The Manor House School (12 page)

"Is it silver plate?"

"It might be anything in that huge sack."

"Oh! Not a body!"

I believe Cicely would have fled precipitately if Lindsay had not held her tightly by the hand. The fear that old Sir Giles Courtenay was being finally disposed of oppressed her like a nightmare.

"No! I expect it's the treasure. We must notice exactly where they're putting it."

[Illustration: AN UNFORTUNATE ACCIDENT]

Lindsay took a step nearer, to gain a better view of the proceedings, but as she did so her foot trod noisily on a dead twig.

"What's that?"

The question was in "The Griffin's" well-known voice.

There was a growl in reply from Scott.

"Best take a look, anyhow," came from Mrs. Wilson.

Scott seized the lantern, and began to flash it round in every direction. Then, oh horrors! he walked straight towards the oak where the two girls were hiding. Nearly paralysed with fear, they did not dare to run away, and could only hope that, after all, under cover of the darkness, he might chance to overlook them.

In her desperation, Lindsay tried to draw farther behind the trunk of the tree. To do so she perforce pushed Cicely back. The latter was not quite prepared for the sudden movement, the ground was uneven, she swayed, clutched violently at her companion to save herself, and over they both rolled down the bank, almost to the very feet of Scott himself.

As Lindsay and Cicely came crashing down the bank, Scott uttered a cry of consternation. In the suddenness of his dismay, the lantern dropped from his hand, extinguishing the light in its fall.

Instantly the two girls were on their feet, and rushed helter-skelter across the garden through the darkness. They plunged anyhow through bushes and over flower-beds, scratching their faces on overhanging boughs, and tearing their dresses on thorns, their one fear lest Scott should be pursuing them, and their one anxiety to gain the safe shelter of the house.

They reached the side entrance without hearing any footsteps behind them. If Scott had tried to follow them, they had evidently managed to elude him, and he must have given up the chase. The door was still unbolted, and they hurried breathlessly upstairs, luckily meeting nobody on the way. What a harbour of refuge it seemed to be, back in their own room! Without daring to light the candle, they went back to bed again with all possible speed.

"Well, we have had an adventure!" began Lindsay, when they were once more comfortably ensconced between the sheets.

"Do you think Scott noticed who we were?" whispered Cicely.

"I can't tell. He had just time to catch a glimpse of our faces before the lantern went out."

"I'm sure they were doing something dreadful that they wanted to keep secret, he looked so utterly horror-stricken at seeing us."

"There's no doubt about it. The unfortunate part is that now they find they've been discovered, they'll bury the treasure somewhere else instead."

"What a pity we fell just at that moment!"

Cicely's voice was very doleful.

"It will have aroused their suspicions, too, and will make them extra careful," lamented Lindsay. "If Scott recognized us, he and Mrs. Wilson will know we're watching them. They'll owe us a grudge. 'The Griffin' was bad enough before, but she'll be worse than ever now."

They scanned the old housekeeper's face narrowly next morning, as she carried the coffee into the dining-room, but her countenance wore its accustomed aspect of grim inscrutability. If she connected them with last night's happenings, she certainly did not betray the knowledge; it was impossible to tell whether she mistrusted them or not, or what feelings lay concealed under her forbidding exterior.

The moment breakfast was over, they rushed into the garden to renew their acquaintance with the scene of their adventure. Somebody had plainly been digging in the bank, though the traces had evidently been tidied carefully up, and the sods replaced.

"Do you think there could be anything here?" said Cicely wistfully, poking a stick into the loosened soil.

"Oh, dear me, no!" replied Lindsay. "Why, the first thing they'd do would be to rush off with that sack to some safer spot. Even the very stupidest persons wouldn't have gone on burying valuables in a place where they knew they'd been watched. 'The Griffin' and Scott are certainly not idiots!"

"If we could only guess where they'd put it!" sighed Cicely.

For the present they had had such a fright that, though neither would confess it, both were a little inclined to let the matter rest in abeyance. It needed courage to risk the anger of Mrs. Wilson and Scott if they were once more caught meddling. It had seemed pleasant enough to search for the treasure themselves in the house, but the affair was now beginning to assume a graver aspect.

"I sometimes wonder if we ought to tell Monica or Miss Russell," said Cicely, who occasionally had uneasy scruples as to the wisdom of their plan of secrecy.

"It wouldn't be of the slightest use," declared Lindsay. "'The Griffin' and Scott would simply deny everything. They'd make out it was all nonsense on our part, like grown-up people generally do. And how could we prove we were right? Miss Russell would tell us to mind our own business, and we should only get into a scrape for our pains. No, we shall just have to let things take their course, and trust to luck."

Under the Hawthorn Tree

It was high summer at Haversleigh. The trees, now in full leaf, cast rich shadows over the landscape, the wild roses were in bloom on the hedgerows, and tall foxgloves stood like crimson sentinels at the margins of the woods. The fields were white with moon-daisies, growing among the long, lush grass; and all the roadsides were a tangle of vetches, campion, bugle, trefoil and speedwells. The wind was fragrant with the scent of newly turned hay; everywhere the mowers were busy, and the daisies were falling fast beneath the swinging scythe or the blades of the reaping-machine. In the Manor garden the roses had reached perfection, and the flower-beds were a mass of colour. The girls spent every available moment out-of-doors, making the most of the bright days, and enjoying their country visit to the full.

One blazing half-holiday afternoon Lindsay and Cicely, allowed for once in the select company of a few of the elder girls, were lounging blissfully under the shade of a big hawthorn tree. The air seemed dancing for very heat; the grasshoppers were chirping away at the edge of the lawn, a lizard lay basking on the stones of the terrace wall, and the sparrows for once were silent.

"It's far too hot to play tennis," said Irene Spencer. "One just wants to sit somewhere where it's green and cool."

"I'm glad we're here, then, instead of at Winterburn Lodge," said Mary Parkinson.

"So am I; and yet Winterburn Lodge is nicer than many other schools," remarked Mildred Roper.

"It's not half bad," assented Mary. "I like it better, at any rate, than the French school I was at in Brussels."

"I didn't know you'd ever been in France," said Lindsay, idly picking a dandelion clock and blowing it to find out the time.

"No more I have, goosey."

"Then why did you say you'd been at a French school? You're telling fibs."

"No, I'm not, because Brussels doesn't happen to be in France--it's in Belgium."

"I thought you were supposed to learn geography in the third class," laughed Irene Spencer.

"She said a French school, not a Belgian one," objected Lindsay.

"Well, everybody speaks French in Brussels."

"Don't they speak Flemish?"

"Only the poor people, and even they can generally talk French as well."

"How long were you there, Mary?" put in Mildred Roper.

"Only one term. I got ill, and had to come home."

"Was it nice?"

"Oh, just tolerable!"

"Had you to talk French all the time?"

"I had to try, because none of the girls knew anything else. They used to laugh at me if I spoke English."

"How nasty! I shouldn't have cared to be you," said Cicely.

"Yes, it was horrid, when I was sure they were saying things about me and I couldn't understand them. I used to get quite cross, and that made my head ache."

"Was the school in the country?" asked Lindsay.

"No, I've told you already it was in Brussels, and that's a big city. It was a large building, with a great high wall all round it, with spikes on the top, as if it were a prison. Inside there was a courtyard where we used to play games. It had orange trees and oleanders in big green tubs, but no grass nor flowers. You couldn't possibly have called it a garden. We hardly ever went out for proper walks. Sometimes we were taken to the park, but even there we had to go very primly, two and two, with the teachers looking after us most sharply."

"Were the teachers nice?"

"Yes, pretty well. I liked them better than the girls, at any rate. There were two sisters in my class, called Marie and Sophie Beauvais, who were always making fun of me because I was English. I had a horrid time until a German girl came to the school, and then they teased her instead of me. The best thing of all was the coffee. It was perfectly delicious--nicer than any I've ever tasted in England."

"Why didn't you stay in Brussels?"

"I was ill, and my mother had to come and fetch me. She declared she would never let me go so far away from home again; so she sent me to Winterburn Lodge instead. Miss Russell is very kind if one's not well, and Mother said she would rather have me properly looked after, even if I didn't learn French."

"Yes, Miss Russell does take care of us," said Irene. "I used to be at another school, and the teachers never noticed if we had headaches, or couldn't eat our meals. We had to work most fearfully hard for exams, too. The headmistress made a point of getting a certain number of passes each year, and one was obliged to prepare and go in whether one was clever or not. Give me good old Winterburn Lodge!--especially when one's at the Manor instead. By the by, there's Monica. She's surely not come to play tennis? It's too hot."

"Fifteen degrees too hot," agreed Monica, throwing herself down on the grass beside the others and fanning herself with her hat. "Out on the road the heat's at simmering-point. I came to bring a message to Miss Russell, and I hear she's gone to Linforth and won't be back until half-past four. I think I shall wait for her."

"Oh, do!" cried the others. "We'll have a 'palaver' here under the trees."

"What's a 'palaver', please? I hope it's something cool and fizzy to drink."

"No, it's nothing of the sort. It's a kind of meeting, where everybody has to tell a story in turn."

"But I'm rigidly truthful!" objected Monica, with a twinkle in her eye.

"You naughty girl! You know we don't mean telling falsehoods. It's telling tales," said Irene.

"I'm no tell-tale either!"

"Don't be too funny. Your story will have to be longer than anyone else's to make up for this. Mildred, you explain, as I don't seem able to express myself properly."

"It can either be a story you have read, or one of something that has happened to yourself," said Mildred. "We prefer people's own adventures if we can get them."

"So few people have any adventures in real life!" said Monica.

"Then you can tell something out of a book."

"Suppose I can't remember anything?"

"You must. It needn't be grand; we're not a critical audience."

"I'm very stupid at telling things," said Monica; "might I read you something instead?"

"If you've got it here."

"As it happens, I have," replied Monica, opening a bound volume of a magazine which she held in her hand. "I brought this book to lend to Miss Russell, as I knew it would interest her. It has a story about the old Manor in the times of the Wars of the Roses, and how Sir Roger Courtenay came to win it for his own. I dare say you might like to hear it."

"If it's about the Manor I'm sure we shall," said Irene. "Who wrote the tale?"

"A gentleman who stayed in the village a year or two ago. He was very enthusiastic about Haversleigh. I suppose he made it up from the short account in the guide-book. All the facts are quite true, though he must have used his imagination for the details. The worst of it is that it's a fairly long story, and if I read it I'm afraid there won't be any time left for you to tell yours."

"Oh, we don't mind that!"

"So much the better!"

"Fire away!"

"Do go on!"

Thus encouraged, Monica found her place and, the girls having clustered round her in a close circle so as to hear the better, she began her tale:

SIR MERVYN'S WARD

The middle of the fifteenth century was one of the most stormy periods that the pages of English history have ever recorded. The rival claims of the houses of York and Lancaster had led to those disastrous Wars of the Roses that wiped away the flower of chivalry and made the fair land one bloody battlefield. In the autumn of 1470 Edward IV had been driven from his throne by the powerful Earl of Warwick, known as the Kingmaker, and Henry VI had been once more restored to power, though for how long a period none could venture to guess. They were hard times to live through, especially for those lesser gentry and yeomen who had not placed themselves definitely under the protection of any of the greater barons, and still strove to keep their estates in peace and quiet. The turmoil of the great struggle had not spared even the obscure village of Haversleigh. The inhabitants went about their tasks with an air of unrest. It seemed scarcely worth while to plough the fields, and sow corn which might be trampled underfoot by the soldiery before there was a chance to reap it. There were loud and deep murmurs among the villagers at the many exactions and tyrannies of Sir Mervyn Stamford, the then occupant of the Manor, the estates of which he administered on behalf of his ward, Catharine Mowbray. Catharine's father, Sir John Mowbray, had fallen in battle on the side of the Yorkists, but with the return of Henry VI to power, Sir Mervyn, a stanch Lancastrian, had bought the rights of her guardianship from the half-imbecile king, and had not only assumed control of her property, but had announced his intention of wedding the maiden, either with or without her consent.