to start several times, I’m quite sure.”

  Jack supplied a pencil, and Jen began to scribble. Sir Keith glanced at her, and then, with amused eyes, turned to his desk again.

  “Will this do?” Jen looked up at last. “ ‘I, Janet Robins’—I suppose I must say Janet, as it’s a document!—‘wi
sh that after my death the Marchwood locket and purse shall be given back to the Marchwood family, if possible to a girl called Katharine Marchwood, and if there is more than one Katharine by that time, to the eldest one. If there is no Katharine, then some other girl must have it, and she must call her daughter Katharine and give it to her. This is NOT to be cancelled by any later will, even if I forget to mention it.’ How would that do? I’d like a Katharine to have the locket again.”

  Sir Keith assented gravely. “It will do excellently. Sign it with your full name. Your friend and I will witness your signature.”

  “I’ll copy it out neatly,” Jen said. “May I take the pencil scribble away to show to Joan?”

  “Certainly. Tell us when you are ready.”

  “I’m going to sign it now.” Jen’s tone was full of importance. “Jack, come and be a witness.”

  Jack stood staring at the pen. “I saw you do it. I watched every stroke. It’s jolly badly written, but I suppose you were nervous. Where do I sign?”

  “It’s enough to make anybody nervous, to have you glowering at one like that,” Jen retorted.

  “Sign there,” said Sir Keith; and added his own signature.

  “Nothing to do with me, of course,” Jack said cheerfully. “But if there are lots of girls and none of them’s called Katharine, there’s going to be a jolly old row over that locket. They’ll all fight for it. Why didn’t you say it must go to the eldest girl in the family, if there wasn’t a Katharine?”

  Jen looked at Sir Keith. “Do you think it matters?”

  “There will be a Katharine, if there are any girls at all. It is one of our family names. But there may be no girls; my young stepbrothers may not marry. Andrew is a wanderer, and Kenneth’s heart seems to be in Africa. You had better insert a line saying that if our family has died out, the locket is to go to your children.”

  “My children!” Jen grinned. “My daughters, I suppose. Wonder if I’ll ever have any? I’d like to put that in. Thank you very much, Sir Keith.”

  Sir Keith put the document into a pigeon-hole in the desk. “I shall instruct my solicitors as to its whereabouts,” he said.

  “Whom did Katharine marry? The first one who was painted wearing the locket?” Jen asked. “I’d like to know more about her.”

  “She was born in 1585,” he said. “Fifteen years later she married young Peregrine Abinger, of the Hall——”

  “At fifteen?” cried Jack.

  Jen’s shriek of excitement drowned the words. “Peregrine? The ‘falcon’? Joy’s ancestor? Oh, you don’t really mean that Peregrine married my Katharine Marchwood?”

  Sir Keith and Jack were both staring at her.

  “Why shouldn’t he—or she? Have you gone batty?” Jack asked.

  “Oh, you don’t understand——”

  “What do you know about Peregrine Abinger?” the puzzled baronet demanded. “Why does it excite you so much that he should have married the lady of your locket?”

  “Because it makes her related to us! Joy will be thrilled to the limit; she wants fearfully much to know more about Peregrine. Then my Katharine Marchwood was Joy’s ancestor? She was really Katharine Abinger?”

  “After her marriage—yes. The picture you found was painted before she left home. But I don’t understand why it matters so much?”

  “No, you couldn’t,” Jen admitted. “We found an old book, written by Ambrose, the monk who lived in the Abbey ruins for fifty years, and it spoke about his adopted son, Peregrine, who was so good to him; Ambrose called him his ‘falcon.’ After he died Peregrine buried him in the Abbey, under the gate-house, and put the book and his ring beside him, and wrote a message saying he’d done it and signed it ‘P.A.’ Joy was thrilled to have her ancestor’s writing, and we love Peregrine because he loved Ambrose and called him his ‘father,’ and was good to him when he was old. It’s marvellous to know that he married my Katharine Marchwood! How pleased Joy will be!”

  Sir Keith looked at her under drawn brows. “When you were searching for the portraits, how much of the house did you—er—visit?”

  “Explore?” Jen reddened, startled by the change of subject. “We didn’t do any harm, really we didn’t. We just peeped into the rooms down here and saw there weren’t any paintings of people—only scenes of woods and the sea, and so on. Jack thought there might be a picture-gallery upstairs, so we rushed up, and there were the family portraits. You said we wouldn’t say any more about the burgling!”

  “I only wished to know how much you had seen,” he said. “If you look in the small drawing-room—the second door on the other side of the hall—you will find a picture that may interest you.”

  Jen stared at him. “Oh, what is it? May we go and look? It’s not a picture of Peregrine, is it?”

  “There weren’t any portraits,” Jack began.

  “Not of Peregrine. See if you can find the picture I mean.”

  “The second door?” Jen shot off, with Jack at her heels.

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE ABBEY CHURCH AT LAST

  Very carefully Jen and Jack went round the small room, scanning each picture in turn.

  “Oh, look! I like this one!” Jen exclaimed, standing before a painting of the interior of a great church, with beautiful windows, strong simple pillars, and a brilliant shaft of sunlight striking across the arches of the choir.

  “D’you think this is the same place—the outside of it?” Jack asked. She, too, was gazing at a church, with a wonderful doorway, a low bell-tower, and high arched windows.

  “How odd! They’re both lovely. I wonder why the Marchwoods—and why he said, ‘not Peregrine’—and why Peregrine made him think of these, as if there might be some connection? It couldn’t possibly——” An astounding idea seized Jen. “Oh, come and ask him! Come on, Jack! It couldn’t be——!”

  “Couldn’t be what? Where do you think it is?” Jack asked, bewildered.

  Jen had gone flying to the door. She ran back for a quick careful look at Jack’s picture.

  “It is! Don’t you see? Oh, come and ask him, Jack!”

  She sped to the library in a whirl of excitement.

  “Sir Keith, is it the Abbey church? The great church that was pulled down? There’s something in the corner of one of the pictures that might be the end of the gate-house. Is it our church, Sir Keith?”

  He laid down his papers. “Yes, my dear. Those are pictures of the Abbey church, painted more than sixty years after it had been destroyed.”

  “Oh! But how? Who could do it, if he hadn’t seen it? And why have you got them? They ought to be in the Abbey, so that every one can see what the church was like.”

  “What cheek!” Jack protested.

  “I agree with Miss Jen. I have often thought it would be a better place for them than buried here. But, my dear children, they were at least safe here. The Abbey was in a ruined condition until Sir Antony Abinger undertook the restoration of the buildings that were left.”

  “That’s true,” Jen nodded. “You’ve kept the pictures safe, anyway.” She looked up at the baronet with awe in her face. “It’s the thing we’ve wanted most of all—to know what that lovely church was like. I’ve often heard Joan say, ‘If only we had a picture of the great church!’ And you have two pictures; and they’ve been here, next door, all the time! I suppose you couldn’t——?” She looked at him longingly.

  He laughed grimly. “Restore them to the Abbey, I suppose! Sir Antony would have had them long ago, if he had been a pleasant neighbour. But he was not a good neighbour, and both my father and I found it best to have as little to do with him as we could. He never knew we had those pictures.”

  “He had a frightful temper, hadn’t he? I’ve heard how he hated everybody and nobody liked him,” Jen assented. “Joy talks about her ‘Sir Antony temper,’ but she doesn’t go off into rages very often. Of course, you wouldn’t dream of giving anything to him if he was as bad as all that. But now——!” and she eyed Sir Keith wistf
ully again.

  “I liked the boy, Tony, his son, who died abroad. If he had succeeded his father, the two families might have been friendly. As it was, I went to live in town, and the pictures remained here and were forgotten.”

  “But how could anybody paint them who hadn’t seen the church?” Jack leaned on the desk and spoke eagerly, all her fear forgotten.

  “Yes, I wanted to ask that,” Jen agreed. “Do you know who did the pictures? And how he managed it?”

  Sir Keith’s eyes gleamed. “The explanation will appeal to you. Katharine of the locket, the wife of Peregrine, knew your old monk and loved him, as her husband did. They were a very young couple; he was eighteen and she fifteen at the time of the marriage. It was the custom in those days.”

  “Then Peregrine was twenty when he wrote his name at the end of Ambrose’s story,” Jen murmured, her eyes fascinated and eager. “We’ve often wondered. Did Ambrose describe the church to them? Of course, he’d been in it often. Oh! Ambrose didn’t paint the pictures, did he? We know he was an artist, working with gold and jewels!”

  “But not a painter. No, he only told them about it. But he probably had an artist’s eye for detail, and his description would be accurate and complete. Katharine sent for a famous Dutch painter who was visiting London, and he came to stay at the Hall and questioned the old monk and made sketches. I believe Ambrose saw the paintings before he died and approved of them.”

  “Then we owe them to him, the old dear!” Jen exclaimed.

  “I expect he was pleased to think the church wouldn’t be forgotten,” Jack added.

  “The paintings were sent to us after the death of Katharine and Peregrine. Their only son had died before them, and his son was a careless youth, wanting only to be at Court under Charles II. Old family treasures did not appeal to him, so he carried out his grandmother’s last wish and sent back the paintings and the locket, both of which she had treasured. The locket was lost a hundred years later, stolen from another Katharine when she was crossing the hills.”