Mistress of Mellyn (29 page)

” Alice,” I whispered. And I stared at that painted face, and, practical woman that I was, I half expected her to step out of the frame and talk to me.

I wondered when that had been painted . before or after the disastrous marriage, before she had known she was to have Geoffry’s child or after.

” Alice,” I said to myself, ” where are you now, Alice? You are haunting me, Alice. Since I have known you I have known what haunting means.”

Gilly was holding my hand.

I said: ” It’s only a picture, Gilly.”

She reached out a small finger and touched the white ball-dress.

Gilly had loved her. I looked into that soft young face and thought I understood why.

Poor Alice, who had been caught up in too many emotions, what had become of her?

I suddenly realised that it was a winter’s morning and I was lightly clad.

“We’ll catch our deaths,” I said practically; and taking Gilly’s hand in mine I firmly shut the door on Alice.

I had been at Penlandstow a week, and I was wondering how much longer this idyllic interlude could last, when Connan spoke to me of what was in his mind.

The children were in bed and Connan asked me if I would join him in a game of chess in the library.

There I found him, the pieces set out on the board, sitting looking at them.

The curtains had been drawn and the fire burned cheerfully in the great fireplace. He rose as I entered and I quickly slipped into my place opposite him.

He smiled at me and I thought his eyes took in every detail of my appearance, in a manner which I might have found offensive in anyone else.

I was about to move king’s pawn when he said: ” Miss Leigh, I did not ask you down here to play. There is something I have to say to you.”

” Yes, Mr. TreMeUyn?”

” I feel I have known you a very long time. You have made such a difference to us both Alvean and myself. If you went away, we should miss you very much. I am certain that we should both want to ensure that you do not leave us.”

I tried to look at him and failed because I was afraid he would read the hopes and fears in my eyes.

” Miss Leigh,” he went on, ” Will you stay with us … always?”

” I … I don’t understand. I … can’t believe …”

” I am asking you to marry me.”

” But … but that is impossible.”

” Why so. Miss Leigh?”

” Because ‘… because it is so incongruous.”

” Do you find me incongruous … repulsive? Do please be frank.”

” I… No indeed not! But I am the governess here….”

” Precisely. That is what alarms me. Governesses sometimes leave their employment. It would be intolerable for me if you went away.”

I felt I was choking with my emotions. I could not believe this was really happening to me. I remained silent. I dared not try to speak.

” I see that you hesitate, Miss Leigh.”

” I am so surprised.”

” Should I have prepared you for the shock?” His lips twitched slightly at the corner. ” I am sorry, Miss Leigh. I thought I had managed to convey to you something of my feelings in this matter.”

I tried to picture it all in those few seconds myself going back to Mount Mellyn as the wife of the Master, slipping from the role of governess to that of Mistress of the house. Of course I would do it and in a few months they would forget that I had once been the governess. Whatever else I lacked I had my dignity perhaps a little too much of it, according to Phillida. But I should have thought that a proposal would have been made in a different way. He did not take my hand; he did not touch me; he merely sat at the table watching me in an almost cool and calculating manner.

He went on : ” Think of how much good this could bring to us all, my dear Miss Leigh. I have been so impressed by the manner in which you have helped Alvean. The child needs a mother. You would supply that need … admirably.”

” Should two people marry for the sake of a child, do you think?”

” I am a most selfish man. I never would.” He leaned forward across the table and his eyes were alight with some thing I did not understand. ” I would marry for my own satisfaction.”

” Then …” I began.

” I confess I was not considering Alvean alone. We are three people, my dear Miss Leigh, who could profit from this marriage. Alvean needs you. And I… I need you. Do you need us? Perhaps you are more self-sufficient than we are, but what will you do if you do not marry?

You will go from post to post, and that is not a very pleasant life.

When one is young, handsome and full of spirit it is tolerable . but sprightly governesses become ageing governesses. “

I said acidly: ” Do you suggest that I should enter into this marriage as an insurance against old age?”

” I suggest only that you do what your desires dictate, my dear Miss Leigh.”

There was a short silence during which I felt an absurd desire to burst into tears. This was something I had longed for, but a proposal of marriage should have been an impassioned declaration, and I could not rid myself of the suspicion that there was something other than Connan’s love for me which had inspired it. It seemed to me as though he were offering me a list of reasons why we should marry, for fear I should discover the real one.

” You put it on such a practical basis,” I stammered. ” I had not thought of marriage in that way.”

His eyebrows lifted and he laughed, looking suddenly very gay. ” How glad I am. I thought of you always as such a practical person, so I was trying to put it to you in the manner in which I felt it would appeal to you most.”

” Are you seriously asking me to marry you?”

” I doubt if I have ever been so serious in my life as I am at this moment. What is your answer? Please do not keep me in suspense any longer.”

I said I must have time to consider this. ” That is fair enough. You will tell me tomorrow?”

” Yes,” I said. ” I will tell you tomorrow.” I rose and went to the door. He was there before me. He laid his fingers on the door handle and I waited for him to open it, but he did no such thing. He stood with his back to the door and caught me up in his arms.

He kissed me as I had never been kissed, never dreamed of being kissed; so that I knew that there was a life of the emotions of which I was totally ignorant. He kissed my eyelids, my nose, my cheeks, my mouth and my throat until he was breathless, and I was too. Then he laughed.

” Wait until the morning!” he mocked. ” Do I look the sort of man who would wait until the morning? Do you think I am the sort of man who would marry for the sake of his daughter? No, Miss Leigh .. he mocked again, ” my dear, dear Miss Leigh . I want to marry you because I want to keep you a prisoner in my house. I don’t want you to run away from me, because, since you came, I have thought of little else but you, and I know I am going on thinking of you all my life. “

” Is this true?” I whispered. ” Can this be true?”

“Martha!” he said.

“What a stern name for such an adorable creature! And yet, how it fits!”

I said: ” My sister calls me Marry. My father did too.”

” Marty,” he said. ” That sounds helpless, clinging … feminine…. You can be a Marty sometimes. For me you will be all three. Marty, Martha and Miss Leigh, my very dear Miss Leigh. You see you are all three, and my dearest Marty would always betray Miss Leigh. I knew from her that you were interested in me. Far more interested than Miss Leigh would think proper. How enchanting! I shall marry not one woman but three!”

” Have I been so blatant?”

” Tremendously so … adorably so.”

I knew that it was foolish to pretend. I gave myself up to his embrace, and it was wonderful beyond my imaginings.

At length I said: “I have a terrible feeling that I shall wake up in bed at Mount Mellyn and find I have dreamed all this.”

” Do you know,” he said seriously, ” I feel exactly the same.”

” But it is so different for you. You can do as you will … go where you will … dependent on no one.”

” I am dependent no longer. I depend on Marty, Martha, my dear Miss Leigh.”

He spoke so seriously that I could have wept with tenderness. The changing emotions were almost too much for me to bear.

This is love! I thought. The emotion which carries one to the very heights of human experience and, because it can carry one so high, one is in continual danger of falling; and one must never forget, the higher the delight, the more tragic the fall.

But this was not the moment to think of tragedy. I loved, and miraculously I was loved. I had no doubt in that library of Penlandstow that I was loved.

For love such as this, one would be prepared to risk everything.

He put his hands on my shoulders and looked long into my face.

He said : ” We’ll be happy, my darling. We’ll be happier than either you or I ever dreamed possible.”

I knew that we should be. All that had gone before would give us a finer appreciation of this joy we could bring each other.

” We should be practical,” he said. ” We should make our plans. When shall we marry? I do not like delay. I am the most impatient man alive, where my own pleasures are concerned. We will go home tomorrow, and there we will announce our engagement. No, not tomorrow … the day after. I have one or two little commitments here tomorrow. And as soon as we are home we will give a ball to announce our engagement. I think that in a month after that we should be setting out on our honeymoon. I suggest Italy, unless you have any other ideas?”

n I sat with my hands clasped. I must have looked like an ecstatic schoolgirl.

” I wonder what they will think at Mount Mellyn.”

” Who, the servants? You may be sure they have a pretty shrewd idea of the way things are; servants have, you know. Servants are like detectives in the house. They pick up every little clue. You shiver.

Are you cold? “

” No, only excited. I still believe I’m going to wake up in a moment.”

” And you like the idea of Italy?”

” I would like the idea of the North Pole in some company.”

” By which, my darling, I hope you mean mine.”

” That was my intention.”

” My dear Miss Leigh,” he said, ” how I love your astringent moods.

They are going to make conversation throughout our lives so invigorating. ” I had an idea then that he was making comparisons between Alice and myself, and I shivered again as I had when he had made that remark about the detectives.

” You are a little worried about the reception of the news,” he went on. ” The servants … the countryside…. Who cares? Do you? Of course you do not. Miss Leigh has too much good sense for that. I am longing to tell Peter Nansellock that you are to be my wife. To tell the truth I have been somewhat jealous of that young man.”

” There was no need to be.”

” Still I was anxious. I had visions of his persuading you to go to Australia with him. That was something I should have gone to great lengths to prevent.”

” Even so far as asking me to marry you?”

” Farther than that if the need had arisen. I should have abducted you and locked you up in a dungeon until he was far away.”

” There was no need for the slightest apprehension.”

” Are you quite sure? He is very handsome, I believe.”

” Perhaps he is. I did not notice.”

” I could have killed him when he had the effrontery to offer you Jacinth.”

j ” I think he merely enjoys being outrageous. He probably knew I should not accept it.”

” And I need not fear him?”

“You need never fear anyone,” I told him.

Then once more I was in that embrace, and I was oblivious of all’ but the fact that I had discovered love, and believed, as doubtless hosts of lovers have before, that there was never love such as that between us two.

At length he said : ” We’ll go back the day after tomorrow. We’ll start making arrangements immediately. In a month from now we’ll be married. We’ll put up the banns as soon as we return. We will have a ball to announce our engagement and invite all our neighbours to the wedding.”

” I suppose it must be done in this way?”

” Tradition, my darling. It is one of the things we have to bow down to. You’ll be magnificent, I know. You’re not nervous?”

” Of your country neighbours, no.”

” You and I will open the ball this time together, dearest Miss Leigh.”

“Yes,” I said; and I pictured myself in the green dress wearing the amber comb in my hair with the diamond horseshoe glittering on the green background.

I had no qualms about taking my place in his circle.

Then he began to talk of Alice. ” I have never told you,” he said, ” of my first marriage.”

” No,” I answered.

” It was not a happy one.”

” I’m sorry.”

” A marriage which was arranged. This time I shall marry my own choice. Only one who has suffered the first can realise the joy of the second. Dearest, I have not lived the life of a monk, I fear.”

” I guessed it.”

” I am a most sinful man, as you will discover.”

” I am prepared for the worst.”

” Alice … my wife … and I were most unsuited, I suppose.”

” Tell me about her.”

” There is little to tell. She was a gentle creature, quiet, anxious to please. She seemed to have little spirit. I understood why. She was in love with someone else when she married me.”

” The man she ran away with?” I asked.

He nodded. ” Poor Alice! She was unfortunate. She chose not only the wrong husband but the wrong lover. There is little to choose between us … myself and Geoffry Nansellock. We were of a kind. In the old days there was a tradition of the droit de seigneurs in these parts.

Geoffry and I did our best to maintain that. “

” You are telling me that you have enjoyed many love affairs.”

” I am a dissolute, degenerate philanderer. I am going to say was.

Because from this moment I am going to be faithful to one woman for the rest of my life. You do not look scornful or sceptical. Bless you for that. I mean it, dearest Marty. I swear I mean it. It is because of those experiences of the past that I know the difference between them and this. This is love. “