Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton

by Rowland Hughes

  It was no surprise, then, to Miss Parsons or the girls to find, on turning round, when they reached the juncture of the glades where the carved urn stood in sunlight, that Hugh was still some way down the shady green tunnel from which they had just emerged. There was nothing odd in this, but there was something odd in his behaviour. Instead of ambling along with his usual bland and determined slowness, he was stopping constantly to turn and stare back down the yew glade, then breaking into a quick jog that seemed to betoken some unusual excitement. When he had reached the end of the glade, he gave one quick look over his shoulder, galloped towards Miss Parsons, his hat falling off as he came, threw his arm round her petersham belt and pressed his chubby face against her stomach.

  Hugh was an undemonstrative child as a rule. Miss Parsons, though secretly a little flattered, was surprised.

  ‘Why Hughie, whatever is the matter?’

  Hugh, his face flushed, replied shortly, ‘Nuffin.’

  ‘Well, then, pick up your hat and come along, or we shall never get all our little jobs done before luncheon.’

  It was not till they had left the clearing and had again entered the sombre walls of yew that Hugh announced:

  ‘Somebody’s coming after us.’

  Miss Parsons glanced back. ‘No dear, I don’t see anyone.’

  ‘I did,’ said Hugh. ‘I kept seeing somebody.’

  ‘What sort of a person? A man or a woman?’ asked Joyce.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hugh. ‘Like both, I fink.’

  ‘Well, there is no one in sight,’ said Miss Parsons briskly, peering dubiously across the dazzle of the clearing to the dimness of the glade by which they had come. ‘So I expect you were day-dreaming, dear.’

  ‘No, I saw somebody,’ Hugh said stoutly. ‘It was there and then it wasn’t there. It was coming this way. I fink it’s still coming.’

  Miss Parsons felt a curious sensation in the region of her spine, as though someone had lightly run an icicle down it.

  She was, of course, aware of Maryiot Cells’ dubious reputation. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew, and most people were eager to tell. But Lady Skelton did not encourage speculation or tittle-tattle on the subject. Paranormal activity had no place in Lady Skelton’s well-regulated life. She had made the interior of Maryiot Cells almost cheerful with chintzes and hot-house flowers and signed photographs of royalty in silver frames.

  Unaccountable noises were firmly attributed to mice and hot-water pipes. Nervous young maidservants were severely snubbed by their seniors when they tried to recount creepy experiences. One or two who would not be silenced (such as the Irish scullery maid who insisted that she heard ‘a smart footstep travelling through the house’) were given a month’s wages and dismissed. Yes, it must be admitted that Lady Skelton had the supernatural well in hand.

  Miss Parsons knew that it would be as much as her post was worth to speak of such things to her charges. She saw that the two girls were staring at their little brother with eyes widened by curiosity. Questions that had better remain unasked trembled on their parted lips.

  Miss Parsons said resolutely, and with a touch of severity, ‘Now dear, no more of that. You must not say things that are not true, even in fun.’

  This was unfair, and Miss Parsons knew it. Hugh, who accepted the aspersion on his probity with the extraordinary resignation of childhood, was a singularly truthful and rather unimaginative child. But the situation had to be reined in somehow.

  Miss Parsons added cheerily, ‘Let’s see which of us can reach the end of the glade first. Walking as fast as we like, but no running.’

  No, it would never do to run. That would be too suggestive of panic, of flight from the indescribable something that Hugh’s infant eyes had discerned moving along in the shades behind them.

  Placing a hand behind Hugh’s lace collar, she propelled him vigorously forward. It would never do if he turned round and began staring again. Miss Parsons had not realised before quite how still and dim it was in these yew glades. Six of them. Too many, too long, and too old. It occurred to her that there was something slightly morbid in an enthusiasm for topiary-work indulged in to excess. It was quite a relief to emerge again into the hot sunshine. It greeted them like a friendly tap on the face.

  Miss Parsons felt Hugh’s forehead. It was cool. She thought, ‘Perhaps a little dose at bedtime.’

  It was as gratifying to Lady Skelton, as it would have been bewildering to the young African at Umweulu, for whose benefit this fête at Maryiot Cells had been organised, to see the substantial crowd that had assembled on the lawn to listen to the Bishop’s opening speech.

  The setting was ideal − the sombre but picturesque background of the old house itself with its bayed windows, its turrets and its tall multitudinous chimneys; the brightly filled flower beds on the terrace, shaped in crescents and stars like floral jewels; the shady, well-kept lawn sloping down at the side and back of the house to the glossy, softly singing river; the old stone bridge and, across the bridge, the yew glades.

  On the lawn to the side of the house, just below the terrace, a small platform had been erected, draped in red bunting and a rather puzzling collection of national flags, for the accommodation of the Bishop and his wife, the rector Mr Chambers, Sir Arthur and Lady Skelton, Lady Ansborough and a few other notables. A tumbler and a carafe of water on the table suggested that some test of endurance on the part of both the speaker and the audience might be looked for.

  There were several rows of chairs in front of the platform for those who, without being immediately concerned in the opening ceremony, were too important or too elderly to stand. The rest of the audience, county, country town and village, clustered round the platform and flowed out across the lawn.

  On all sides there were parasols, large hats with flowers and feathers, white spotted veils, top hats, grey homburg hats, straw boaters and white panamas, black Sunday suits, girls in muslin frocks, boys in knickerbockers, and old ladies defying the heat in feather boas.

  The buzzing voice of the crowd, its aimless, fluid movement, was stilled in sudden expectancy as Lady Skelton sailed on to the platform in full heliotrope rig, followed by the Bishop of Chiltern and the other guests.

  With a surprising air of decision the rector, vague old Mr Chambers, stepped forward and, imposing silence with a raised hand, invoked a blessing on the proceedings, the Bishop listening with bent head and closed eyes and the air of paying due tribute to spiritual etiquette.

  Mr Chambers’s moment was soon over. Lady Skelton swam to the fore and, surveying friends, acquaintances, tenants and strangers with a gracious smile, proceeded to address them in the masterful tones of one who had spoken at countless bazaars, parish teas and committee meetings.

  It was so delightful, she said, to see so many happy faces here today, and to feel that so many friends, known and unknown, had rallied loyally round her to make this fête a real success. They all knew that the Umweulu Mission was Maiden Worthy’s own special mission. It was very wonderful to feel that for forty years the good, dear people of Maiden Worthy parish (she paused) …. Nor must she forget the kind parishioners of Little Worthy who, in conjunction with their big sister parish, also contributed towards the Umweulu Fund. Well, it was very wonderful and inspiring to feel that for forty years they had been supporting this splendid work and helping to maintain and educate a young African lad of the Umweulu tribe. How they all wished that they could be transported to Umweulu and see for themselves the good work going on amid the dense African jungle with its lions and crocodiles and other marvels of nature. She was sure that then they would realise what a really worthwhile work it was. As it was they must be content with Maryiot Cells, and the very warm welcome – not quite tropical, but very warm for all that! (Laughter) − which she and Sir Arthur extended to them one and all. Now she knew that they had not come here to listen to her (polite murmurs of dissent from those on and around the platform) so she would, without further ado, invite his Grace, the Lor
d Bishop of Chiltern, to address them.

  The applause which greeted the close of her speech drowned a savage growl from Colonel McRoberts, ‘Confounded nonsense, in my opinion, all this business of trying to turn niggers into Christians. All that happens is that they drink your whisky and steal your best pair of riding boots like that rascal of a Ujojo boy that I had out in Kulanga in ‘82.’3

  But before he could enlarge further on his African experiences to his neighbours, there was another outburst of applause as the Bishop rose to speak.

  With his imposing height, silvery hair, ascetic but benign features and rich voice, he looked so exactly all that a Bishop ought to be that it would have been difficult to have mistaken him for anything else even without his gaiters. He was justly famed for his eloquence, and his listeners, agreeably conscious that they were combining something of the spiritual benefits of a service at the Cathedral with the mundane entertainment of a garden fête, settled down to give him their full attention.

  He began by addressing them in light, even whimsical vein, getting up speed, in a manner of speaking, before soaring towards sublimer things. He had been speaking for about seven minutes and a half, and had begun, with the dove-like gentleness and serpent-like cunning enjoined by Scripture, to introduce a more serious note into his speech, when it seemed to him that a sudden change had come over the day. It was not only that a passing cloud had obscured the sun, as often happens on the finest summer day, giving a somewhat livid appearance to the verdant lawn and the people collected on it, but surely there was a sudden and noticeable drop in the temperature too?

  The Bishop felt extraordinarily chilly. His hands, with the fingers lightly interlocked across his apron, as was his wont when speaking on a platform, had become stone cold. He was conscious of an odd sensation of ‘pins and needles’ all over his body.

  Perturbed as he was − for he believed that he had suddenly been taken ill and, like most active and conscientious persons, he had a dread of illness − his words continued to flow out with the smoothness of the accomplished orator. He was speaking of service and fellowship, was actually saying the words, ‘We cannot live unto ourselves alone,’ when he saw the figure standing under the beech tree.

  It was the figure of a woman − of that he had no doubt, for though its attire was masculine, with long skirted coat and breeches and broad-brimmed hat, there was a distinctly feminine appearance about the face and form.

  Moreover, this person who stood there with closed eyes was a young woman. ‘Beautiful and well favoured’ were the words that came into the Bishop’s numbed mind, but it was not a beauty that would commend itself to a Bishop, nor, for that matter, to any God-fearing man. The expression on the face was malign, predatory, doleful, and altogether most disquieting.

  The archaic costume might have suggested someone decked out in fancy dress for the occasion of the fête, but no such comforting supposition came to the Bishop’s aid. Something undefinable in the figure’s looks and demeanour assured him with horrid certainty that this was no human being that he gazed upon, but an apparition. Rigid with fear, it seemed to him that he was enclosed with this unhallowed thing in a sphere apart − a sphere of icy coldness and a menacing stillness. The people on the platform beside him, the upturned faces beneath him, had receded from reality, were as meaningless as images painted upon glass. Enclosed together, and yet − final horror! − she was unaware of him, wrapt in some state of being beyond human comprehension.

  Shutting his eyes, the Bishop clutched at a prayer. The wave of terror subsided, leaving him faint and sweating. He became aware of his own faltering voice, his wife looking at him in anxiety. He cleared his throat, poured himself out a glass of water with a shaking hand. In the moment’s respite which this action gave him, he glanced leftwards towards the river.

  Upon the narrow stone bridge was a figure on a horse − the same figure which but a few seconds ago had stood upon his right hand some fifty feet distant under the beech tree.

  The glass of water dropped from the Bishop’s hand. He staggered and collapsed on to his chair.

  They said it was the heat. They said it was his heart. They said it was overwork. The Bishop himself said very little, apologising to his host and hostess for the trouble that he was causing them, begging that the fête might proceed as though nothing had happened, and – when he was lying down in Sir Arthur’s shaded dressing room – murmuring to his wife:

  ‘My dear, pray do not question me at present, but I should like to leave this house as soon as possible.’

  Both the prelate and the child had been vouchsafed a glimpse of the unseen, and, in consequence, had suffered some emotional disturbance. The gross unfairness of life must be a continual source of distress to the sensitive-minded. They gave the Bishop a tot of Sir Arthur’s Napoleonic brandy, but little Hugh got Gregory’s Powder.4

  2

  THE RETICENCE OF MISS ISABELLA SKELTON

  ‘Evil thing that walks by night.’1

  AS FAR AS can be ascertained, the following experience was the only really startling one that occurred in Miss Isabella Skelton’s placid and blameless life. There may have been others – though hardly, one imagines, of a like nature – but if so, there is no record of them either in the known facts of her life or in family traditions or journals.

  Born in 1855, the youngest but one of the six daughters of Sir Wilfred and Lady Skelton, Isabella’s existence pursued the sheltered course which might have been expected from the circumstances of her class, period and virginity.

  Her childhood in the large and well-filled nurseries of Maryiot Cells was a cosy one. It could hardly have been otherwise with Nanny Callaghan, stout, comfortable, yet somehow superb, in her cap with streamers and her voluminous white apron, as their presiding genius. Nanny Callaghan was never flustered, never at a loss. To see her sitting before the fire in her rocking-chair you would suppose her nearly immovable, or at the least slow-moving. But let some nursery crisis occur – Miss Florence bellowing from the cupboard into which she had been bolted by her angel-faced toddler sister Miss Lucy, Miss Charlotte shrieking at having thrust a marble up her nose, the adenoidal nurserymaid dropping a kettle of scalding water over her foot – and Nanny Callaghan was all speed and commanding movement.

  She had a store of sagacious maxims which her charges accepted as hardly less sacred than scripture:

  ‘A sad child is a sick child.’

  ‘It is good to be helped.’

  ‘Of saving cometh having.’

  ‘With patience and perseverance you can drive a snail to Jerusalem.’

  Nanny’s sayings, the high, polished fire-grate, muffins for tea, the battered rocking-horse, the dolls’ house, syrup roly-poly on winter Sundays, roast chestnuts and apples for Hallowe’en, a cuckoo clock which Aunt Bessie had brought back from Switzerland – these and innumerable other trifles were woven together to form a nursery pattern of rich security and happiness for Isabella and her sisters.

  Living in the same house, but in a world somewhat apart, there was Papa and Mama, Papa with his beautiful side-whiskers, cravats and frock-coats – a magnificent being to be revered, a little feared but nevertheless adored. Ecstatic moment when he took Isabella on his knee at dessert and, smoothing out her frilled muslin frock and her silk sash, fed her with cherries. Or (there was a meet on the lawn at Maryiot Cells) bent down from his chestnut horse in all the splendour of his scarlet coat and white buckskin breeches, and lifted her on to the saddle.

  Dear Mama suffered from delicate health. She spent a good deal of her time lying on a sofa. From their earliest years it was impressed on Isabella and her sisters that they must not make too much noise on their visits to the drawing-room because of ‘poor Mama’s head’.

  A photograph of that same head (crowned with a luxuriant coil of hair) shows that Lady Skelton had the expression of a fretful if inoffensive sheep, but Isabella never noticed this. To Isabella her mother was something precious and fragile that might be snatche
d from the family circle at a moment’s notice by singing angels. Nor did the fact that Lady Skelton lived to the age of eighty-five greatly alter her daughter’s conception of her.

  Childhood passed into girlhood. Nanny Callaghan was painlessly superseded by governesses and retired into the housekeeper’s room, from whence she ruled, nursed, bullied and comforted the household. There was the mild discipline of lessons, good works, and ‘good’ books, regular church services, sacred music on Sunday evenings, sketching and pianoforte lessons, relieved by picnics, skating, charades, drives in the brougham and games of croquet.

  The evening came when Isabella wore her first ball dress of white satin trimmed with Valenciennes lace,2 and long white kid gloves, and attended her first grownup ball. There is no reason to suppose that she was not a success either then or on her subsequent appearances in society, and her continued celibacy was certainly dictated by her own choice. It is known that she had several suitable ‘offers’ and, though by no means a beauty, there were elderly gentlemen, in later years, who were ready to assure the younger generation that ‘though your aunt Blanche was the handsome one of the family, your aunt Bella was a very pleasant-looking girl.’

  If some secret unsatisfied fancy, some frustrated romance, nipped like a belated November rosebud before it came to full blossom, prevented Isabella from fulfilling her woman’s destiny, it must have been a mild and fugitive one, for there is no evidence that it impaired her contentment or her spirits to any marked degree. When girlhood was left behind and all her sisters married, she settled down cheerfully to the role of what Lady Skelton described as ‘our home bird’. She was her father’s companion, her mother’s right hand, and so active in parish affairs that the rector used to declare that she was worth two curates to him.