Mistress of Mellyn (26 page)

then no one else will. “

But I was determined that I would not be waited on and I insisted on going to the buffet with him, ” Pride,” he murmured, slipping his hand through my arm. ” Wasn’t that the sin by which fell the angels?”

” It may have been ambition; I am not sure.”

” Well, I’ll warrant you’re not without a dash of that either. Never mind. What will you eat? Perhaps it is as well you came. Our Cornish food often seems odd to you foreigners from the other side of the Tamar.”

He began loading one of the trays which had been put there in readiness.

” Which sort of pie will you have? Giblet, squab, nattling or muggety?

Ha, here’s taddage too. I can recommend the squab: layers of apple and bacon, onions and mutton and young pigeon. The most delicious Cornish fare. “

” I’m ready to try it,” I said.

” Miss Leigh,” he went on, ” Martha … has anyone ever told you that your eyes are like amber?”

” Yes,” I answered.

” Has anyone ever told you you’re beautiful?”

“No.”

“Then that oversight should be and is’re citified immediately.”

I laughed and at that moment Connan came into the room with Lady Treslyn.

She sat down with Celestine, and Connan came over to the buffet.

“I am enlightening Miss Leigh about our Cornish food. She doesn’t know what a fair maid’ is. Is that not odd. Con, seeing that she is one herself?”

Connan looked excited; his eyes smiling into mine were warm. He said:

” Fair maids, Miss Leigh, is another name for pilchards served like this with oil and lemon.” He took a fork and put some on two plates. ” It is a contraction of the old Spanish fumado, and we always say here that it is food fit for a Spanish don.”

” A relic, Miss Leigh,” interrupted Peter, ” of those days when the Spaniards raided our shores and took too great an interest in another kind of fair maid.”

Alvean had come in and was standing beside me. I thought she looked tired.

” You should be in bed,” I said.

” I’m hungry,” she told me.

” After supper we’ll go up.”

She nodded and with sleepy pleasure she piled food on a plate.

We sat round the table, Alvean, Peter, Celestine, Sir Thomas, Connan and Lady Treslyn.

It seemed like a dream that I should be there with them. Alice’s brooch glittered on my dress, and I thought: Thus, two years ago, she would have sat . as I am sitting now. Alvean would not have been here then; she would have been too young to have been allowed to come, but apart from that and the fact that I was in Alice’s place, it must have been very like other occasions. I wondered if any of the others thought this.

I remembered the face I had seen at the peep, and what Alvean had said on the night of that other ball. I could not remember the exact words but I knew that it had been some thing about her mother’s love of dancing and how, if she came back, she would come to a ball. Then Alvean had half-hoped to see her among the dancers. What if she watched from another place? I thought of that ghostly solarium in moonlight and I said to myself: ” Whose face did I see at the peep?”

Then I thought: Gilly! What if it were Gilly? It must have been Gilly.

Who else could it have been?

My attention was brought back to the group at the table when Connan said: ” I’ll get you some more whisky, Tom.” He rose and went to the buffet. Lady Treslyn got up quickly and went to him. I found it difficult to take my eyes from them. I thought how distinguished they looked she in green shaded mauve draperies, the most beautiful woman at the ball and he, surely the most distinguished of the men.

” I’ll help you, Connan,” she said, and I heard them laughing together.

” Look out,” said Connan, ” we’re spilling it.”

They had their backs to us, and as I watched them I thought that with the slightest provocation I could have burst into tears because now I dearly saw the ridiculousness of my hopes.

She had slipped her arm through his as they came back to the table.

The intimate gesture wounded me deeply. I suppose I had drunk too much of the mead, or metheglin as they called it. Mead. It was such a soft and gentle name. But the mead which was made at Mount Mellyn was very potent.

I said to myself coldly: It is time you retired.

As he gave the glass to Sir Thomas—who emptied it with a speed which surprised me—I noticed that there were smudges of shadow under Alvean’s eyes, and I said: ” Alvean, you look tired. You should be in bed.”

” Poor child!” cried Celestine at once. ” And she only just recovering….”

I rose. ” I will take Alvean to bed now,” I said. ” Come along, Alvean.”

She was half-asleep already and made no protest but rose meekly to her feet.

” I will say good night to you all,” I said.

Peter rose to his feet. ” We’ll see you later,” he said.

I did not answer. I was desperately trying not to look at Connan, for I felt he was not aware of me; that he would never be aware of anyone when Lady Treslyn was near.

” Au revoir,” said Peter, and as the others echoed the words absentmindedly I went out of the punch room, holding Alvean by the hand.

I felt as Cinderella must have felt with the striking of the midnight hour.

My brief glory was over. Lady Treslyn had made me realise how foolish I had been to dream.

Alvean was asleep before I felt her room. I tried not to think of Connan and Lady Treslyn while I went to my room and lighted the candles on my dressing table. I looked attractive;

) there was no doubt of it. Then. I said to myself. Anyone looks attractive by candlelight.

The diamonds winked back at me, and I was immediately reminded of the face I had seen at the peep.

I thought afterwards that I must have drunk too freely of the metheglin, because on impulse I went down to the landing below my own.

I could hear the shouts coming from the servants’ hall. So they were still merry-making down there. The door to Gilly’s room was ajar, and I went in. There was enough moonlight for me to see that the child was in her bed, but sitting up, awake.

” Gilly,” I said.

” Madam!” she cried and her voice was joyful. ” I knew you’d come tonight.”

” Gilly, you know who this is.” What had made me say such a foolish thing?

She nodded.

” I’m going to light your candle,” I said, and I did so.

Her eyes regarded my face with that blank blue stare, and came to rest on the brooch. I sat on the edge of the bed. I knew that when I had first come in she had thought I was someone else.

She was contented though, which showed the confidence she was beginning to feel in me.

I touched the brooch and said: ” Once it was Mrs. TreMellyn’s.”

She smiled and nodded.

I said : ” You spoke when I came in. Why do you not speak to me now?”

She merely smiled.

” Gilly,” I said, ” were you at the peep in the solarium tonight? Were you watching the dancers?”

She nodded.

” Gilly, say Yes.”

” ” Yes,” said Gilly.

” You were up there all alone? You weren’t afraid?”

She shook her head and smiled.

” You mean no, don’t you, Gilly? Say no.”

” ” No. “

” Why weren’t you afraid?”

She opened her mouth and smiled. Then she said: “Not afraid because .

”

” Because?” I said eagerly.

“Because,” she repeated.

” Gilly,” I said. ” Were you alone up there?”

She smiled and I could get her to say no more.

After a while I kissed her and she returned my kiss. She was fond of me, I knew. I believed that in her mind she confused me with someone else, and I knew who that person was.

Back in my room I did not want to take off my dress. I felt that as long as I wore it, I could still hope for what I knew to be impossible.

So I sat by my window for an hour or so. It was a warm night and I was comfortable with my silk shawl about me.

I heard some of the guests coming out to their carriages. I heard the exchange of goodbyes.

And while I was there I heard Lady Treslyn’s voice. Her voice was low and vibrant, but she spoke with such intensity that I caught every syllable and I knew to whom she was speaking.

She said: ” Connan, it can’t be long now. It won’t be long-Next morning when Kitty brought my water, she did not come alone. Daisy was with her. I heard their raucous voices mingling and, in my half-waking state, thought they sounded like the gulls.

” Morning, Miss.”

They wanted me to wake up quickly; they had exciting news. I saw that in their faces.

“Miss …” they were both speaking together, both determined to be the one to impart the startling information, “last night … or rather this morning …”

Then Kitty rushed on ahead of her sister: ” Sir Thomas Treslyn was taken bad on the way home. He was dead when they got to Treslyn Hall.”

i I sat up in bed, looking from one excited face to the other. One of the guests . dead! I was shocked. But this was no ordinary death, no ordinary death.

I realised, no less than Kitty and Daisy, what such news could mean to Mount Mellyn.

VII

Sir Thomas Treslyn was buried on New Year’s Day.

During the preceding week gloom had settled on the house, and it was all the more noticeable because it followed on the heels of the Christmas festivities. All the decorations had been left about the house, and there was divided opinion as to which was the more unlucky—to remove them before Twelfth Night or to leave them up and thereby show lack of respect.

They all appeared to consider that the death touched us closely. He had died between our house and his own; our table was the last at which he had sat. I realised that the Cornish were a very superstitious people, constantly on the alert for omens, eager to placate supernatural and malignant powers.

Connan was absentminded. I saw little of him, but when I did he seemed scarcely aware of my presence. I imagined he was considering all that this meant to him. If he and Lady Treslyn had been lovers there was no obstacle now to their regula rising their union. I knew that this thought was in the minds of many, but no one spoke of it. I guessed that Mrs. Polgrey would consider it unlucky to do so until Sir Thomas had been buried for some weeks.

Mrs. Polgrey called me to her room and we had a cup of Earl Grey laced with a spoonful of the whisky I had given her.

” This is a shocking thing,” she said. ” Sir Thomas to die on Christmas Day as he did. Although ‘tweren’t Christmas Day but Boxing Day morning,” she added in a. slightly relieved tone, as though this made the situation a little less shocking. ” And to think,” she went on, reverting to her original gloom, ” that ours was the last house he rested in, my food was the last that passed his lips! The funeral is a bit soon, do you. not think, Miss?”

I began to count the days on my fingers. ” Seven days,” I said.

” They could have kept him longer, seeing it’s winter.”

” I suppose they feel that the sooner it’s over the sooner they’ll recover from the shock.”

She herself looked shocked indeed. I think she thought it was disrespectful or unlucky to suggest that anyone would want to recover quickly from their grief.

” I don’t know,” she said, ” you hear tales of people being buried alive. I remember years ago, when I was a child, there was a smallpox epidemic. People panicked and buried quick. It was said that some was buried alive.”

” There is surely no doubt that Sir Thomas is dead.”

” Some seem dead and are not dead, after all. Still seven days should be long enough to tell. You’ll come to the funeral with me, Miss?”

“I?”

” But why not? I think we should show proper respect to the dead.”

” I have no mourning clothes.”

” My dear life, I’ll find a bonnet for ‘ee. I’ll give ‘ee a black band to sew on your cloak. Reckon that ‘ud be all right if we were just at the grave.

“Twouldn’t do for ‘ee to go into the church like, but then ‘(wouldn’t be right either … you being the governess here, and them having so many friends as will attend to fill Mellyn Church to the full.”

So it was agreed that I should accompany Mrs. Polgrey to the churchyard.

I was present when Sir Thomas’s body was lowered into the tomb.

It was an impressive ceremony, for the funeral had been a magnificent one in accordance with the Treslyn’s rank in the duchy. Crowds attended, but Mrs. Polgrey and I hovered only in the distance. I was glad of this; she deplored it.

It was enough for me to see the widow in flowing black draperies yet looking as beautiful as she ever had. Her lovely face was just visible among the flowing black, which seemed to become her even as green and mauve had on the night of the Christmas ball.

She moved with grace and she looked even more slender in her black than in the brilliant colours I had seen her wear, intensely feminine and appealing.

Connan was there, and I thought how elegant and distinguished he looked; I tried to fathom the expression on his face that I might discover his feelings. But he was determined to hide those feelings from the world; and I thought, in the circumstances, that was Just as well.

I watched the hearse with the large waving black plumes and I saw the coffin, carried by six bearers and covered with velvet palls of deep purple and black, taken into the church. I saw the banks of flowers and the mourners in their deathly black, the only colour being the white handkerchiefs which the women held to their eyes—and they had wide black borders.

A cold wind had swept the mists away and the winter sun shone brightly on the gilt of the coffin as it was lowered into the grave.

There was a deep silence in the churchyard, broken only by the sudden cry of gulls.

It was over and the mourners, Connan, Celestine and Peter among them, went back to their carriages which wound their way to Treslyn Hall.

Mrs. Polgrey and I returned to Mount Mellyn, where she insisted on the usual cup of tea and its accompaniment.

We sat drinking, and her eyes glittered. I knew she was finding it difficult to restrain her tongue. But ‘she said nothing of the effect this death might have on us all at Mount Mellyn. So great was her respect for the dead.