Mistress of Mellyn Read online

  “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 color 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 where 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 gray hair; she was 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 realized, when I encountered 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 flagstone, 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 back of it 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 door at the end of the hall. She opened it and a short flight of some half-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 in several cabinets 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 still follow the old customs 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 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 your part of the house. You will find a staircase at the end of this corridor which leads to the nurseries. Your room is up there. But first come to my sitting room and we’ll have that tea. I told Daisy to see to it as soon as I heard Joe Tapperty was here. So there shouldn’t be long to wait.”

  “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 it 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. 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 realized that it confirmed my impression of Mrs. Polgrey. There were antimacassars on the chairs; there was a whatnot 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 mantelpiece 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.

  Still, I felt something comfortingly normal about this room as I did about the woman.

  She looked at the main table and tutted in exasperation; then she went to the bell rope and pulled it. It was only a few minutes later that a black-haired girl with saucy eyes appeared carrying a tray on which was a silver teapot, a spirit lamp, cups and saucers, milk and sugar.

  “And about time too,” said Mrs. Polgrey. “Put it here, Daisy.”

  Daisy gave me a look which almost amounted to a wink. I did not wish to offend Mrs. Polgrey, so I pretended not to notice.

  Then Mrs. Polgrey said: “This is Daisy, miss. You can tell her if you find anything is not to your liking.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Polgrey, and thank you, Daisy.”

  They both looked somewhat startled and Daisy dropped a little curtsy, of which she seemed half-ashamed, and went out.

  “Nowadays …” murmured Mrs. Polgrey, and lighted the spirit lamp.

  I watched her unlock the cabinet and take out the tea canister which she set on the tray.

  “Dinner,” she went on, “is served at eight. Yours will be brought to your room. But I thought you would be needing a little reviver. So when you’ve had this and seen your room, I’ll introduce you to Miss Alvean.”

  “What would she be doing at this time of day?”

  Mrs. Polgrey frowned. “She’ll be off somewhere by herself. She goes off by herself. Master don’t like it. That’s why ’e be anxious for her to have a governess, you see.”

  I began to see. I was sure now that Alvean was going to be a difficult child.

  Mrs. Polgrey measured the tea into the pot as though it were gold dust, and poured the hot water on it.

  “So much depends on whether she takes a fancy to you or not,” went on Mrs. Polgrey. “She’s unaccountable. There’s some she’ll take to and some she won’t. Her was very fond of Miss Jansen.” Mrs. Polgrey shook her head sadly. “A pity she had habits.”

  She stirred the tea in the pot, put on the tea cosy, and asked me: “Milk? Sugar?”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  “I always do say,” she remarked, as though she thought I needed some consolation, “there ain’t nothing like a good cup of tea.”

  We ate tea biscuits with the tea, and these Mrs. Polgrey took from a tin which she kept in her cabinet. I gathered, as we sat together, that Connan TreMellyn, the master, was away.

  “He has an estate farther west,” Mrs. Polgrey told me. “Penzance way.” Her dialect was more noticeable when she was relaxed as she was now. “He do go to it now and then to see to it like. Left him by his wife, it were. Now she was one of the Pendletons. They’m from Penzance way.”

  “When does he return?” I asked.

  She looked faintly shocked, and I knew that I had offended because she said in a somewhat haughty way: “He will come back in his own time.”

  I saw that if I was going to keep in her good books, I must be strictly conventional; and presumably it was not good form for a governess to ask questions about the master of the house. It was all very well for Mrs. Polgrey to speak of him; she was a privileged person. I could see that I must hastily adjust myself to my new position.

  Very soon after that she took me up to my room. It was large with big windows, and from the window seats there was a good view of the front lawn, the palm trees, and the approach. My bed was a four-poster and seemed in keeping with the rest of the furniture; but though it was a big bed it looked dwarfed in a room of this size. There were rugs on the floor, the boards of which were so highly polished that the rugs looked somewhat dangerous. I could see that I might have little cause to bless Mrs. Polgrey’s love of polishing everything within sight. There was a tallboy and a chest of drawers; and I noticed that there was a door in addition to the one by which I had entered.

  Mrs. Polgrey followed my gaze. “The schoolroom,” she said. “And beyond that is Miss Alvean’s room.”

  “I see. So the schoolroom separates us.”

  Mrs. Polgrey nodded.

  Looking round the room I saw a screen in one corner and as I approached it I noticed that it shielded a hip bath.

  “If you want hot water at any time,” she said, “ring the bell and Daisy or Kitty will bring it to you.”

  “Thank you.” I looked at the open fireplace and pictured a roaring fire there on winter days. “I can see I’m going to be very comfortable here.”

  “It’s a pleasant room. You’ll be the first governess to have it. The other governesses used to sleep in a room on the other side of Miss Alvean’s room. It was Miss Celestine who thought this would be better. It’s a more pleasant room, I must say.”

  “Then I owe thanks to Miss Celestine.”

  “A very pleasant lady. She thinks the world of Miss Alvean.” Mrs. Polgrey shook her head significantly and I wondered whether she was thinking that it was only a year since the master’s wife had died, and that perhaps one day he would marry again. Who more suitable to be his wife than this neighbor who was so fond of Miss Alvean? Perhaps they were only waiting for a reasonable lapse of time.

  “Would you like to wash your hands and unpack? Dinner will be in two hours’ time. But perhaps first you would like to take a look at the schoolroom.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Polgrey,” I said, “but I think I’ll wash and unpack first.”

  “Very well. And perhaps you’d like a little rest. Traveling is so fatiguing, I do know. I’ll send Daisy up with hot water. Meals could be taken in the schoolroom. Perhaps you’d prefer that?”

  “With Miss Alvean?”

  “She takes her meals nowadays with her father, except her milk and biscuits last thing. All the children have taken meals with the family from the time they were eight years old. Miss Alvean’s birthday was in May.”

  “There are other children?”

  “Oh, my dear life, no! I was talking of the children of the past. It’s one of the family rules, you see.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, I’ll be leaving you. If you cared for a stroll in the grounds before dinner, you could take it. Ring for Daisy or Kitty and whoever is free will show you the stairs you will use in future. It will take you down to the kitchen garden, but you can easily get from there to wherever you want to go. Don’t ’ee forget though—dinner at eight.”

  “In the schoolroom.”

  “Or in your own room if you prefer it.”

  “But,” I added, “in the governess’s quarters.”

  She did not know what to make of this remark, and when Mrs. Polgrey did not understand, she ignored. In a few minutes I was alone.

  As soon as she had gone the strangeness of the house seemed to envelop me. I was aware of silence—the eerie silence of an ancient house.

  I went to the window and looked out. It seemed a long time ago that I had driven up to the house with Tapperty. I heard the August notes of a bird which might have been a linnet.

  I looked at the watch pinned to my blouse and saw that i
t was just past six o’clock. Two hours to dinner. I wondered whether to ring for Daisy or Kitty and ask for hot water; but I found my eyes turning to the other door in my room, the one which led to the schoolroom.

  The schoolroom was, after all, my domain, and I had a right to inspect it, so I opened the door. The room was larger than my bedroom but it had the same type of windows and they were all fitted with window seats on which were red plush fitted cushions. There was a table in the center of the room. I went over to it and saw that there were scratches on it and splashes of ink, so I guessed that this was the table where generations of TreMellyns had learned their lessons. I tried to imagine Connan TreMellyn as a little boy, sitting at this table. I imagined him a studious boy, quite different from his erring daughter, the difficult child who was going to be my problem.

  A few books lay on the table. I examined them. They were children’s readers, containing the sort of stories and articles which looked as if they were of an uplifting nature. There was an exercise book on which was scrawled “Alvean TreMellyn. Arithmetic.” I opened it and saw several sums, to most of which had been given the wrong answers. Idly turning the pages I came to a sketch of a girl, and immediately I recognized Gilly, the child whom I had seen at the lodge gates.

  “Not bad,” I muttered. “So our Alvean is an artist. That’s something.”

  I closed the book. I had the strange feeling, which I had had as soon as I entered the house, that I was being watched.

  “Alvean!” I called on impulse. “Are you there, Alvean? Alvean, where are you hiding?”

  There was no answer and I flushed with embarrassment, feeling rather absurd in the silence.

  Abruptly I turned and went back to my room. I rang the bell and when Daisy appeared I asked her for hot water.

  By the time I had unpacked my bags and hung up my things it was nearly eight o’clock, and precisely as the stable clock was striking eight Kitty appeared with my tray. On it was a leg of roast chicken with vegetables and, under a pewter cover, an egg custard.

  Daisy said: “Are you having it in here, Miss, or in the schoolroom?”