A Terrible Tomboy Part 29

'He was a faithful friend, Peggy, for he laid down his life for you,'

said Father later on in the day, when poor Rollo's body had been carried home to the stable, and the tramp safely lodged by Mr. Adams and Harry in Warford Gaol, to await his trial for attempted highway robbery and a.s.sault.

Peggy had cried till her cheeks were purple and swollen and her eyes were only two aching slits. She took her troubles hardly, and just at present it seemed to her as if life could never be quite the same again.

Bobby, almost equally afflicted, had the added trial of trying to conceal his grief, for he regarded tears as unmanly, and the result was a peculiar shortness and roughness of manner, with frequent rushings away to the barn when his feelings overcame him. Joe, whose sympathy could not have been more genuine if Peggy had lost a parent, hovered about all day, trying to console the bereaved pair, with small success, till towards evening a sudden flash of genius inspired him to suggest a funeral, perhaps his village experience teaching him that the bustle and preparation necessary for such a ceremony was the best safety-valve to work off sorrow.

'We might bury him among the ruins, Miss Peggy. There's a fine place round by the old abbot's house, where the ground is soft, and we could dig easy; and I've a cousin in the slate-quarries at Bethogwen as has promised many a time to cut me a little tombstone as a present, if ever I was wantin' one, so I'll ask him to bring it next time he comes, and put Rollo's name on it, and the day, and as how he died defendin' you; and we'll fix it up nice, and plant flowers round, just as if it was the churchyard.'

Peggy sat up, and wiped her eyes with the corner of her damp pocket-handkerchief.

'He ought to be in the real churchyard,' she said chokily. 'If ever a dog deserved the Victoria Cross and a military funeral, it's Rollo!'

'Do you think he'll go to heaven?' asked Bobby, with a suspicious gulp.

'Of course he will! I wonder you can ask such a question! Heaven wouldn't be heaven unless we found Rollo there! We'll wrap his body in the Union Jack, and pick all our best flowers to strew round him; and you might fire off your old pistol over his grave, if Father will let you have any gunpowder--a parting salute, you know, like they do for officers,' said Peggy, cheering up a little at the thought of arranging the obsequies.

Just at sunset the melancholy procession started off from the stable towards the ruins. Joe and Bobby were bearers, and carried between them the packing-case lid, draped with all the available flags that could be found, which bore what had once been poor Rollo. Peggy followed as chief mourner, her arms full of wreaths and flowers, and a piece of black c.r.a.pe, purloined from the sc.r.a.p-bag, pinned conspicuously upon her hat.

The place chosen was among the most perfect part of the old Abbey, not so much filled up with stones and rubbish as the great refectory or the remains of the choir. Tradition pointed it out as the abbot's house, and that name had clung to it through all the hundreds of years since the busy monks had lived and worked there.

'Suppose you dig just here, Joe,' cried Peggy, selecting a spot where a blackthorn was bursting forth into a sheet of white blossom and the primroses were yellowest and best.

Joe moistened the palms of his hands in the orthodox fashion, and seizing the spade began to shovel away at the loose, light soil. He had dug about three feet deep when his spade struck against a smooth, flat stone, which, instead of coming out easily amongst the rubbish, seemed to extend for some way underneath the surface.

'It looks like a paving-stone, for all the world,' he said, sweeping the soil away from it with his hand. 'I'll dig out the earth all around it, and see what it do be.'

It took Joe a considerable time to clear the stone, though Bobby went to his aid with a trowel; but he got it free at last, and Peggy stooped down curiously to examine it.

'There are marks on it, like letters and queer figures, but they're all filled up with soil,' she said. 'It seems to me it's a kind of lid, and if you dig round the edge a little more, Joe, we might lift it up. It's rather like the cover of one of those old stone coffins in the churchyard, only smaller. I wonder if there is anything inside?'

Joe set to work again with a will, clearing out the earth well from under the side of the stone; then, putting his fingers beneath it, he gave a mighty jerk of his strong arms, and up it came, nearly upsetting him with the force of the recoil. Three eager faces peered anxiously down into what certainly looked like the inside of a small stone coffin, but instead of containing mouldering bones, it held a good-sized chest of oak, bound with iron, rather rusted and crumbling, but still holding quite firmly together.

'Lift it out, Joe!' cried Peggy, in such excitement that Rollo was almost forgotten for the moment. 'Whatever can be inside it?'

'It bean't no light weight, Miss Peggy, whatever it be,' groaned Joe, for it was as much as he could manage to heave the heavy chest from its resting-place on to the gra.s.s above.

'There may be money and all sorts of treasures in it,' suggested Bobby.

'Perhaps the smugglers left it behind.'

'Nay, this be older nor smugglers,' said Joe, with a glance at the solid workmanship and the quaint carving on the old lid, 'unless they made use of an old thing for their own purposes. Let be, Master Bobby, I can't do nothing with you hangin' over me like this!'

He had been fumbling with the ancient rusty lock while he spoke, and it now broke away from the rotten woodwork. He flung back the heavy lid, and revealed--neither gold nor jewels, nothing but a pile of musty-looking old parchments and books. The children looked at each other in blank disappointment.

'There might be something underneath,' said Peggy, beginning to rummage the chest to the very bottom; but her hopes were soon dashed, for a further search did not bring anything more to light.

'How disgusting! Who cares for old books?' exclaimed Bobby, whose heart had been set on stolen jewels, smuggled valuables, or daggers and firearms at the least.

'They're very funny ones, at any rate,' said Peggy, picking up one of the despised tomes. 'Just look at the backs. They're so thick and heavy.

They seem to be made of metal of some kind, with little bits of coloured gla.s.s stuck into them; but they're terribly tarnished and dirty. I can't read the writing inside at all, and there are the queerest little pictures all round the edges of the pages.'

'What be I to do with the box?' asked Joe, gazing at their find in some perplexity. 'And be I to dig another hole for the burial, miss, or not?'

Her thoughts recalled to the melancholy occasion, Peggy flung down the book, and her grief broke forth anew.

'We'll bury him in the old stone coffin,' she declared. 'We'll line it with leaves and primroses, and then lay him in, and just drop on the lid again. I'm glad he should have a real coffin, after all, and the Abbey's almost as good as the churchyard, for Father says lots of the old monks must have been buried here, if we could only find their graves.'

Even Ophelia could not have chosen a more flowery resting-place, for the children covered poor Rollo with violets, primroses, and white sloe-blossom. Joe carefully replaced the lid, and shovelled on the soil again, heaping it up, and smoothing it with the flat of his spade, in imitation of the village s.e.xton.

Father had refused to allow gunpowder, so the pistol was useless, but Peggy placed a wreath of white jonquils picked from her own garden upon the grave, and dropped so many tears over it that I do not think any dog could have been more truly mourned and regretted.

'You won't forget about the tombstone, will you, Joe?' she said, finding the prospect of a monument to her pet decidedly consoling. 'I mean to make up a nice epitaph for him, in poetry if I can manage it--something about his being such a beauty, and then dying doing his duty, because that would rhyme.'

'Miss Peggy,' declared Joe solemnly, 'you shall have that there little tombstone, if I has to go without one myself. You write the words out plain on a piece of paper, and I'll walk over to Bethogwen the very next time I gets a holiday. You'll see my cousin will do it beautiful, havin'

worked a year in a stonemason's yard, and being fond of a dog, too. He might even try his hand at a weepin' angel or a broken flower at the top, but I can't promise that, not knowin' whether he's kept his tools.'

The box containing the old ma.n.u.script was carried into the loft by Joe, and examined by Father at his leisure.

'I don't know much about this sort of thing, Peggy,' he said, 'but I should imagine they would be mostly old records and deeds of the Abbey.

It is marvellous how well they are preserved, but the oak and the stone combined must have kept out the air, and parchment does not decay like paper. Valuable? Not from a money point of view, I am afraid; but no doubt they would prove very interesting to some antiquarian who could read them. We will keep them here until the Rector comes home again. I expect he will be delighted to look over them some day, and will tell us what they are all about.'

Mr. Vaughan had intended to write an account of the find to the local newspaper, but in the hurry and worry of his affairs he forgot. The Rector was still away, and as n.o.body else took any interest in such matters, the mysterious old chest stayed neglected among the corn-sacks.

Only Peggy sometimes stole up the stone staircase, and taking one of the strange books from its hiding-place, would pore over the quaint pictures which bordered the pages. They fascinated her with their crude drawing and colours still vivid and bright--saints with halos round their heads, kneeling rapt in prayer, with folded hands, in the midst of green fields and flowers, while the Virgin, clothed in blue and gold, appeared with a whole company of angels from the skies above; patient martyrs, with wan faces upturned to heaven, while their persecutors flung stones, or heaped on the burning brands; the blessed pa.s.sing into the joys of Paradise, with the wicked writhing in the tormenting flames below; and round all a curious illuminated bordering, where strange faces peered out of twisting foliage, and figures of birds and animals were intertwined with patterns of flowers or the tail of a capital letter. What patient fingers, she wondered, had toiled over these in days gone by, working with paint-pots and palette of gold to put the glory of paradise on his pages? Had the world altered much in all these years? And how little did the old artist think that his work would be found and marvelled at when he and his order were alike forgotten, and the very Abbey where he had lived and laboured had long since crumbled away!

So the old chest remained in the loft, as hidden there as when it had been buried in the earth, and Peggy came and went, never dreaming in the time that followed that these ancient, musty relics could in any way be bound up with the fate and fortunes of the Vaughans.

CHAPTER XXII

DEEPENING TROUBLE

'The web of our life is a mingled yarn, Good and ill together.'

As the year advanced, Mr. Vaughan found that his troubles by no means decreased. Mr. Norton, urged on by his solicitor, was a hard creditor, and would allow neither time nor mercy. He had taken a fancy to the place, it seemed, and hearing that some of the neighbouring properties would probably soon be on sale, wished to settle down at Gorswen and let it form the nucleus of a large new estate. Unless the whole of the mortgages could be paid up by the end of July, the property must fall into his hands, and the black cloud which had hung for so long over the Abbey seemed on the verge of breaking.

Mr. Vaughan had tried by every means in his power to meet his difficulties, but all the channels he had counted upon had failed him, and as he sat over his account-books late into the night blank ruin stared him in the face. So impossible did it seem in any way to raise so large a sum of money that he began quietly to make arrangements to realize what he could on the stock and furniture, to enable him to make a fresh start in a fresh place. It would be too trying, he decided, to settle down anywhere in the neighbourhood of his old home, and it would be better for both himself and his children to seek their fortune in a new country, where his practical knowledge of farming should stand him in good stead. He had thought at first of Kansas or Nebraska, but having a friend in Australia, who might help him considerably in the choice of land, he determined to give the preference to the colonies, and to try his luck under the Southern Cross. It would be impossible to take much more than their personal belongings with them, so everything else would have to be sold on previously. Already an auctioneer had been sent for to the Abbey to inspect the furniture, and give some idea of what it might be likely to realize. It made Lilian's blood boil to see him appraising the old oak, examining the curtains and carpets, and taking notes of the pictures and books.

'There's grand stuff here for a sale,' he said to her enthusiastically, rubbing his hands as if he expected her to share in his joy. 'We shall have dealers from all over the kingdom. It's not often one gets the chance of genuine antiques which have been known to be in one family for such a length of time. I shouldn't wonder, now, if that Chippendale suite were to run into three figures; it's a very scarce pattern, and much sought after. There's some china, too, that will attract many of the buyers, and should go for a fair price, and that Romney portrait ought to be quite a catch. I think you will find that in our experienced hands the very utmost will be made of everything. Of course, we shall advertise the sale in good time, and have catalogues printed and distributed in every likely quarter.'

'It seems quite bad enough to have to sell the things at all,' said Lilian afterwards. 'But to hear him talk of putting all our dear old treasures down in a catalogue made me feel absolutely ill. I can't bear to have the Romney picture go, either, because it's just like Peggy; it might have been painted from her'--the vision of the family portraits and the armour of her ancestors being turned over and valued by oily gentlemen of the Hebrew persuasion adding a double sting to the trial.

Bobby was still too young to fully understand everything that was taking place, but to the two girls it was a time of bitter trouble and humiliation. To Peggy, the mere fact that it should be Phyllis Norton who would take her place at the Abbey seemed as hard as anything to bear, and she knew her old home would pa.s.s to a family who would care nothing for its ancient traditions and a.s.sociations. Mr. Norton had spoken freely of his plans in the neighbourhood, and it was well known that he intended to almost rebuild the house, pulling down the ruins and all the more early portion, and turning the whole into a handsome modern residence. Of romance and respect for the past he possessed not a whit, and valued the estate for its shooting and horse-rearing capabilities alone.

'All the things which we care for most will be done away with,' grieved Peggy--'the dear old tower pulled down, the ruins destroyed, the garden uprooted, and the woods cleared away. I should not have minded so much if we could have given up the place to someone who would have kept it just as it is. It seems so hard we should be turned out when we love it so. I feel as if, when we leave the Abbey, there will be nothing left!'

'We shall still have each other, Peggy,' said Father. 'And while our little circle is unbroken, I think we shall be able to make a home again somewhere. It is hard to be torn up by the roots, but you must not let it spoil your young lives, at any rate. I hope my children may get on as well in the new country as they would have done in this, though an old fellow like I am may find it difficult to settle down again.'

'You're not old, Father,' said Lilian, stroking the hair which had shown tell-tale streaks of gray lately among the brown.