Виктория Холт: Mistress of Mellyn

” There are two courses open to a gentlewoman when she finds herself in penurious circumstances,” my Aunt Adelaide had said. ” One is to marry, and the other to find a post in keeping with her gentility.”

As the train carried me through wooded hills and past green meadows, I was taking this second course; partly, I suppose, because I had never had an opportunity of trying the former.

I pictured myself as I must appear to my fellow travellers if they bothered to glance my way, which was not very likely: A young woman of medium height, already past her first youth, being twenty-four years old, in a brown merino dress with cream lace collar and little tufts of lace at the cuffs. (Cream being so much more serviceable than white, as Aunt Adelaide told me. ) My black cape was unbuttoned at the throat because it was hot in the carriage, and my brown velvet bonnet, tied with brown velvet ribbons under my chin, was of the sort which was so becoming to feminine people like my sister Phillida but, I always felt, sat a little incongruously on heads like mine. My hair was thick with a coppery tinge, parted in the centre, brought down at the sides of my too-long face, and made into a cumbersome knot to project behind the bonnet. My eyes were large, in some lights the colour of amber, and were my best feature; but they were too bold—so said Aunt Adelaide; which meant that they had learned none of the feminine graces which were so becoming to a woman. My nose was too short, my mouth too wide.

In fact, I thought, nothing seemed to fit; and I must resign myself to journeys such as this when I travel to and from the various posts which I shall occupy for the rest of my life, since it is necessary for me to earn a living, and I shall never achieve the first of those alternatives: a husband.

We had passed through the green meadows of Somerset and were now deep in the moorland and wooded hills of Devon. I had been told to take good note of that masterpiece of bridges building, Mr. Brunei’s bridge, which spanned the Tamar at Saltash and, after crossing which, I should have left England behind me and have passed into the Duchy of Cornwall.

I was becoming rather ridiculously excited about crossing the bridge.

I was not a fanciful woman at this time perhaps I changed later, but then a stay in a house like Mount Mellyn was enough to make the most practical of people fanciful so I could not understand why I should feel this extraordinary excitement.

It was absurd, I told myself. Mount Mellyn may be a magnificent mansion; Connan TreMellyn may be as romantic as his name sounds; but that will be no concern of yours. You will be confined to below stairs, or perhaps to the attics above stairs, concerned only with the care of little Alvean.

What strange names these people had! I thought, staring out-of the window. There was sun on the moorland but the grey tors in the distance looked oddly menacing. They were like petrified people.

This family to which I was going was Cornish, and the Cornish had a language of their own. Perhaps my own name, Martha Leigh, would sound odd to them. Martha! It always gave me a shock when I heard it. Aunt Adelaide always used it, but at home when my father had been alive he and Phillida never thought of calling me Martha. I was always Marty. I could not help feeling that Marty was a more lovable person than Martha could ever be, and I was sad and a little frightened because I felt that the River Tamar would cut me off completely from Marty for a long time. In my new post I should be Miss Leigh, I supposed; perhaps Miss, or more undignified still Leigh.

One of Aunt Adelaide’s numerous friends had heard of ” Connan TreMellyn’s predicament.” He needed the right person to help him out of his difficulties. She must be patient enough to care for his daughter, sufficiently educated to teach her, and genteel enough for the child not to suffer through the proximity of someone who was not quite of her own class. Obviously what Connan TreMellyn needed was an impoverished gentlewoman. Aunt Adelaide decided that I fitted the bill.

When our father, who had been vicar of a country parsonage, had died.

Aunt Adelaide had swooped on us and taken us to London. There should be a season, she told us, for twenty-year-old Martha and eighteen-year-old Phillida. Phillida had married at the end of that season; but after four years of living with Aunt Adelaide, I had not.

So there came a day when she pointed out the two courses to me.

I glanced out of the window. We were drawing into Plymouth. My fellow passengers had alighted and I sat back in my seat watching the activities on the platform.

As the guard was blowing his whistle and we were about to move on, the door of the carriage opened and a man came in. He looked at me with an apologetic smile as though he were hinting that he hoped I did not mind sharing the compartment with him, but I averted my eyes.

When we had left Plymouth and were approaching the bridge, he said : ” You like our bridge, eh?”

I turned and looked at him.

I saw a man, a little under thirty, well dressed, but in the manner of the country gentleman. His tail coat was dark blue, his trousers grey; and his hat was what in London we called a ” pot hat ” because of its resemblance to that vessel. This hat he laid on the seat beside him. I thought him somewhat dissipated, with brown eyes that twinkled ironically as though he were fully aware of the warnings I must have received about the in advisability of entering into conversation with strange men.

I answered : ” Yes, indeed. I think it is a very fine piece of workmanship.”

He smiled. We had crossed the bridge and entered Cornwall.

His brown eyes surveyed me and I was immediately conscious of my somewhat drab appearance. I thought: He is only interested in me because there is no one else to daim his attention. I remembered then that Phillida had once said that I put people off by presuming, when they showed interest, that I believed it was because no one else was available. ” See yourself as a makeshift,” was Phillida’s maxim, ” and you’ll be one.”

” Travelling far?” he asked.

” I believe I have now only a short distance to go. I leave the train at Liskeard.”

” Ah, Liskeard.” He stretched his legs and turned his gaze from me to the tips of his boots. ” You have come from London?” he went on.

” Yes,” I answered.

” You’ll miss the gaiety of the big city.” , ” I once lived in the country so I know what to expect.” | ” Are you staying in Liskeard?”

I was not sure that I liked this catechism, but I remembered Phillida again: ” You’re far too gruff, Marty, with the opposite sex. You scare them off.”

I decided I could at least be civil, so I answered: ” No, not in Liskeard. I’m going to a little village on the coast called Mellyn.”

” I see.” He was silent for a few moments and once more turned his attention to the tips of his boots.

His next words startled me. ” I suppose a sensible young lady like you would not believe in second sight … and that sort of thing?”

” Why …” I stammered. ” What an extraordinary question!”

” May I look at your palm ?”

I hesitated and regarded him suspiciously. Could I offer my hand to a stranger in this way? Aunt Adelaide would suspect that some nefarious advances were about to be made. I thought in this case she might be right. After all I was a woman, and the only available one.

He smiled. ” I assure you that my only desire is to look into the future.”

” But I don’t believe in such things.”

” Let me look anyway.” He leaned forward and with a swift movement secured my hand.

He held it lightly, scarcely touching it, contemplating it with his head on one side.