I felt a faint tingling which began at the base of my spine and seemed to creep up to my neck. This, I supposed, was what is known as making one’s flesh creep.
Little Alice! But her name was not Alice. It was Alvean. It had unnerved me for the moment because it had sounded similar.
Then I felt irritated and a little angry. Did I look the part then? Was it possible that I already carried the mark of the penurious gentlewoman forced to take the only course open to her? A governess!
Was he laughing at me? He lay back against the upholstery^ of the carriage, his eyes still dosed. I looked out of the|| window as though he and his ridiculous fortune-telling were of; not the slightest interest to me.
He opened his eyes then and took out his watch. He studied it gravely, for all the world as though this extraordinary conversation had not taken place between us.
” In four minutes’ time,” he said briskly, ” we shall pull into Liskeard. Allow me to assist you with your bags.”
He took them down from the rack. ” Miss Martha Leigh,” was clearly written on the labels, “Mount Mellyn, Mellyn, Cornwall.”
He did not appear to glance at these labels and I felt that he i had lost interest in me. ?
When we came into the station, he alighted and set my bags on the platform. Then he took off the hat which he had set apon his head when he picked up the bags, and with a deep bow he left me.
While I was murmuring my thanks I saw an elderly man coming towards me, calling: ” Miss Leigh! Miss Leigh! Be you Miss Leigh then?” And for the moment I forgot about my travelling companion.
I was facing a merry little man with a brown, wrinkled skin and eyes of reddish brown; he wore a corduroy jacket and a sugar-loaf hat which he had pushed to the back of his head and seemed to have forgotten.
Ginger hair sprouted from under this, and his brows and moustaches were of the same gingery colour.
” Well, Miss,” he said, ” so I picked you out then. Be these your bags? Give them to me. You and me and old Cherry Pie ‘ml soon be home.”
He took my bags and I walked behind him, but be soon fell into step beside me.
” Is the house far from here?” I asked.
” Old Cherry Pie’U carry us there all in good time,” he answered, as he loaded my bags into the trap and I climbed in beside him.
He seemed to be a garrulous man and I could not resist the temptation of trying to discover, before I arrived, something about the people among whom I was going to live.
I said: ” This house. Mount Mellyn, sounds as though it’s on a hill.”
“Well, ‘tis built on a cliff top, facing the sea, and the gardens run down to the sea. Mount Mellyn and Mount Widden are like twins. Two houses, standing defiant like, daring the sea to come and take ‘em.
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.
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