The Palace in the Garden Part 4

Mrs. Munt grew a little uneasy.

"You must have heard of your uncle, the Colonel, who was killed in India," she said. "And there was Miss Mary, who died when she was only fifteen. You must have seen her grave at Ansdell Friars."

I shook my head.

"No, I don't think so. But I do remember the tablet in the church to Colonel Baldwin Ansdell. I often wondered who he was. You remember it, Tib? But hadn't grandpapa any other sisters? You said young _ladies_, Mrs. Munt."

I had forgotten all my shyness now in curiosity. But it was not fated to be satisfied just then. Nurse suddenly interrupted.

"Miss Gussie, dear, you must wait a while to hear all these things from Mrs. Munt. The tea's all ready, and I'm sure you're all hungry. Just run up stairs with Miss Tib to take off your hats, there's a dear. Will you show us the rooms, Mrs. Munt, please?"

So we were all trotted off again--up stairs this time, though it scarcely seemed like going up stairs at all, so broad and shallow were the steps compared with the high-up flights in our London house. And Tib and I were so pleased with the room which Mrs. Munt told us was to be ours, that we should have forgotten all about the talk down stairs if she hadn't made another remark, which put my unanswered question into my head again.

"Yes, it is a nice room," she said, looking round with pleasure at the light-painted furniture and the two white beds side by side, the old-fas.h.i.+oned cupboards in the wall, two of them with gla.s.s doors, letting us see a few queer old china cups and teapots inside; "_and_ so little changed, even to its name. We've always called it the young ladies' room."

There it was again--the young _ladies_; but nurse was listening and evidently fussing to get us down to tea. I must trust to cross-questioning Mrs. Munt some other time.

And the tea was really enough to take up all our attention. There was everything of country things--fresh eggs, and b.u.t.ter and milk of the best, and bread, and tea-cakes, and strawberry jam, and potted fish--all "home-made," of course. I think Mrs. Munt and nurse were really a little frightened to see how much we ate.

After tea we wanted, of course, to go out, but Liddy decided that it was too damp, and Mrs. Munt consoled us by giving us leave to go all over the house, for it was barely six o'clock and quite light. She took us into the front hall and showed us the dining-room, out of which opened the study, and beyond that again, what had been the school-room, and was now grandpapa's bed-room. There was nothing _very_ interesting in these rooms, though they were all quaint and old-fas.h.i.+oned; and through all the house there was the sort of clean, fresh, and yet _not new_ feeling--a mixture of faint old scents that cannot be got away, and wood-fires long ago burnt out, and yet the sweet, pure country air preventing their being musty or stale--that you never notice except in an old country house that has been carefully kept, and yet not really lived in for many years.

And then Mrs. Munt, taking us through the hall again, showed us the door of the drawing-room, and told us we might look at it by ourselves, which we were pleased at.

It was _much_ more interesting, for, though a small room, it was filled with pictures and curiosities. The pictures were mostly miniatures--such queer things some of them were; gentlemen in uniform and the funniest fancy dresses, some with wigs down to their waists, some of them with helmets to make them like Roman soldiers. And ladies to match--some looking dreadfully proud, with towers of hair on the top of their heads, and some simpering in a silly way. One of these last was really rather like Tib when she smiles in what I call her "company"

manner--though it's hardly fair to say that now, as she has really left it off--and she was very angry at my saying so, and told me that the most stuck-up-looking one of all was very like _me_; "and it's better to look silly than to be so horribly proud," she added. We were really rather near quarrelling, which would have been a bad beginning for our life at Rosebuds, when we caught sight of an old cabinet in one corner, of which the top half stood open, showing rows and rows of little drawers, and here and there queer shaped doors opening into inside places, where there were more drawers and shelves. It was a j.a.panese cabinet, of course--a very old and valuable one. I have never seen one so large and curious, and it quite absorbed our attention till nurse came tapping at the door--I don't know why she tapped; I suppose she had an idea that, as we were in the drawing-room, she must--to tell us it was time, and more than time, to go to bed.

And though I wanted to talk to Tib in bed about the queerness of there having been young _ladies_ long ago in this very room, and that Mrs.

Munt evidently didn't want to tell us about them, I was so sleepy, and so was Tib, that our conversation got no further than, "Tib, don't you think----" and a very indistinct murmur of "Yes, Gussie, of course I do," before we were both fast asleep and----

CHAPTER IV.

THE DOOR IN THE GARDEN WALL.

"Deep in a garden, rank and green, It were scarce older now than then, For all the seasons gone between."

C. C. FRASER TYTLER.

The next thing we knew it was to-morrow morning--our first morning at Rosebuds!

I have told already about this first morning--how beautiful it was to wake to all the fresh sweet country sounds and feelings. I have felt this several times since then in my life, but never quite so newly and strongly as that morning, and every time since then that I have felt it, that day has come back to my mind.

It was very fine and bright, and immediately after breakfast we got leave to go out into the garden.

"Not outside, of course," said nurse, anxiously. "When you want to go a walk I will go with you--I or f.a.n.n.y. Mrs. Munt will tell us all the nicest walks."

"We shall never want to go walks here, I am sure," said Tib. "The garden is much nicer, and we can find lots of things to amuse us in it. Besides, nursey, you know you don't care about walks with your rheumatics, and f.a.n.n.y is sure to say she hasn't time, as she has to be housemaid too here."

"It's much best to let us play in the garden always," I said. "I'm sure grandpapa would like it best."

"Any way, till the new Miss Evans comes," said Gerald.

But Tib and I turned on him.

"Oh, you horrid little boy!" we said; "what is the use of spoiling our nice first day by speaking of anything so dreadful?"

"I don't believe there ever could be anybody at all like Miss Evans--that's one comfort, any way," I added. But Gerald looked rather grumpy: he couldn't bear being called a "little boy"--he wouldn't have minded being called "horrid" if we hadn't put in the "little."

All grumpiness, however, was forgotten when we found ourselves out of doors, and free to do as we chose. This first day, of course, the great thing to do was to explore, and that we did pretty thoroughly. The lawn in front was a beautiful place for running races on, or for "Miller's ground," or games like that--and the walk all round it was interesting because Mrs. Munt told us that twelve times round it, made a mile.

"We might have walking matches," said Tib, consideringly. "It wouldn't be very amusing; but still, if we got tired of everything else, it would be worth remembering;" and then we proceeded to inspect the rest of our domain.

_The_ place of places was the tangle, or shrubbery, as Mrs. Munt had called it, away down at the back. It was quite a large place, and you could not distinguish easily where it ended, for the wall which edged it was so old, and so covered with ivy and other creepers run wild, that till you actually felt it you couldn't have told it was there. Here and there in the tangle there were little clearings, as it were, carefully enough kept--indeed, the gardeners did clear out the tangle itself once or twice a year, only it was meant to be wild--where you were sure to find a bench, or a rustic seat, and in one place there was even a summer-house, though a rather unhappy looking one.

"I don't suppose," said Tib, when we came upon this arbour, "I don't suppose any one's been here since those children--grandpapa and the brothers and sisters who are dead, or that we can't hear about--played here, ever, ever so long ago. Papa hadn't any brothers or sisters, and he wasn't much here--nurse knows that much. It looks like as if it had never been touched since then--doesn't it? _Isn't_ it queer to think of?" and Tib sat down on one of the shady seats, still feebly holding together, and looked very serious. "Isn't it queer?" she repeated.

"It would be a nice place for a robber's castle," said Gerald, who had mounted up beside Tib, and was peeping out at a little slit in the side which had been meant to let light in by, in the days when the summer-house had a door that would shut. "See here, this hole would just do for an archer to shoot through when he saw the--the others you know,"

he went on, getting rather muddled, "marching up the hill--we could fancy it was a hill."

"Nonsense, Gerald!" I said. "You're mixing up robbers' dens and feudal castles. You're too little to plan plays. All you can do is to be what Tib and I fix for you in our plans."

Gerald was very indignant. He muttered something about "just like girls," but he dared not say it loud out; we kept him in far too good order for that. Tib and I went on talking without noticing him, and he sat down in a corner, and amused himself by poking about among the dry fir needles that lay like a sort of sand on the floor, for the arbour was made of fir branches and cones. I remembered afterwards hearing him give a sort of little squeak, and say, "Hi! I declare!" or something like that, but at the time I paid no attention, and he stayed quite quiet in his corner.

His words, though I snubbed him so, had reminded Tib of her plans, and we went on talking about them for some time. She was all for a regular romance--there was to be a beautiful lady shut up by a cruel baron, who wanted to get all her money by forcing her to marry his hump-backed son (I am afraid that among the old children's books, one or two not quite children's books had got in; I remember one, called "The Imprisoned Heiress," which we read a chapter or two of, and then it got stupid), and she was to escape by "scaling the fortress wall," which meant, we had a hazy idea, stripping it down stone by stone, as if it were a fish with scales. We decided that the summer-house would do very well for the lonely tower, and we sallied forth at last, all three of us, to inspect the wall and choose a good place for the imaginary escape. But time had fled faster than we fancied; we had only gone a few steps, when we heard f.a.n.n.y's voice in the distance.

"Miss Tib, Miss Gussie, Master Gerald! Master Gerald, Miss Gussie, Miss Tib! oh, dear, dear, wherever can they be? Your dinner's ready--din--ner! din--ner!" she went on at last, as if she thought the word "dinner" would be the best bait to catch us by.

We were rather hungry again already. We all set up a shout, and set off in a scamper to where f.a.n.n.y stood, the image of despair, at the beginning of the tangle, which she dared not enter in her thin London slippers, as the moss-grown paths looked damp and dirty.

That afternoon, to our vexation, was showery--it was not so hopelessly rainy as to prevent our going out at all, but nurse told us we must stay in the front, on the short-cropped lawn and the dry gravel paths.

So it was not till the next day that we returned to the old summer-house and the tangle. We had, in the meantime, talked over the plan of the play, and got it more into shape. You will see that it had nothing to do with the "mystery," as Tib and I still called it to ourselves. We had decided to wait a little before playing at _it_. I did not care for Gerald to hear about it, for fear he should chatter to nurse, and I also wanted to see if there really was anything else to find out. There was no knowing but what in time Mrs. Munt would tell us more about the family history, and though Tib was rather reluctant to give up making a story of it, I persuaded her that so far we really knew too little.

We began cleaning out the summer-house, for I wanted to make it habitable for the unfortunate heroine.

"You see," said I, "it would be more natural for the cruel baron to persuade her that he was bringing her here for safety, as he had heard his castle was going to be attacked by some enemy; so he makes it pretty comfortable for her. And then, when she's been living here alone for some time, and she must be finding it very dull, he sends the horrid little hump-back, who pretends to be against his father, and tells her she is going to be kept there unless she'll marry him, and that he is dreadfully sorry for her, and----"

"I don't see why he need pretend to be against his father," said Tib; "he might just say straight off that she must marry him or else she'll never get out. But I think it would be much better to fancy it was a horrid dungeon. Gerald, I don't think you need trouble to rake up the cones and leaves into a bed for her. I don't see any sense in pretending it's comfortable."

"I do--and it makes it much more of a play," I said. "Any way, we might make it that way at first, and have her thrown into the dungeon afterwards, and escape from there."

Tib did not object to this. But the word "escape" reminded her of the wall. She proposed that we should examine it, and find the best place.

We had to scramble in among the bushes before we got to the wall. And it proved to be a much higher one than we expected.

"The play will have to be all pretence," said Tib; "we couldn't possibly get over this, or pull any stones away. It is far too strong."