Mistress of Mellyn (2 page)

But they’m built on firm rock. “

” So there are two houses,” I said. ” We have near neighbours.”

” In a manner of speaking. Nansellocks, they who are at Mount Widden, have been there these last two hundred years. They be separated from us by more than a mile, and there’s Mellyn Cove in between. The families have always been good neighbours until ” He stopped and I prompted: ” Until ?”

” You’ll bear fast enough,” he answered.

I thought it was beneath my dignity to probe into such matters so I changed the subject. ” Do you keep many servants?” I asked.

” There be me and Mrs. Tapperty and my girls. Daisy and Kitty. We live in the rooms over the stables. In the house there’s Mrs. Polgrey and Tom Polgrey and young Gilly. Not that you’d call her a servant. But they have her there and she passes for such.”

” Gilly!” I said. ” That’s an unusual name.”

” Gillyflower. Reckon Jennifer Polgrey was a bit daft to give her a name like that. No wonder the child’s what she is.”

” Jennifer? Is that Mrs. Polgrey?”

“Nay! Jennifer was Mrs. Polgrey’s girl. Great dark eyes and the littlest waist you ever saw. Kept herself to herself until one day she goes lying in the hay or maybe the gillyflowers with someone. Then, before we know where we are, little Gilly’s arrived; as for Jennifer her just walked into the sea one morning. We reckoned there wasn’t much doubt who Gilly’s father was.”

I said nothing and, disappointed by my lack of interest, he went on :

” She wasn’t the first. We knowed her wouldn’t be the last. Geoffry Nansellock left a trail of bastards wherever he | went.” He laughed and looked sideways at me. ” No need for 9 you to look so prim. Miss.

He can’t hurt you. Ghosts can’t ‘| hurt a young lady, and that’s all Master Geoffry Nansellock is now . nothing more than a ghost. “

” So he’s dead too. He didn’t … walk into the sea after Jennifer?”

That made Tapperty chuckle. ” Not him. He was killed in a train accident. You must have heard of that accident. It was just as the train was running out of Plymouth. It ran off the lines and over a bank. The slaughter was terrible. Mr. Geoff, he were on that train, and up to no good on it either. But that was the end of him.”

” Well, I shall not meet him, but I shall meet Gillyflower, I suppose.

And is that all the servants? “

” There are odd boys and girls some for the gardens, some for the stables, some in the house. But it ain’t what it was. Things have changed since the mistress died.”

” Mr. TreMellyn is a very sad man, I suppose.”

Tapperty lifted his shoulders.

” How long is it since she died?” I asked.

” It would be little more than a year, I reckon.”

” And he has only just decided that he needs a governess for little Miss Alvean?”

” There have been three governesses so far. You be the fourth. They don’t stay, none of them. Miss Bray and Miss Garrett, they said the place was too quiet for them. There was Miss Jansen a real pretty creature. But she was sent away. She took what didn’t belong to her.

“Twas a pity. We all liked her. She seemed to look on it as a privilege to live in Mount Mellyn. Old houses were her hobby, she used to tell us. Well, it seemed she had other hobbies besides, so out she went.”

I turned my attention to the countryside. It was late August and, as we passed through lanes with banks on either side, I

caught occasional glimpses of fields of corn among which poppies and pimpernels grew; now and then we passed a cottage of grey Cornish stone which looked grim, I thought, and lonely.

I had my first glimpse of the sea through a fold in the hills, and I felt my spirits lifted. It seemed that the nature of the landscape changed. Flowers seemed to grow more plentifully on the banks; I could smell the scent of pine trees; and fuchsias grew by the roadside, their blossoms bigger than any we had ever been able to cultivate in our vicarage garden.

We turned off the road from a steep hill and went down and down nearer the sea. I saw that we were on a cliff road. Before us stretched a scene of breath-taking beauty. The diff rose steep and straight from the sea on that indented coast; grasses and flowers grew there, and I saw sea pinks and red and white valerian mingling with the heather—rich, deep, purple heather.

At length we came to the house. It was like a castle, I thought, standing there on the diff plateau—built of granite like many houses I had seen in these parts, but grand and noble—a house which had stood for several hundred years, and would stand for several hundred more.

” All this land bdongs to the Master,” said Tapperty with pride. ” And if you look across the cove, you’ll see Mount Widden.”

I did look and saw the house. Like Mount Mellyn it was built of grey stone. It was smaller in every way and of a later period. I did not give it much attention because now we were approaching Mount Mellyn, and that was obviously the house which was more interesting to me.

We had climbed to the plateau and a pair of intricately wrought-iron gates confronted us.

” Open up there!” shouted Tapperty.

There was a small lodge beside the gates and at the door sat a woman knitting.

” Now, Gilly girl,” she said, ” you go and open the gates and save me poor legs.”

Then I saw the child who had been sitting at the old woman’s feet. She rose obediently and came to the gate. She was an extraordinary looking girl with long straight hair almost white in colour and wide blue eyes.

” Thanks, Gilly girl,” said Tapperty as Cherry Pie went happily through the gates. ” This be Miss, who’s come to live here and take care of Miss Alvean.”

I looked into a pair of blank blue eyes which stared at me with an expression impossible to fathom. The old woman came up to the gate and Tapperty said: ” This be Mrs. Soady.”

” Good day to you,” said Mrs. Soady. ” I hope you’ll be happy here along of us.” ” Thank you,” I answered, forcing my gaze away from the child to the woman. ” I hope so.”

” Well, I do hope so,” added Mrs. Soady. Then she shook her head as though she feared her hopes were somewhat futile.

I turned to look at the child but she had disappeared. I wondered where she had gone, and the only place I could imagine was behind the bushes of hydrangeas which were bigger than any hydrangeas I had ever seen, and of deep blue, almost the colour of the sea on this day.

” The child didn’t speak,” I observed as we went on up the drive.

” No. Her don’t talk much. Sing, her do. Wander about on her own. But talk … not much.”

The drive was about half a mile in length and on either side of it the hydrangeas bloomed. Fuchsias mingled with them, and I caught glimpses of the sea between the pine trees. Then I saw the house. Before it was a wide lawn and on this two peacocks strutted before a peahen, their almost incredibly lovely tails fanned out behind them. Another sat perched on a stone wall; and there were two palm trees, tall and straight, one on either side of the porch.

The house was larger than I had thought when I had seen it from the cliff path. It was of three stories, but long and built in an L shape.

The sun caught the glass of the mullioned windows and I immediately had the impression that I was being watched.

Tapperty took the gravel approach to the front porch and, when we reached it, the door opened and I saw a woman standing there. She wore

a white cap on her grey hair; she was y tall, with a hooked nose and, as she had an obviously dominating manner, I did not need to be told that she was Mrs. Polgrey.

” I trust you’ve had a good journey. Miss Leigh,” she said.

” Very good, thank you,” I told her.

” And worn out and needing a rest, I’ll be bound. Come along.-in. You shall have a nice cup of tea in my room. Leave your bags. I’ll have them taken up.”

I felt relieved. This woman dispelled the eerie feeling which had begun, I realised, since my encounter with the man in the train. Joe Tapperty had done little to disperse it, with his tales of death and suicide. But Mrs. Polgrey was a woman who would stand no nonsense, I was sure of that. She seemed to emit common sense, and perhaps because I was fatigued by the long journey I was pleased about this.

I thanked her and said I would greatly enjoy the tea, and she led the way into the house.

We were in an enormous hall which in the past must have been used as a banqueting room. The floor was of flagged stone, and the timbered roof was so lofty that I felt it must extend to the top of the house. The beams were beautifully carved and the effect decorative. At one end of the hall was a dais and at the back of this a great open fireplace. On the dais stood a refectory table on which were vessels and plates of pewter.

” It’s magnificent,” I said involuntarily; and Mrs. Polgrey was pleased.

” I superintend all the polishing of the furniture myself,” she told me.

“You have to watch girls nowadays. Those Tapperty wenches are a pair of flibbertigibbets, I can tell ‘ee. You’d need eyes that could see from here to Land’s End to see all they’m up to. Beeswax and turpentine, that’s the mixture, and nothing like it. All made by myself.”

” It certainly does you credit,” I complimented her.

I followed her to the end of the hall where there was a door. She opened this and a short flight of some half a dozen steps confronted us. To the left was a door which she indicated and after a moment’s hesitation, opened.

” The chapel,” she said, and I caught a glimpse of blue slate flagstones, an altar and a few pews. There was a smell of dampness about the place.

She shut the door quickly.

” We don’t use it nowadays,” she said. ” We go to the Mellyn church.

It’s down in the village, the other side of the cove . just beyond Mount Widden. “

We went up the stairs and into a room which I saw was a dining room.

It was vast and the walls were hung with tapestry. The table was highly polished and there were several cabinets in the room within which I saw beautiful glass and china. The floor was covered with blue carpet and through the enormous windows I saw a walled courtyard.

” This is not your part of the house,” Mrs. Polgrey told me, ” but I thought I would take you round the front of the house to my room. It’s as well you know the lay of the land, as they say.”

I thanked her, understanding that this was a tactful way of telling me that as a governess I would not be expected to mingle with the family.

We passed through the dining room to yet another flight of stairs and mounting these we came to what seemed like a more intimate sitting room. The walls were covered with exquisite tapestry and the chair backs and seats were beautifully wrought in the same manner. I could see that the furniture was mostly antique and that it all gleamed with beeswax and turpentine and Mrs. Polgrey’s loving care.

” This is the punch room,” she said. ” It has always been called so because it is here that the family retires to take punch. We follow the old custom still in this house.”

At the end of this room was another flight of stairs; there was no door leading to them, merely a heavy brocade curtain which Mrs.

Polgrey drew aside, and when we had mounted these stairs we were in a gallery, the walls of which were lined with portraits. I gave each of them a quick glance, wondering if Connan TreMellyn were among them;

but I could see no one depicted in modern dress, so I presumed his portrait had not yet taken its place among those of his ancestors.

There were several doors leading from the gallery, but we went quickly along it, to one of those at the far end. As we passed through it I saw that we were in a different wing of the house, the servants’ quarters I imagined, because the spaciousness was missing.

” This,” said Mrs. Polgrey, ” will be y

” I fear it will take some time to learn my way about the house,” I said.

” You’ll know it in next to no time. But when you go out you won’t go the way I brought you up. You’ll use one of the other doors; when you’ve unpacked and rested awhile, I’ll show you.”

” You’re very kind.”

” Well, I do want to make you happy here with us. Miss Alvean needs discipline, I always say. And what can I do about giving in to her, with all I have to do! A nice mess this place would be in if I let Miss Alvean take up my time. No, what she wants is a sensible governess, and ‘twould seem they’m not all that easy to come by. Why, Miss, if you show us that you can look after the child, you’ll be more than welcome here.”

” I gather I have had several predecessors.” She looked a trifle blank and I went on quickly. ” There have been other governesses.”

” Oh yes. Not much good, any of them. Miss Jansen was the best, but it seemed she had habits. You could have knocked me down with a feather.

She quite took me in! ” Mrs. Polgrey looked as though she thought that anyone who could do that must be smart.

“Well, I suppose appearances are deceptive, as they say. Miss Celestine was real upset when it came out.”

” Miss Celestine?”

” The young lady at Widden. Miss Celestine Nansellock. She’s often here. A quiet young lady and she loves the place. If I as much as move a piece of furniture she knows it. That’s why she and Miss Jansen seemed to get on. Both interested in old houses, you see. It was such a pity and such a shock.

n You’ll meet her sometime. As I say, scarcely a day passes when she’s not here. There’s some of us that think. Oh, my dear life!

‘twould seem as though I’m letting my tongue run away with me, and you longing for that cup of tea. “

She threw open the door of the room and it was like stepping into another world. Gone was the atmosphere of brooding antiquity. This was a room which could not have fitted into any other time than the present, and I realised that it confirmed my impression of Mrs.

Polgrey. There were antimacassars on the chair; there was a ” what-not ” in the corner of the room filled with china ornaments including a glass slipper, a gold pig and a cup with ” A present from Weston” inscribed on it. It seemed almost impossible to move in a room so crammed with furniture. Even on the mantel-piece Dresden shepherdesses seemed to jostle with marble angels for a place. There was an ormolu clock which ticked sedately; there were chairs and little tables everywhere, it seemed. It showed Mrs. Polgrey to me as a woman of strong conventions, a woman who would have a great respect for the right thing which would, of course, be the thing she believed in.