A Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl (18 page)

Miss Todd received Diana quite amiably, but insisted upon her having a carbolic bath, and herself washed her hair with strong disinfectant soap. The clothes she had worn disappeared mysteriously for some days, and were then returned from the stoving department of the Glenbury Sanitation Office. Diana made no comments at head-quarters, but laughed to herself.

"I'm sure Toddlekins believes I've had measles," she confided to Wendy.

"Of course she does. She said she hadn't the least doubt about it, and that you hadn't eaten anything which could have caused you to have nettle-rash."

"What would she say if she knew about the sausages?" queried Diana.

Spooks

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 grass, 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 mediæval atmosphere, she began to tell the girls such vivid stories of the doings of the brethren that they almost believed her. She invented several fictitious characters: Brother Amos, Brother Lawrence, Brother John, and Prior Andrew, and gave a most circumstantial 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 superstitious 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 passage 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 gods of Greece because you were learning classical 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.

[Illustration: 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 passage 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 passage, 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.

"Has it crept through the keyhole?" quavered Peggy.

"Or just vanished into thin air?" speculated Magsie.

"The door's really locked!" declared Vi, rattling the handle again to make sure.

"We certainly
saw
it go up, but it's not here now!"

"Flesh and blood can't disappear in a second!"

"It's most uncanny!"

"The old Cistercians wore white habits."

"I say, I don't like this!"

Brother Lawrence, as the girls began to call the apparition, showed himself frequently, but always with the same elusiveness. The phenomenon was invariably as before: his white monastic robes would glimmer through the darkness, glide up the stairway, and then seemingly melt into nothing. Geraldine herself pursuing hotly on the scent, found that she was utterly baffled.

A head girl, especially a prefect with a scorn for superstition, does not like to admit herself baffled. Geraldine thought the matter over, took Loveday into her confidence, and went to Miss Todd. As the result of her interview she resolved to set what she called "a very neat little spook-trap". She and Loveday said nothing about it to the rest of the school. They merely bided their time.

Brother Lawrence did not always show up when anybody was on the watch for him; he seemed to prefer displaying his supernatural powers to the unwary. For two whole days he did not put in an appearance; whether he was haunting elsewhere or expiating his sins in purgatory was a point for discussion. On the third evening, however, Tattie, Jess, and Magsie had screwed their courage to sticking-point, and strolled upstairs in the twilight, half hoping and half fearing to catch a glimpse of the now almost familiar apparition. They kept in the shadow of the big cupboard, and held each others' hands without speaking. A full moon was shining through the landing window, and lit up the narrow staircase with a silvery, ghostly gleam. Suddenly from the darkness of a doorway emerged the white robes, and passed rapidly upwards in the moonlight. Still clutching hands for moral support, the three girls tore after it. Surely this time they could manage to overtake it? But no; it had turned the corner before they reached the lowest stair, and by the time they had dashed up the ten steps it had made its usual disappearance. They halted on the yard of landing, breathing hard; then their hearts seemed to turn somersaults, for the attic door suddenly opened. It was no ghost who peered forth at them, but Geraldine and Loveday. The former had a candle in her hand; she struck a match and lighted it calmly.

"You needn't look so scared!" she said to the panting trio. "I'm just going to show you your precious spook. Stand back a little, will you? I assure you it won't bite you!"

She descended to the landing, turned round towards the four steps that led to the attic door, then, to the immense amazement of the girls, raised up the steps like the lid of a chest. There was a good-sized cavity below, and in this place of concealment crouched a white-clad figure. Geraldine took it by the arm and hauled it unceremoniously forth. It issued chuckling, and, as its cowl fell back, disclosed a well-known and decidedly mirthful countenance.

"Stars and Stripes!" ejaculated Jess.

"The game's up!" proclaimed Diana coolly. "You two"--nodding at the seniors--"have been too many for me."

"I always thought you were at the bottom of all this, Diana Hewlitt!" said Geraldine. "I was quite determined I'd catch you. Take those things off at once. What are they? Sheets? Fold them up properly; don't trail them on the floor. Do you know that if anybody in the school had had a weak heart you might have killed her by playing such a trick?"