A harum-scarum schoolgirl Part 23

March had come, and even in the northern mountainous region of the Pennines, where snow lingers long after it has melted in more favoured districts, winter had begun to make way for spring. The snowdrops--January flowers in Wales or Cornwall, fair maids of February in most counties--were late bloomers at Pendlemere, and were never in their prime till St. Patrick's Day. They made up for their tardy arrival by their luxuriance. They grew almost wild in the orchard, and spread like a white carpet over the gra.s.s, tossing fairy bells in the wind.

Diana, promoted to help Miss Carr in the spraying of apple-trees, paused in her work to look round and revel in nature's re-awakening. She was a sun lover, and the long months of perpetual mist and rain had tried her very much. She had, to be sure, kept up her spirits in spite of weather; still, the sight of fleecy, white clouds scudding across a blue sky, and the sound of the missel-thrush tuning up on the bare branch of the plum-tree were particularly cheering. Hedge-sparrows twittered among the shrubs, and rooks were busy flying with large twigs in their bills to repair their nests in the elms near the church. In the March sunshine the lake glittered like gold.

"I wonder if it looked just like this when the old monks lived here,"

said Diana. "Did they see exactly what we do now?"

"Pretty much the same, I expect," answered Miss Carr rather abstractedly. "The lake and the fells would be there, and probably most of the farms, though the buildings would be different in those days. The lay brethren would attend to the land just as we do. I dare say they dug in this very orchard, and grew herbs in the same place where we're going to plant our potatoes."

"It's a pity we can't call up a vision of them!"

"No, thank you!" said Miss Carr, who was a practical person, and not given to romance. "I've not the slightest desire to see spooks. I'm quite content with modern life, and don't want fourteenth-century ghosts gliding about the place. Get on with your work, Diana! I'm more concerned with apple-trees than with the old monks."

When Diana got an idea into her head, however, it was apt to stick. She had a lively imagination, and she liked to picture what the Abbey had once been. She read the account of it in the local guidebook and in Chadwick's _Northern Antiquities_, which she borrowed from the library, and she further devoured Scott's _The Monastery_. Steeped in this mediaeval atmosphere, she began to tell the girls such vivid stories of the doings of the brethren that they almost believed her. She invented several fict.i.tious characters: Brother Amos, Brother Lawrence, Brother John, and Prior Andrew, and gave a most circ.u.mstantial account of their adventures.

"How do you know what they used to do?" asked Jess, much impressed.

"I guess I sort of feel it," said Diana. "It's almost like remembering."

"Some people think we come back to earth and live again. Were you one of the old monks, Di?"

"She must have been an unholy one, if she was!" interrupted Sadie.

"Anybody less like a monk than 'Stars and Stripes' I couldn't think of!"

"There were all sorts, of course. I've told you Brother Lawrence was up to tricks sometimes, and got the discipline. The Prior used to be down on him, just as Toddlekins is down on us. He was more sinner than saint.

That's why he can't rest quietly."

"Doesn't he rest?" Jess's voice held a note of uneasiness.

"No, I don't think he does. I've a kind of feeling that he haunts the place, coming back to find out what it's like now."

"An earth-bound spirit!" gasped Jess.

"Yes, he's got some sins to expiate, you see."

The conversation was growing creepy. Sadie, Tattie, Jess, and Peggy, who with Diana were squatting near the schoolroom fire in the gloaming, moved a little nearer together. There is comfort in physical contact.

The fact that Brother Lawrence was entirely an invention of Diana's did not relieve the tenseness of the situation; she had talked about him so often that she seemed to have conjured him up. They could almost see his white habit gliding along the corridor, and his unsaintly eyes gleaming from under his cowl. They began to wish he had behaved better during his lifetime, or at any rate that he had not chosen to revisit the scenes of his old sins.

"If I were really to see him I'd have forty fits!" shivered Peggy, who was a superst.i.tious little soul who threw spilt salt over her left shoulder, and curtsied religiously to the new moon.

"It isn't everybody can see ghosts," declared Diana. "You've got to have the psychic faculty. Some people can feel they're there, even when they can't see them."

"Oh, that would be _far_ worse! It would be awful to know something was in the room, and not be able to see it!" exploded Jess. "Tattie, may I come and sleep in your bed to-night?"

"There's not much room, but you can if you like," conceded Tattie; "so long as Geraldine doesn't find out."

"I'll creep in when she's asleep."

It was all very well for Diana to people the corridor with imaginary monks; she knew they were images of her own creation; the more weak-minded of her form mates, however, were frankly frightened. Nothing spreads more readily than a ghost scare. Sadie, Jess, and Peggie were bolting squealing along the pa.s.sage one evening, when they almost collided with Geraldine. She seized Jess by the arm, and pulled her into the radius of the lamplight, nodding to the other two to follow.

"I want a word with you," she said. "It's high time you stopped this ridiculous nonsense. I don't know who started it, but it's getting the limit. Oh, yes! I know you go creeping into Tattie's bed when you think I'm asleep, and you daren't walk upstairs alone. I'm not as blind or deaf as you seem to suppose. You're putting silly ideas into juniors'

heads. Whoever heard of the Abbey being haunted? Such stuff! You'll be afraid of your own shadows next. Do try to be more strong-minded! I really shouldn't have expected----"

Geraldine stopped, because something like a whirlwind suddenly descended the stairs and stampeded towards them. It resolved itself into Diana--Diana with scarlet cheeks, shining eyes, and face simply bubbling over with excitement.

"Hallo! I say!" she jodelled, "What _do_ you think?" Then she saw Geraldine, and halted dead.

"Come here!" commanded the head girl. "I want to talk to you too about this absurd spook scare. It's mostly among you intermediates, and the sooner you get it out of your silly heads the better. Pity you can't find something more sensible to talk about. Why don't you read, and fill up your empty brains? There are heaps of good books in the library, if you'd only get them out. You spend all your spare time gossiping."

"We _do_ read!" retorted Diana, taking up the cudgels for the maligned intermediates. "I've just read _The Monastery_, and that's all about a ghost called 'The White Lady of Avenel'. It's _grand_ where she rides the sacristan's mule down the river and sings:

'Merrily swim we; the moon shines bright.

Good luck to your fishing! Whom watch ye to-night?'

There are heaps and loads of ghost tales in the guide book and in Chadwick's _Northern Antiquities_, and those are all books Miss Todd _told_ me I might read. She said they were 'educational'."

"She didn't mean you to take the ghosts seriously, though, any more than you'd believe in the G.o.ds of Greece because you were learning cla.s.sical literature. Why, you'll tell me next that you expect to see the fairies."

"I'm not sure that I don't!"

"Then you're a bigger goose than I thought you. Really, at fourteen! I'm astonished at all of you. You don't see _me_ running squealing away from supposed ghosts. Don't let me catch you being such little idiots again."

Having finished her harangue, and having, as she thought, thoroughly squashed the folly of the intermediates, Geraldine proceeded on her way, happily oblivious of the faces they were pulling behind her back.

"I'd like to see _her_ squeal and run," grunted Jess.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITS COWL FELL BACK, AND DISCLOSED A WELL-KNOWN AND DECIDEDLY MIRTHFUL COUNTENANCE]

"So should I," agreed Sadie. "She's always _very_ superior. By the by, Stars and Stripes, what were you just going to tell us?"

"Nothing particular."

Diana was looking preoccupied, as if her thoughts were far away.

"I'm sure it was," urged Sadie. "Don't be mean! Go on!"

"I've changed my mind. No, I'm _not_ going to tell you. It's no use bothering me, for I just shan't."

"I think everybody's horrid to-night," said Sadie, turning away much offended.

It was on the very next evening that Ida Beckford, going to her bedroom in the gloaming, caught a glimpse of a white-robed figure with a cowl over its head gliding along the pa.s.sage and up the stairs. Ida was not so strong-minded as Geraldine. She turned the colour of pale putty, and went straight downstairs again to relate her psychic experience to her fellow seniors. She did not meet with the sympathy she expected.

"Some silly trick of those intermediates," sniffed Hilary.

"I'll be down on them if they go shamming spooks," threatened Geraldine.

"If it happens again we'll set a watch and catch it," declared Stuart loftily.

Ida cheered up at this mundane view of the matter, and recovered her colour; but she abandoned the blotter she was going to fetch, and stayed in her form-room instead of walking upstairs again. The news began to creep about the school, however, that the Abbey was being haunted by a spiritual visitor. Many of the girls saw it glide along the landing in the dusk, and disappear up a certain narrow flight of stairs. Now herein lay the mystery. The stairs went up ten steps in full view of the pa.s.sage, then they turned a sharp corner, rounded a yard of landing, and with four more steps ended in a locked attic door. Several of the most venturesome members of the school had tried to follow the figure, but when they came round the corner, to their immense surprise it had utterly disappeared. And there was absolutely no place in which it could possibly have concealed itself.