Strangers at the Abbey

by Elsie J. Oxenham

  Rykie rode alongside her. “I suppose you’ll rush in and tell Joan all about it?”

  “Then you do know you didn’t play the game! Oh, Joan will find out! She won’t need to be told. And she won’t like it. I wish the girls didn’t know you’re her cousin!”

  “What rot! How you do go on!” Rykie cried.

  Jen said nothing, and they rode in silence, Jen unhappy, Rykie scornful.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE COMPLETE STRANGER

  “What has happened? Has something gone wrong at school?” Joan demanded, as she gave the younger girls their much-needed tea.

  Jen shook her head and was silent.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Rykie said defiantly. “I got on all right. The girls in my form are quite decent and they seemed to like me. I rather think the Dramatic people liked me too.”

  “Well, I don’t!” Jen burst out, her tone shocked.

  Joan looked at her and then at Rykie. “Something did happen. Jen is upset and you are angry. What was it? And why is Jen so sure the girls didn’t like you?”

  “She has such odd ideas. She’s making a frightful fuss about nothing.”

  “You may as well own up.” Joy raised her eyes from a sheet of music paper. She wandered to the piano in the next room, tried a note or two, and came back to scribble a bar. “Yes, that’s better. What’s the matter with you two? Speak up, Rykie! Get it over! Joan will have it out of you sooner or later. What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing!” Rykie retorted. “I showed those girls that I could speak blank verse, that’s all.”

  “In fact, you swanked.” Joy looked at her keenly. “Jen wouldn’t like that, of course.”

  “What happened, Rykie?” Joan asked sternly.

  “Oh, well, if you’re going to put on that school-mistressy voice!” Rykie wilted before Joan’s look. “I didn’t do anything. You can tell her”—to Jen. “I know you’re aching to do it. Tell them the whole thing; then they’ll see for themselves what a silly fuss you’re making.”

  Jen took a long drink of tea and set down her cup with a bang. “Muriel asked her to read or say something to the Dramatic girls after school, so that they could hear what her voice is like. She stalked in and began to spout Jaques’s first big speech—Jaques, you know! With Aileen Carter sitting there next to Muriel!”

  “ ‘A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ th’ forest’—that one?” Joy quoted. “It’s a fine speech, but it wasn’t exactly a tactful one to choose.”

  “Rykie, how unkind!” Joan exclaimed. “And how very foolish! Couldn’t you see how the girls would feel?”

  “Crazy,” Joy added. “And then you say they liked you!”

  “They didn’t,” Jen said.

  Rykie looked from one to another, bright-eyed and indignant. “I knew none of you would understand! The play’s the thing. I could play Jaques; I had to show those girls. Now it’s up to them. If they think I’m better than the other person they’ll have to give the part to me.”

  “And jolly comfortable you’ll feel, with Rosalind and Audrey loathing you, and probably all the rest too,” Jen said bitterly.

  “Were Nesta and Beatrice there?” Joan asked, looking troubled.

  “Of course they were there! They looked as black as thunder.”

  “Did they understand that Rykie knew Jaques had been chosen?” Joy looked up from her work.

  “Yes. They knew I’d told her.”

  Joy whistled and returned to her notes. “I wish you people would fight this out somewhere else! How can I make up a dance with you all yattering away?”

  “You shouldn’t work in the dining-room,” Jen retorted. “Go and sit in silence beside the piano!”

  “Oh, but I wanted to hear about school.”

  “And do you like it, now that you’ve heard?” Rykie demanded.

  “Not one bit. I think you’re an awful ass,” Joy told her cheerfully.

  “I thought you might understand,” Rykie complained. “I knew Joan wouldn’t.”

  “Is that meant for a compliment? I’m more inclined to look on it as an insult,” Joy informed her. “Why should I approve of sneaky behaviour?”

  “There was nothing sneaky about it!” Rykie cried.

  “Oh, yes, there was! You tried to steal the part from Aileen. I don’t know her, and I don’t like her family, but I hope she’ll stick to the part and fight you for it. And I hope she’ll win.”

  “She can’t, if the rest give the part to me.”

  “Do you think they will?” Joan looked at Jen.

  “I’ve no idea what they’ll do. It’s horrible for them. They looked awfully worried.”

  “Don’t blame them. It’s a nasty problem,” and Joy bent over her work again.

  “Rykie, didn’t you see what an awkward position you were putting those girls in?” Joan asked gravely.

  Rykie shrugged her shoulders. “That’s up to them. If I gave them the chance of a better Jaques than they’d got, they ought to love me for it, if they care about the play. I don’t say I did; that’s for them to decide.”

  “But you think you did,” Joy said, without looking up. “In fact, you’re sure of it. For sheer cheek you beat anyone I’ve ever met. There’s no end to your good opinion of yourself.”

  “You’re all of you wrong.” Rykie went back to her argument. “I’m right, you know. It’s the play that matters, and the school. I may not be better than this Aileen girl, but if I am they’ll have to use me.”

  “That’s sound enough,” Joan said quietly. “We’re not objecting to that. What upsets us is the way you’ve tried to take the part from Aileen. If you had given the girls any other speech—you must know plenty—and if they had been impressed and had asked if you knew any of Jaques’s words, then it would have been all right. We might have felt sorry that you should cut out Aileen Carter, but that would have been just bad luck for her. But you didn’t wait to be asked. You started on Jaques—and you knew they had a Jaques already. It was a mean trick, and very unkind, and it has created a difficult position for a whole crowd of girls. I’m more sorry about it than I can say. And I can’t pretend I’m proud that the school knows you’re my cousin.”

  “Oh, rot!” Rykie said, but she had grown crimson and looked uncomfortable.

  “I suppose you have prep? You’d better get on with it,” Joan said coldly. “What the Dramatic will do I can’t imagine; I’m sorry for them. But you’ve done your share and now we must wait and see.”

  “That other girl ought to resign the part,” Rykie muttered. “She can’t stick to it if the rest want to have me.”

  “She won’t.” Joy spoke without looking up. “Isn’t her name Carter? That family never gives up anything. She’ll stick to it through thick and thin and fight you for it. And I hope you’ll have a happy time.”

  “Aileen may not be like that, Joy,” Joan remonstrated. “She’s only Carry’s cousin. She may be quite different.”

  “What’s she like, Jen?” Joy asked.

  “I can’t tell you. She’s in the Sixth; I’ve never had anything to do with her. She looks much more like Jaques than Rykie would do.”

  Rykie laughed. “One can make up to look like anybody.”

  “You know all about that, of course,” Jen said, with deep meaning.

  “You’ve created a difficult problem for Aileen,” Joan said. “I’m sorry for her.”

  “And for Muriel,” Joy added. “I’m sorry for Queen Speedwell.”

  “She looked frightfully worried when we came away,” Jen said, picking up the case she had dropped. “Well, I’ve work to do. I’ll go and get on with it.”

  Joan went out to her mother, who was sitting in a sheltered corner in the garden, to give her a very gentle account of this new trouble, and Joy went to the piano to try over her dance. Rykie, left alone, followed Joy. “I haven’t a lot to do. Play it to me, Joy! Is it pretty?”

  “No,” said Joy. “I mean, I won’t play it to you. Of course it
’s pretty. Go away! I don’t like you.”

  “You’re all hateful!” Rykie burst out.

  “None of us like you,” Joy said ruthlessly. “Go away!”

  And Rykie, unwanted by anybody, went sulkily to do her prep and to do it very badly.

  “Isn’t she awful, Joan?” Jen managed to whisper at bedtime.

  “Don’t worry too much, Jenny-Wren. It’s very awkward, but it will work out somehow.”

  “You’re out of it,” Jen groaned. “I’m right in the middle of it, at school, for everybody knows she comes with me. Beetle says she wishes I hadn’t brought her.”

  “You couldn’t help it. It’s really my fault, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, Joan, no! It’s my fault for telling her about the play. But who could imagine she’d do a thing like this?”

  “She can’t see our point of view, and we can’t see hers. But she has a point of view, and she’s quite sure she’s right.”

  “She’s a complete and absolute stranger to every idea we have!” Jen sighed. “She simply can’t understand how we feel.”

  “ ‘A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ th’ forest,’ ” Joy quoted, when she met Rykie at supper-time. “If I want to meet a fool I’ll know where to find one. I shall come to look for you.”

  “You’ve no right to call me a fool!”

  “I should think you’ll feel like one, if you’re put into a play where everybody loathes you for pushing yourself in,” Joy remarked. “I wouldn’t like it. I should think you’d feel awful.”

  “She won’t. She doesn’t care,” Jen said gloomily. And in a murmured aside to Joan—“It’s the O.P.V. again, isn’t it?”

  Joan laughed in spite of herself. “It is, Jenny-Wren. But be careful! Don’t make things any worse.”

  “Tell Joy to stop saying those lines at her. It only makes her mad.”

  “I’ll warn Joy,” Joan promised. “But it is tempting, Jen!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE DRAMATIC IN A DIFFICULTY

  The Dramatic Society girls were facing a crisis.

  As the door closed behind Jen and Rykie, Muriel spoke. “Before anybody says anything, can anyone tell me this—did that child know the part of Jaques had been given to Aileen Carter?”

  “Yes.” Nesta had no hesitation in replying. “Jen Robins had told her.”

  “Then I don’t feel we want her in the play.”

  “Hear, hear!” said Orlando, a tall, fair girl named Gillian “She tried to pinch the part.”

  “It was a horrible thing to do,” said her friend Jennifer, who was to play Celia.

  “But she did it jolly well.” The opposite point of view came from Shirley, who was to be Touchstone.

  “She’d be a marvellous Jaques, judging from those two speeches,” added Susan, a small girl who was chosen as old Adam.

  Muriel looked at them, her fingers playing nervously with her pencil. “Exactly! There you have it. A good Jaques but a horrid girl.”

  “Loathsome,” said Jennifer.

  “Oh, not as bad as that!” Shirley cried. “She’s ambitious and she wants the part. You can hardly say that’s loathsome!”

  “But it’s Aileen’s part, and the girl knew it!” Gillian protested.

  “Yes,” Muriel said grimly. “We mustn’t forget that. It’s not merely a question of a good Jaques or an unpleasant girl. We’ve already chosen our Jaques.”

  Everyone looked at Aileen Carter. She had made no comment, but had been sitting with bent head listening to the outcry.

  Now she faced the girls bravely. “I should never do the part as this girl would do it.”

  “Oh, but you haven’t learnt the words yet! We can’t possibly tell!” Muriel said quickly.

  “No amount of coaching will make me as good as she’ll be. She’s a born actress; I’m not. I might recite the part nicely, but she’ll live it—she’ll be Jaques. I can’t get outside myself like that. I’d better give it up.”

  “No, rather not! We won’t allow it!” There was an instant chorus, even from those who, a moment before, had been inclined to want Rykie.

  “We’ve chosen you, and we’ll stick to you,” Muriel said warmly.

  “It’s nice of you, but you can’t, if it’s better for the play, and you know it is. The play’s the thing that counts.”

  “And what if the rest of us won’t act with this new child?” Orlando demanded.

  “Gillian, you can’t do that!” Aileen protested.

  “Oh, can’t we? I don’t like the kid. I don’t want to have a lot to do with her. She’ll be always with us, if she’s Jaques.”

  “She’s much younger than any of us and absolutely new to the school,” said Angela, who was playing Phyllis, the shepherdess. “Why shouldn’t she wait a year? I don’t see why she should walk straight into one of the best parts in the play! She doesn’t even belong to the Society yet.”

  “Oh, but she’s going to join right away,” Beetle put in gloomily.

  “I think she should wait,” Nesta said. “By next year we shall know what she can do and all about her. Jen Robins feels awfully sick with her over this.”

  “But what about As You Like It?” Susan insisted. “You can’t say she wouldn’t be a marvellous Jaques! And she’s practically joined us.”

  “She has!” Beetle growled. “Those speeches were dramatic enough for anything.”

  “We want the play to be good,” Angela said, wavering between two points of view.

  Aileen Carter rose. “Please listen, everybody! I’m not giving up the part on the spot. I feel I ought to do it, but I did want most frightfully to be in the play, and they were all so pleased at home when they heard about Jaques. I can’t give it up without telling them. I want time to think it over. May I wait till to-morrow before I decide?”

  “We don’t want you to give it up,” Muriel said quickly.

  “It’s jolly decent of you to think of it,” Nesta cried.

  “We didn’t mean to put you out, Aileen,” Susan began.

  “Then what did you mean?” Aileen turned on her, not unnaturally. “You can’t have two people being Jaques.”

  “I don’t know,” Susan groaned. “We want to stick to you, but——”

  “But you want the best Jaques? You want the play to be as good as possible?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do,” Susan acknowledged.

  “So do I,” Aileen retorted. “If I feel this Rykie child will be better than I’d ever be, what can I do but back out and give her the part?”

  “I’m not convinced that it’s the right solution, Aileen,” Muriel put in. “Rykie—we must find out what that odd name means!”

  “Frederica, after her father, Jen Robins says,” Nesta explained.

  “Oh! Well, Rykie may be a better actress than any of us, but if she’s a nasty sort of girl she won’t be any help to the play. If we’re unhappy because she’s there, the thing can’t possibly go well.”

  “But need we be like that?” Angela said.

  “I don’t know. It’s for all of you to say. If Aileen is really such a brick as to withdraw, for the sake of the play, then the question will be—are the rest of you going to put up with Rykie and take her in and be a jolly crowd all together? For if not, we’d better stick to Aileen. We know she’ll fit in.”

  There was a pause, as the Society considered the position with Rykie in the cast.

  “I don’t much like the idea,” Gillian admitted.

  “It would be heaps jollier with Aileen,” Jennifer agreed.

  Beetle spoke up in a gruff voice. “It’s a big question. We’d better go home and sleep on it. I’ve a ghastly feeling that the kid will not only do her own part so awfully well that she’ll make us all look and sound feeble, but that she’ll always be telling us how to do ours as well.”

  “She may be a born actress, as Aileen says. The trouble is, I’m afraid she knows it,” Nesta sighed.

  “But all that would be jolly good for the play,” Shirley
argued. “People would say it was the best we’d ever done.”

  “It won’t be very pleasant for us,” Gillian retorted.

  “Let’s do a different play! Something she’s never heard of!” Angela suggested.

  “Too late,” Muriel said. “We’ve told everybody. And the Head wants us to do Shakespeare.”

  “I’m quite sure there isn’t anything of his that kid hasn’t heard of!” Beetle muttered.

  “She can’t know them all off by heart.” Angela defended her idea. “If we choose something new, we’ll have to fix the parts all over again and we can leave her out.”

  “We’ve done that already. We’ve decided on our parts. The trouble is that she has pushed in, and she’d do it again,” Muriel said. “Aileen and Beatrice are right; we need time to think it over. We’ll leave it till to-morrow, and longer, if we must. But remember, everybody! If Aileen decides to withdraw, then the rest of us have to decide to welcome Rykie properly—not merely to put up with her for the sake of the play. She’s very keen to join us; we must be keen to have her, or we shall get nowhere.”

  “No, Muriel, I do protest!” Gillian exclaimed. “She’s only keen to join us for her own sake, so that she can be in the play. She doesn’t care about us or the Society; she doesn’t really care about the play, or the school, whatever she says. She only cares about herself and her part, and about making a great success of it.”

  There was a pause. At last Muriel said: “Isn’t that rather unkind, Gillian?”

  “Probably. But I’m sure it’s true.”

  “I know it’s true,” Nesta said. “Jen talked about her. The kid’s full of ideas about the stage and about getting on, and she’s bursting with conceit over her sister in Hollywood.”

  “Hollywood! Is her sister in films?”

  “Going to be. She’s just flown to Hollywood. They sent for her to go.”

  The Dramatic Society looked at one another.

  “We shall have to put the child in,” Jennifer groaned.

  “We’ll never hear the end of it from her crowd, if we don’t,” Aileen said brusquely. “How can I possibly hang on to Jaques, knowing everybody is saying how much better our little actress would have done it? Oh, go home, everybody! Don’t talk any more to-night!” And she took up her books and went off to the cloakroom.