Legend of the Seventh Virgin (17 page)

“He was the best father in the world, Kerensa, yet I could wish now that he had been harsh and cruel sometimes, so that I did not have to mourn so much.”

She began to weep silently and I put an arm about her. I led her to bed and gave her the sedative Dr. Hilliard had given me.

Then I stopped by her bed until she slept and I tried to peer into the future.

The future was not to be as we had imagined it. It was as though a mischievous fate were reminding us that man proposes and God disposes.

In the first place David Killigrew did not get the St. Larnston living. Instead, the Reverend James Hemphill with his wife and three daughters came to the parsonage.

David went sadly back to become a curate again, to shelve his dream of marriage and to share his life with his widowed mother. He said we must write to each other — and hope.

Mrs. Yeo and Belter were only really concerned — as were Bess and Kit — as to whether the Hemphills would require their services.

Mellyora seemed to have grown up in those weeks; I suppose I did, too, for we suddenly found that security had been swept away from us.

Mellyora took me to her bedroom where we could talk in peace. She looked grave; but her fear for her own future had at least superimposed itself on her grief for her father. There was no time for mourning.

“Kerensa,” she said to me, “sit down. I’ve heard that my father has left so little that it will be necessary for me to earn my living.”

I looked at her; she had lost weight and seemed frail in her black dress. She had put up her hair, which somehow made her look helpless. I pictured her in some stately mansion — the governess — not quite one of the servants and yet considered unfit to associate with the family. I shivered.

And what of my own fate? One thing I did believe; I should be more able to take care of myself than she would.

“What do you propose to do?” I asked.

“I want to talk it over with you. Because you see this affects you, too. You’ll have to leave here.”

“We shall have to find means of earning a living. I shall talk it over with Granny.”

“Kerensa, I shan’t like our being separated.”

“Nor I.”

She smiled at me wanly. “If we could be together somewhere … I wondered if we could start a school … or something.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere here in St. Larnston.”

It was a wild plan and I could see that she didn’t believe in it even as she spoke.

“When shall we have to leave?” I asked.

“The Hemphills are coming in at the end of the month. That gives us three weeks. Mrs. Hemphill is very kind. She has said I need not worry if I wanted to stay a little longer.”

“She won’t expect to find me here. I could go to my Granny, I suppose.”

Her face puckered and she turned away.

I could have cried with her. I felt that everything I had gained was being snatched from me. No, not everything. I had come to the parsonage an ignorant girl; now I was a young woman almost as educated as Mellyora. I could be a governess even as she could.

That thought gave me confidence and courage. I would talk to Granny. I wouldn’t despair yet.

A few days later Lady St. Larnston sent for Mellyora. I can only say “sent,” because this was not like the invitations Mellyora had received previously; this was a command.

Mellyora put on her black cloak and black straw hat, and Miss Kellow, who was leaving at the end of the week, drove her to the Abbas.

They returned in about an hour. Mellyora went to her room, calling me to come to her.

“I’ve settled it,” she cried.

I didn’t understand her, and she went on quickly: “Lady St. Larnston has offered me a post and I’ve accepted it. I’m to be her companion. At least we won’t have to go away.”

“
We?
”

“You didn’t think I would leave you?” She smiled and was like she had been in the old days. “Oh, I know we won’t like it much … but at least it’s something definite. I’m to be her companion and there’s a job for you, too.”

“What sort of job?”

“Lady’s maid to Mrs. Justin St. Larnston.”

“Lady’s maid!”

“Yes, Kerensa. You can do it. You have to look after her clothes, do her hair … make yourself generally useful. I don’t think it’ll be very difficult … and you do like clothes. Think how clever you were with the red velvet dress.”

I was too taken aback to speak.

Mellyora rushed on. “When she asked me she said it was the best thing she could do for me. She said she felt she owed something to us, and she couldn’t let me be left penniless. I told her that you had been with me for so long that I regarded you as my sister and I wouldn’t leave you. Then she thought for a while and said that Mrs. St. Larnston needed a maid, and that you would be taken on. I said I was sure you would be grateful …”

She was breathless and there was an unmistakable gleam in her eyes. She wanted to go and live at the Abbas even as companion to Lady St. Larnston. I knew why. It was because she couldn’t bear to think of leaving St. Larnston while Justin was there.

I went at once to Granny Bee and told her what had happened.

“Well, you always wanted to live in that house,” she said.

“As a servant!”

“There’s only one way as it could be aught else,” she went on.

“How?”

“By marrying Johnny St. Larnston.”

“As if …”

Granny laid her hand on my head, for I was sitting on a stool by her chair. “You be comely, my child.”

“His sort don’t want to marry mine — however comely we are.”

“Not as a rule, ’tis true. But ’tain’t the rule either that your sort be taken up and educated, now is it?”

I shook my head.

“Well, bain’t that a sign? You don’t expect things that happen to they ordinary folk to happen to ’ee, do ’ee?”

“No, but I don’t like Johnny. Besides, he never would marry me, Granny. There’s something in him that tells me he never would. He’s different with me than with Mellyora, though perhaps he won’t be now. He wants me. I know that, but he doesn’t care for me one bit.”

Granny nodded. “That’s for now,” she said. “Changes come. Be careful when you be in that house, lovey. Take special care of Johnny.” She sighed. “I did hope you’d marry maybe a parson or a doctor like. That’s what I could have wished to see.”

“If it had all turned out as we thought, Granny, I don’t know whether I’d have married David Killigrew.”

She stroked my hair. “I know. Your eyes be fixed on that house. It have done something to ’ee, Kerensa. It have bewitched ye.”

“Oh, Granny, if only the parson hadn’t died.”

“There comes a time when we all must die. He weren’t a young man and his time had come.”

“There’s Sir Justin, too.” I shuddered, remembering what I had seen when I had opened the wrong door. “Sir Justin and the Reverend Charles. That’s two of them, Granny.”

“’Tis natural. You’ve seen the leaves on the trees come autumn time. They shrivel and drop and dry. One by one they fall. That’s because they be come to autumn. Well some of us be come to our autumn; then one after the other quickly we’ll drop from the trees.”

I turned to her in horror. “Not you, Granny. You mustn’t die.”

She laughed. “Here I be. Don’t seem like my turn have come yet, do it?”

I was afraid in those moments — afraid of what the future held for me at the Abbas, afraid of a world which would not contain Granny Bee.

I
stood at the window of my room and said to myself: “You’re here. You live here!” — and in spite of the circumstances I was exultant.

The room was a small one, and close to those occupied by Justin and Judith St. Larnston. There was a bell high on the wall and when it sounded it was my duty to hurry to my mistress. The furnishings were sparse, as for a maid; it had a small bed, a cupboard, a chest of drawers, two chairs, and a dressing table with a swing mirror standing on it. That was all. But there were rugs on the floor and the same thick velours curtains which hung in the richly furnished apartments. From the window I looked across the lawns to the hedge which separated them from the meadow; I could just see the Six Virgins and the disused mine.

My mistress had not yet seen me and I wondered whether she would approve of me. Now that Sir Justin was paralyzed, Lady St. Larnston made most of the decisions in this house and since she had decided that I should be her daughter-in-law’s maid, so I was.

Ours had been a chilly reception. Very different from the way we had been greeted when we arrived in our masks. Belter, now employed by the Hemphills, drove us over.

“Good luck,” he said, nodding first to Mellyora and then to me; and his looks implied that we should need it.

Mrs. Rolt received us, a little smugly, I thought, as though she were rather pleased to see us in this position, particularly me.

“I’ll send one of my maids up to see if her ladyship is ready to receive ’ee,” she said. She took us round to one of the back doors, emphasizing by a smirk that we had made the mistake of presenting ourselves at the great stone portico which led into the main hall. We should in future, Mrs. Rolt told us, not be expected to use that door.

Mrs. Rolt took us into the main kitchen, an enormous room with vaulted ceiling and stone floors; it was warm though, on account of an oven which looked — and I am sure was — big enough to roast an ox. Two girls sat at the table cleaning silver.

“Go up to her ladyship and tell her the new companion and maid has arrived. She wanted to see them herself.”

One of the girls started for the door.

“Not you, Daisy!” cried Mrs. Rolt hastily. “My dear life! Going to her ladyship like that! Your hair do look like you’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards. You, Doll.”

I noticed that the one addressed as Daisy had a plump, blank face — currant-eyed, with wiry hair that grew low down almost to the thick bushy eyebrows. Doll was smaller, more lithe and in contrast to her companion had an alert expression, which might have been crafty. She went through the kitchen into an adjoining room and I heard the sound of running water. When she emerged she was wearing a clean apron. Mrs. Rolt nodded her head with approval and, when Doll had gone, turned her attention to us.

“Her ladyship has told me that you will eat with us in the servants’ hall.” This was addressed to me. “Mr. Haggety will tell you your place.” Then to Mellyora: “I understand you’re to have meals in your own room, Miss.”

I felt a rush of color to my cheeks and I knew Mrs. Rolt noticed it and was not displeased. I foresaw battles to come. I had to stop myself blurting out that I would take my meals with Mellyora; I knew this would be forbidden and I should be doubly humiliated.

I stared up at the vaulted ceiling. These kitchen quarters with their ovens and spits had been used from the earliest days and I discovered later that there were butteries, pantries, storerooms, and cooling houses attached.

Mrs. Rolt went on: “We be all sorry, Miss, about your bereavement. Mr. Haggety were saying as things won’t be the same like what with the new Reverend at the parsonage and you, Miss, here at the Abbas.”

“Thank you,” said Mellyora.

“Well, we was saying — Mr. Haggety and me — as how we hoped you’d settle in well. Her ladyship needs a companion since Sir Justin was afflicted.”

“I hope so too,” answered Mellyora quietly.

“Of course you’ll know how things be run in a big house, Miss.” She glanced at me and that quirk played about her mouth. She was telling me that there was a world of difference between my position and that of Mellyora. Mellyora was the parson’s daughter and a lady born and bred. I could see that she was thinking of me standing on the platform at Trelinket Fair and that was how she would always see me.

Doll came back to announce that her ladyship would see us now, and Mrs. Rolt told us to follow her. We mounted about a dozen stone stairs at the top of which was a green baize door which led to the main part of the house. We went along several corridors before we came to the main hall and ascended the staircase which I remembered from the night of the ball.

“Here be the part where the family do live,” said Mrs. Rolt. She nudged me. “Why you be all pop-eyed, m’dear. Reckon you thinking how grand everything be, eh?”