Spring in a Shropshire Abbey. Gaskell Catherine Henrietta Milnes

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СКАЧАТЬ saw that the instinct of an animal of prey was strong within her.

      For Smokey paced up and down my room; her eyes shone like topazes in the sunlight, and as she walked, she lashed her tail like a lioness at the Zoo.

      “She’d kill poor Bill if she could get him,” I said.

      “Yes,” answered Bess, “and eat him up, without pepper and salt. Cats are never really kind, not right through, for all their purring.”

      Then Bess asked me what I meant to do, now that I was well again. “Papa,” she said, “told me that I might go sledging some day; but this morning you must take me and show me where St. Milburgha was buried, and tell me also about the old monks. Do you know, mama, I often think of the monks in bed. Last night – I don’t remember all, but there was something that happened with a man in a black gown, and Hals did something as a swan – I rather disremember,” continued my little maid, with naïveté, “for I fell asleep before I could rightly recollect. But Burbidge perhaps will tell me; he knows a lot about monks. It is fine, as Nana says, to be such a scholard.”

      “Ah! now I remember,” said Bess, after a pause. “Burbidge declares that they walled up Christians, the monks, and drank out of golden cups, and hunted the deer.”

      I was amused at Burbidge’s views – they were obviously those of the very primitive Protestant.

      “Come into the garden this morning, child, and I will tell you a little about the monks.”

      A few hours later I called “Bess!” from the gravel below. “Are you ready?” Then I heard a buzz of excited voices from the nursery, and a great fight, going on over the winding round of a comforter, and Bess leapt down two stairs at a time and joined me in the garden.

A WALK IN THE CLOISTERS

      I had my snowshoes on, so I had no sense of cold, and round my shoulders heavy furs. Mouse sported before us rather like a benevolent luggage train, whilst the two terriers, Tramp and Tartar, cut capers, barked, and sniffed and frisked. These hunted in the bushes, darted in and out, and sought for rabbits under every stone and tree. They yelped and put their noses frantically into holes and corners. Whether the rabbits were real or imaginary it was impossible to say.

      Bright sunshine fell upon the old red sandstone of which the later part of the old Abbey Farmery is built, and cast an opalescent glare on the snow-covered roof. The old yew hedges stood forth like banks of verdant statuary, in places where the snow had melted, and on the top of a stone ball stood the blue-necked peacock.

      The day was deliciously crisp, clear, and invigorating, and Bess, as she ran along, laughed and snowballed me and the dogs, and so we wandered away into the cloisters.

      “Tell me about it all,” said Bess at last, confidentially, after a time of breathless frolicking with the dogs. “Miss Weldon talks so much that I can never understand her.”

      Then I told Bess in a few simple words about the cloisters. “There was, first of all, dear,” I said, “a party of Saxon ladies who lived at the abbey, and the most beautiful was Milburgha, their abbess. She came here to avoid a wicked Welsh prince, and she rode a beautiful milk-white steed. And she was very holy.”

      “I should be holy, if I rode a milk-white steed,” said Bess, impulsively, “I am sure I should.”

      And then I added rather irrelevantly, “St. Milburgha kept geese.”

      “Saints and princesses always do,” answered Bess, authoritatively. “I know what they did, they combed their hair with golden combs, and talked to emperors in back gardens. Then they always had flocks of goats or geese. I don’t think they could get on without that, mama,” said my little maid, with a gasp. “It must be very amusing,” she continued, “to be a saint or a princess and have a crown. They have them in Bible picture-books. Anyway, they never have any lessons or governesses, hardly mamas, and they only talk to the animals.”

      “But, my little girl,” I urged, “saints have to be very good; and then you must remember, Bess, that princesses in all the stories have to accomplish terrible tasks, and saints to endure terrible pains.”

      “Worse,” asked Bess, “than taking horrible, nasty, filthy medicines, worse than going to have teeth taken out by the dentist?”

      “Worse than that,” I answered.

THE CROWN OF MARTYRDOM

      “Then I think I’ll wait a little,” replied Bess, with composure, “before I change; for I should not like a crown after losing my teeth, or worse, or even jam-rolly, if I had to take tumblers of horrid physic first. And I have heard Burbidge say that, ‘them as wins a crown must walk on hot ploughshares first.’ Still,” she added, “I should sometimes like to be good.”

      “How about doing disagreeable things, Bess? For I fear, at first, that is what has to be done.”

      “Well, mama,” answered Bess, “not too good; not good enough to die, but just good enough to get a little more money for good marks than I have ever got before.”

      And I saw by Bess’s saucy smile that the day was a long, long way off when she would ever be what she calls very, very good, i. e.—

      Never dirty her hands;

      Never ruffle her hair; and

      Never answer back those in authority.

      For a moment we ceased talking, and looked at the old carved stone basin in which the successors of Roger de Montgomery’s Clugniac monks bathed in the twelfth century. On the broken shaft which supported the basin are three carved panels; one represents the miraculous draught of fishes and the other two St. Paul and St. Peter.

      Bess shook her head and repeated sadly, “Of course I should like to be a saint, but there must not be too much pain. It isn’t fair of God to want too much.”

      Then we wandered round to the east side of the old house, and I looked up and pointed out to Bess the old stone gargoyles. And Bess looked too.

      “Those,” she said, “are Christian devils. Nana says we never could get on here without a Devil, and the monks had theirs too.”

      There are many times in life, I find, when it is wiser not to answer a child, and this was just one. Strong light often dazzles, and, after all, are we not all children groping in the dark?

      We peeped into the kitchen from outside, and saw the coppers glimmering like red gold on the shelves of the old oak dresser. Auguste, the cook, was chopping some meat, and the blows he gave resounded merrily through the crisp frosty air. I called through the mullion window and asked if the little soiled suit of yesterday was dry, as Fred the groom was to ride over to Hawkmoor and take it there in the afternoon.

      “Oui, madame la comtesse,” cried Auguste, for by that title he always addressed me; not that I have a title, but that Auguste thinks it kind and polite so to address me. Besides, he has a confused belief that every English woman has a title of some kind, and that its exact nature is immaterial. As he spoke he opened the little oak door that communicates with the garden and exclaimed joyously —

AUGUSTE’S SECRET

      “Voyez, madame, le jeune comte will still be a joli garçon in it. See, he will still rejoice the heart of his father and mother in grenat foncé.” So saying good-natured Auguste passed into the garden displaying in his arms the red suit. A miracle seemed to have been performed. There it was, spotless and dry, and as good as it was when made by Messrs. Tags and Buttons of New Bond Street. Auguste laughed and talked excitedly, gesticulated СКАЧАТЬ