The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories (9 page)

As Harriet's left foot was resting firmly on the floor, she felt rather injured, but, catching the governess’ eye, she hastily stooped, picked up an imaginary back-board with both hands, and carried it to the middle of the room.

"It would help,” she said to herself, “if I knew what the dratted thing looked like. But I suppose it's as long as I am."

"Put it down, child. Now lie on it. Flat on your back, arms at your sides, eyes looking at the ceiling."

Harriet lay down on the floor, looking at Miss Allison doubtfully, and was rewarded by a nod.

"Now Mark,” said the governess briskly, “I have written on the blackboard a list of Latin prepositions followed by the ablative case. You will occupy yourself in learning them while I write out an exercise for you both. Harriet, you can be trying to think of twenty wildflowers beginning with the letter
l."

She sat down at an invisible table and began briskly writing on nothing. Mark looked gloomily at the empty space where the blackboard was supposed to be, and wondered how he could learn a list of words he couldn't see. This adventure, it seemed to him, was a bit too much like real life. He wished Miss Allison was a more conventional ghost with clanking chains.

Harriet gave him a grin, and then, as Miss Allison looked particularly occupied, she whispered:

"A, ab, absque, coram, de..."

Mark's face cleared. Of course, now he remembered the words. Thank goodness he had learned them at school. He thought for a moment anxiously of what would happen if they didn't know what she had written on the blackboard, but anyway, that was in the future. No use worrying about it now.

At the end of what was presumably half an hour, Miss Allison turned round.

"Well!” she said. “Harriet, you may put away your board. Mark, let me hear you recite. You should have it by rote now."

"A, ab, absque,” he began.

"Never let me see you recite like that, Mark. Hands behind your back, feet in the first position, head up.” Mark obeyed peevishly.

"Now begin again."

"A, ab, absque, coram, de,

Palam, clam, cum, ex and e

Tenus, sine, pro, in, prae

Ablative with these we spy."

"Very good, Mark, though your pronunciation is a little modern,” she said. “You may open that blue tin and have a caraway biscuit."

Mark looked about for a blue tin, saw none, and opened an imaginary one.

Harriet did rather badly over her wildflowers beginning with
l.
Half the ones she thought of, such as lady's smock, lady's slipper, lady's tresses, lords and ladies, and all the lesser stitchworts and lesser chickweeds were disqualified, leaving her with a very poor list. She got no caraway biscuit. However, as Mark's had been imaginary, she did not greatly mind.

After this, they had to do embroidery. It also was totally imaginary. They held invisible pieces of linen, threaded invisible needles, and sometimes for the fun of the thing stuck them into their fingers and squeaked with imaginary pain. It was all very amusing. It soon appeared that even if they couldn't see their work, Miss Allison could. She kept up a running fire of comment, from which they gathered that Mark's was bad and Harriet's fairly good. This seemed reasonable enough. Mark was rather indignant at being expected to do embroidery, but after a while the governess began to read aloud to them a fascinating book called
Improving Tales
, all about some good children and some bad ones, so he just stuck his needle in and out and listened.

"There,” said Miss Allison finally, “that will do for today. For your preparation you will both turn to page two hundred in your Latin grammars and learn the list of words beginning:

"Amnis, axis, caulis, collis,

Clunis, crinis, fascis, follis—and you will also each write me a composition entitled ‘Devotion to Duty.’”

"Please,” said Harriet, “which is our Latin grammar?"

"Why, Crosby, of course. The blue book. Now run along, dears. You will want to get ready for your walk."

Mark wanted to go to bed, but she gave him such an extremely firm look that he went out with Harriet.

"You'll have to sleep on the sofa in my room,” she whispered, “and creep back as soon as it's light. I wouldn't dare try to disobey her."

"Nor me,” he whispered back. “She looks much firmer than any of the masters at school."

Luckily it was very warm, and there were some spare blankets in Harriet's room, so he was quite comfortable and slept well.

They were both rather silent and sleepy at breakfast, but afterwards on the river bank they discussed things.

"What are we going to do about those wretched essays?” asked Mark sourly. “I'm blowed if I write about devotion to duty."

"Oh, that's all right,” Harriet replied. “Don't you see, the composition will be just like the embroidery. We'll show up an imaginary one."

"I don't quite understand that,” said Mark, screwing up his eyes and throwing stones into the mudbank; the tide was rapidly running out.

"Nor do I,” agreed Harriet candidly, “but I
think
it's something like this: you see, she must have taught hundreds of children when she was alive, and I expect she made them all do embroidery and write about devotion to duty. So when we give her our imaginary things, she thinks about the ones she remembers. See what I mean?"

"Well, almost."

"No, what
I'm
worried about,” Harriet went on, “is if she asks us to learn things and recite. Because if we haven't got the books to learn them from—like this wretched Crosby—we're stumped. Have you ever heard of Crosby?"

"No, we use Kennedy in our class."

"So do we. Well, maybe we could ask to write them down from memory instead of reciting them. It'll be all right, of course, if she asks us to learn something like
The Ancient Mariner.
"

"I dunno,” said Mark, “all this sounds a bit too much like work to me."

"It is a bit. Still, not too many people have learned Latin prepositions from a ghost. That's something."

"I tell you,” said Mark. “The attic."

"What about it?"

"There are hundreds of old boxes there with things in them that belong to the house. I was up there one day looking for secret passages. Maybe if we looked in them we'd find some old lesson books that belonged to the people who were here before."

"That's an idea. We might find something about Miss Allison too—a diary or something. Let's go now."

"Anyway,” Harriet pointed out as they walked back to the house, “if it does get too much of a good thing, we can always just stay in bed and not go to her."

"All right for you,” said Mark, “but I expect she's in my room all the time. She'll probably just haul me out of bed at ten o'clock."

The lunch bell rang as they came up the garden, so they had to put off their search in the attic.

It was a dark, cool room, lit only by green glass tiles in the roof. Harriet sat for a while pensively on a box while Mark rummaged about, turning out with everything little piles of thickish yellow powder smelling of pine needles.

"That's for the moths,” she said. Then she began folding the things and putting them back as he went on. They were mostly clothes folded in tissue paper, and old rush baskets pressed flat, large women's hats with draggled bunches of feathers, and pairs of kid gloves.

"People wore things like these in the 1914 war,” said Harriet. “Look, here's a newspaper. January, 1914. This is too modern."

"Half a sec,” said Mark, “over here they seem to be older.” He pulled out an enormous flounced ball-dress of fawn-colored satin; some shawls; a pair of satin slippers; a little woven basket with a lid, containing brightly colored glass bracelets and necklaces of glass beads; a large flat box full of fans—ivory, with pink flowers, satinwood, and wonderful plumy feathers.

"I wish there were some letters or books or something,” Mark murmured discontentedly. Harriet was exclaiming to herself over the fans before laying them back in the box.

"This one's very heavy,” said Mark, tugging at a chest. The lid came up unwillingly. Underneath was a gorgeous Chinese hanging of silk, folded square. He lifted it out.

"Aha!” A heavy, old-fashioned Bible lay on the tissue paper.

"Harriet, look here!"

Harriet came across and read over her brother's shoulder the inscription in a beautiful copperplate handwriting: “to my dear daughter Georgiana Lucy Allison from her affectionate Mother, Christmas 1831."

"Well!” they breathed at each other. Mark flipped through the leaves, but there was nothing else, except for a faded pansy.

"Let's see what else there is in the box."

Underneath the tissue paper were more books.

"Lesson books,” said Harriet ecstatically. “
Primer of Geography.
Mason's
Manual of Arithmetic
. Look! Here's Crosby's
Latin Grammar Made Easy.
"

Besides the lesson books there were children's books—
Improving Tales for the Young, Tales for Little Folks, Good Deeds in a Bad World, Tales from the Gospel,
and a number of others, all improving. Several of them also had Miss Allison's name in them. Others had children's names—"John, from his affec. Governess,” “Lucy, from Mamma,” and in a large stumbling script, “Lucy, from Isabel."

"We'd better take down all the lesson books,” said Harriet. “They can live on the bookshelf in your room—there's plenty of empty space."

They had a further search in the other boxes, but found nothing else interesting except some children's clothes—sailor suits, dresses, and pantalets, which Harriet would have liked to try on. “But they look so fragile,” she said with a sigh, “I'd probably tear them.” So everything was replaced and they went downstairs, each with an armful of books.

Later that evening, Harriet's mother found her sprawled on the drawing-room sofa looking at a book and then shutting it and muttering to herself.

"You look as if you were learning poetry,” said Mrs. Armitage, glancing over her shoulder. “What,
Latin!
Good heavens, I have got diligent children. Incidentally I wish you'd find another tune to practice on the piano. I find myself singing that
'Lieber Augustin'
all day long."

That night, when Harriet went along to Mark's room at about midnight, she found him already at work reciting the principal parts of Latin verbs.

"Mark knows his list of words very well, Harriet. I trust that you will also be able to earn your caraway biscuit,” remarked Miss Allison, and then, while Harriet lay on her imaginary back-board, the governess read them a long, boring chapter about the War of the Roses.

"I generally start my pupils at the
beginning
of history, with William the Conqueror,” explained Miss Allison, “but your dear mother expressed a wish for you to study this period particularly."

Afterwards Harriet recited her Latin and also earned a caraway biscuit. Then Harriet and Mark showed Miss Allison their invisible essays on Duty, and Harriet's point was proved. Miss Allison obviously saw them, even if the children didn't, and peevishly pointed out several spelling mistakes.

"Mark, you will write out the word ‘ceiling’ fifty times,” she said. “That will be all for this morning, dears. Harriet, will you ask Anne to run up with a duster, and I will dust my room myself. And tell her that she forgot to sweep under the bed yesterday, though I reminded her particularly."

"Mother,” said Mark one morning. “Can I change my bedroom? I'd much rather sleep in the room next to Harriet."

"Well, if you do,” said his mother, looking at him acutely, “you must promise not to be popping in and out of each other's rooms all night. I thought I heard something last night.” But they gazed at her so innocently that she agreed and said they could change the things over themselves.

"Just as well,” said Mark, when they were carrying sheets along the passage. “Do you know she hauled me out of bed last night and asked me what I thought I was doing sleeping on the schoolroom sofa?"

"She
is
queer,” Harriet remarked thoughtfully. “I sometimes wonder if she really
sees
us at all. She obviously doesn't see the same furniture we do, because sometimes she uses tables and chairs that aren't there, and when she talks about our parents, she doesn't mean Mother and Father, because they never said anything to her about the War of the Roses."

"And there's all this business about Anne and Cook, too. I suppose she sort of sees them all around. Poor old thing,” said Mark, tucking in a lump of blanket, “I'm getting quite fond of her."

"You know, I'm sure she has something on her mind,” added Harriet. “She looks so worried at times, as if she was trying to remember things."

It soon appeared that the children had something on their minds, too.

"You both of you look dreadfully tired nowadays,” remarked Mrs. Armitage. “You aren't sickening for measles, are you? And don't you think you're overdoing this holiday work a bit? Surely you don't need to do all that Latin and History. The other afternoon when you were asleep on the lawn, Mark, I heard you muttering the dates of the kings of England in your sleep. Take a bit of rest from it. By the way, there's an Admiral Lecacheur coming to tea this afternoon—he lives in that little house on the river you've taken such a fancy to. If you want to get invited to have a look round it, you'd better put in an appearance."

"Lecacheur?” said Mark vaguely. “I seem to know the name."

"Yes, it's the family who lived here before. He's the owner of this house, actually, but he's mostly away, so he prefers to let it and live in the cottage."

Lecacheur! Of course it was the name written in the lesson books! Mark and Harriet exchanged a swift, excited look.

"Is he an old man?” asked Mark carelessly.

"About sixty, I believe. Now I must fly. I've masses to do. Be good, children."

"If he's about sixty,” said Harriet, when they were alone, “he must have been born in 1885. I
wish
we knew when Miss Allison died."

"Well, we know she was alive in 1831 because of that Bible. I wonder how old she was when she was given that?"

"Say she was about ten,” said Harriet, counting on her fingers, “that makes her sixty-five when the admiral was born. Well, that's quite possible. She looks more than that. He may easily have known her. We'll have to draw him out, somehow."