This larger apprehension made all three of Sir Wilfrid’s womenkind glance towards the door of the dressing-room where he had retired to an early bed with a toothache and a glass of whisky, hot water, lemon, nutmeg and sugar.
Bemused with sleep, confused by the lateness of the hour and the strangeness of the scene, ignorant of what had happened, her thoughts momentarily diverted by the allusion to Papa, Isabella only caught the tail-end of the really appalling noises, which sounded as though something was pouncing down from step to step of the great staircase, but which ceased, a moment afterwards, with unnerving abruptness. She caught Alice’s terrified whisper, ‘Mama, who is it?’ Lady Skelton shuddered violently. ‘Hush! I don’t know, dear.’
She shepherded her young daughters into her bedroom, made them get into her bed and, though she was in a shocking state of tremor, stood for a moment at the communicating door of the dressing-room – but luckily Sir Wilfrid slept on.
Lady Skelton always had a little spirit lamp and a saucepan handy in her bedroom in case she should feel faint in the night, and the episode which had opened in such blind terror for Isabella ended as a midnight picnic, with hot milk and biscuits and the unparalleled privilege of sleeping, snug and secure, between her mother and sister in the huge walnut bed.
Next morning, it all seemed like a nightmare, but this time it was a nightmare that she shared with Mama and Alice, as the cups and crumbs of last night’s repast testified. But her enquiries on the subject of the disturbances themselves were gently discouraged.
‘Mama, was it burglars making the noise last night?’
‘No dear, not burglars. Old houses do make odd noises at night, you know.’
‘Old houses do make odd noises at night.’ Certainly Maryiot Cells seemed to do so, though fortunately for the peace of mind of its inmates, whatever or whoever was responsible for this particular outbreak appeared to have spent itself.
The recollection of that strange night became blurred in Isabella’s memory. Unsatisfied curiosity soon died. No unusual experiences came her way, except the unrelated, untoward noises and happenings that the Skelton family – if not the more timid of their visitors – had come to accept as an unmentioned feature of their home life.
And so there was no reason why Isabella Skelton should feel apprehensive or alarmed as she took that evening stroll on the eve of her sister’s wedding day. Her thoughts, in fact, were occupied with her bridesmaid’s dress of pale blue figured silk trimmed with forget-menots and fine lace, as she passed the Abbot’s Pool and walked along the path, a little narrowed here, that led to the pool called Purgatory. No sensitive antennae of her consciousness warned her, ‘Beware! Beware!’; no shadow of approaching horror fell across her innocent and trivial meditations.
She observed that she had come to the great oak – Lady’s Oak, it was traditionally named – one of whose boughs, thick as a man’s wrist, overleaned the path. Her glance dropped to her small, neat elastic-sided boots whose progress through the heaps of fallen leaves made a pleasant rustling sound. She raised her eyes again and there, immediately before her, there swung the body of a hanged person.
‘Swung’ – no, that was not the word, for the figure hung in a stillness and rigidity that was utterly preternatural as though, in its dark outlandish male attire, it was violently superimposed upon the harmless evening air. Though so still, so lifeless, it was full of menace. Was the face, lolling upon the body, male or female? Enough to say that it was loathsome to behold, congested, the swollen tongue protruding leeringly from the mouth….
Isabella gave a low moan, clutched at a tree for support and, leaning her head against its trunk, battled with closed eyes for her reason and her life. Sheer animal fear of death had blotted out all else from her reeling mind. Her heart was like a horse that had broken loose and was galloping wildly away. If she could not stop its panic flight she knew that it would gallop her out of life itself.
It was in this dire extremity that she summoned to her aid from the depth of her consciousness the figure of the guardian angel who, as a child, she had been convinced had sat all night at the end of her bed, and who, even now, had not in her belief entirely forsaken its guardianship of her slumbers. It was, as was to be expected, a Victorian angel, closely resembling the picture of the angel carrying a dying child to Heaven that hung above the mantelpiece in Isabella’s bedroom - an angel with a sweetly insipid face, long curling hair, substantial wings and a white robe as decent as a nightgown. But though Isabella’s angel would no doubt have appeared mawkish to modern eyes, it performed its duty with admirable efficiency. It caught and quieted Isabella’s stampeding heart. Furthermore, it gave Isabella the courage to open her eyes and look at the accursed tree.
The bough stretched blamelessly across the path, its ghastly burden vanished as though it had never been.
Isabella turned and ran for home, stumbling on and tearing the hem of her skirt as she ran. Along the path she fled, across the bridge and lawn, never pausing till she had run through the conservatory into the boudoir.
It was empty, except for Aunt Lizzie who was dozing on the sofa where Isabella had settled her half an hour ago, her face imperious and discontented in sleep, her lace cap a little awry, her massive bosom, which looked as though it had been poured into her dark silk dress, heaving in comfortable regularity. The boudoir was the same too. Isabella’s affrighted eyes took in the safe, familiar details; the fringed velvet curtains, the draped mantelpiece and its vases, the occasional tables with their rich tablecloths and burden of knick-knacks and photographs. All was substantial, seemly, accountable, as she had (till less than half an hour ago) believed the entire universe to be.
She ran upstairs, meeting no one on the way, for the first dinner gong had sounded, staggered into her bedroom and there, before the alarmed gaze of her sister Florence and of Agnes Allen, fell down in a faint.
They put her to bed and administered the usual remedies. By the morning she declared herself to be completely recovered. That she had at any rate recovered sufficiently to carry out her bridesmaid’s duties is shown by the photograph of the wedding group.
There is the bride, a mysterious figure veiled in clouds of white tulle, for it seems that even after the ceremony her virgin charms must be concealed from her lover’s eyes. There is the bridegroom, a pleasing, rather waggish-looking young man (it is satisfactory to be able to record that Aunt Lizzie was wrong and that he did live to make old bones). And there, against a background of bonnets, tiny hats, shawls, dolmans,6 beruffled and looped-up skirts, frock-coats, top hats, side-whiskers and beards, are the ten young bridesmaids in their festal dresses, and among them Isabella Skelton, looking a little wan. But that may be because she is sitting next to Miss Kathie Allen, whose saucy, roguish air beckons unmistakably to us across the gulf of seventy years.
One thing is certain: only Isabella’s enjoyment on that festive day was overshadowed by the thought of the appalling vision that had assailed her. Amid all her terror and mental disarray she had resolved that no knowledge of this ill-omened thing should mar her dear Blanche’s happiness and, intensely as she longed to unburden herself to some sympathetic listener, Nanny’s dictum, ‘Tell one, tell all’, fortified her resolve to keep total silence. In answer to all the solicitous enquiries she only said (praying that the untruth might be forgiven her) that while out on her walk she had stumbled and fallen down, and that the shock had made her feel a little seedy, but that she would be quite set up after a rest.
Happily her secret dread that the appearance foreboded some evil to the bridal pair was unfounded. But having once determined to keep silence, Isabella thought it wisest to continue to do so. It had all been so horrible, not at all the kind of thing that one wished to connect with one’s dear home, or, for that matter, with the universe. She wished that she could have consulted some really wise, experienced clergyman – someone like Dean Farrar7 for instance – but unfortunately Mr Henderson, though a most worthy and earnest man and most
helpful about Isabella’s classes for young boys, was not at all the kind of person to whom you would go for enlightenment on so weird and unpleasant a matter.
So in the end, Isabella’s journal remained her sole confidant.
To her account of her experience she added, rather unexpectedly, this quaintly worded prayer that is carved above the family crest over the fireplace in the Great Hall of Maryiot Cells:
‘Therefore O Lord, in Thee is my full hope and trust that Thou wilt mee defend from sin, the world and deville, who goeth about to catch poor sinners in their snare and bring them to that place where grief and sorrow are.’
3
LADY SOPHIA MET HER MATCH
‘Stubborn unlaid ghost.’1
IN ONE OF the attics of Maryiot Cells there was, till the recent fire which destroyed the house, a large, wooden antique chest, painted in the Dutch fashion with neat landscapes and bunches of spring flowers, and furnished with a massive double lock. In this chest there lay, among title deeds, letters, estate maps, and other family relics accumulated throughout several centuries, detailed plans for the complete rebuilding of Maryiot Cells. These plans were drawn out in 1781 by Mr Josias Wedgeworth, an architect of no little repute at that period.2
It is evident from the bundle of letters which accompany the plans that, though his patron was nominally Sir Charles Skelton, who had succeeded to his father’s title and estates the previous year, it was in fact Sir Charles’s wife, Lady Sophia Skelton, who was the prime instigator and director of this ambitious architectural scheme. ‘Her ladyship desires me most particularly …’ ‘With regard to the Folly, her Ladyship is most earnest in her wish …’ ‘It is her Ladyship’s intention …’ These and similar phrases appear frequently in the letters which Sir Charles addressed to the (doubtless) harassed architect.
The scheme may be fairly described as ‘ambitious’, for it embraced a reconstruction of the ancient manor house of Maryiot Cells so drastic as to entail, for all intents and purposes its demolition (though it seems that the beautiful Long Gallery was to be partially spared). In place of the irregular, rambling, venerable and inconvenient house with its twisting staircases and narrow passages, its clustering chimneys, stone obelisks, gables and mullioned windows, whose Tudor frame incorporated elements of its medieval origin, there was to arise a no less inconvenient but modern and hence classical mansion, with all the frigid magnificence of a portico designed in the Ionic order, supporting a pediment, colonnades, niches in the corridors for the reception of classical statues, lofty ceilings depicting mythological amours and so on.3
That Lady Sophia had the means to carry out this bold project is explained by the fact that she was the only child and heiress of the wealthy Earl of Terrall; that she had the energy and resolution necessary to surmount the inevitable difficulties and annoyances of such a scheme is evident from her portrait, and from the tales still told about her in the locality.
In her excellent portrait by an unknown artist (which happily was stored in London at the time of the fire) she wears a large hat of fashionably masculine shape with an upturned brim and an ostrich feather; her hair is powdered and drawn back from her face in curls; she has a narrow black velvet ribbon round her throat, and over her pale-coloured dress she wears a little black silk cape or mantelet fastened in front with a cameo brooch. Her face – that of a woman in her late thirties – is not beautiful but it is comely and arresting. There is something almost boyish about her wide forehead and rounded chin, but her dark lively eyes are very feminine. Though there is good humour in the firmly closed mouth, determination is the dominant expression of Lady Sophia’s face. Here, you feel, is a woman who would have swum triumphantly through life in any class or any century. She has none of that air of overbred, swan-like helplessness which characterises many portraits of eighteenth-century women.
No wonder that her husband and her children (seven sons and four daughters) loved and deferred to her. No wonder that the villagers of Maiden Worthy accepted her beneficent if autocratic rule with due meekness.
She was a fine horsewoman and an enthusiastic rider to hounds, and the only woman to see the end of the Garston Gorze hunt, famed in local song and story. But there was more to Lady Sophia than physical dash and daring. When the neighbourhood was scourged by an epidemic of ‘putrid fever’, or typhus, Lady Sophia sent her children away to safety and settled down, with Sir Charles to keep her company, to help the overworked apothecary Mr Browning fight the disease. Defying infection, she sailed into cottage after cottage bringing blankets, syllabubs, sage tea and courage to her husband’s stricken tenants, and acting as Mr Browning’s assistant – if the word ‘assist’ can be stretched sufficiently to cover the cheerful unconcern with which she pooh-poohed his suggestions and disobeyed his instructions.
Her ideas on hygiene were in advance of her times. Regardless of the outcries of her patients and the protests of the hapless Mr Browning, she tore open tiny casement windows, letting the fresh air into darkened, pestiferous cottages, ordered infected bedding to be burnt and, with her own hands, shaved the heads of her female patients, promising them each a gift of a close cap with blue ribbons if they submitted with patience to her ministrations.
On her own initiative she drew a quarantine cordon round the parish, forbidding its inhabitants, under pain of her severe displeasure, to leave it or to allow strangers to enter it. Her methods, high-handed though they were, were justified by the fact that there were fewer deaths in Maiden Worthy than in any of the surrounding parishes, and that it was the first village to be free of the epidemic.
It is no surprise after this to learn that, in later years, when England was faced by the threat of a Napoleonic invasion, Lady Sophia Skelton raised and, at her own cost, maintained a body of volunteers from among her husband’s tenants.
Certainly a woman of character, and one not easily deflected from her purpose. Which makes it the stranger that of her vaunting architectural schemes there remains no trace except the Folly, or miniature Grecian temple, set down in desolate incongruity by the banks of the river, and those plans which were stored away for years, dusty and forgotten in the attic at Maryiot Cells; for the partial rebuilding of the west wing after the outbreak of fire in 1782 was obviously an emergency measure and in no way connected with Lady Sophia’s original plan.
The solution of this teasing little mystery can however be pieced together from the bundle of letters, tied with faded red ribbon, which accompanies the plans. A solution? Perhaps that is hardly the word for an explanation so unnatural, so contrary to reason and so strange.
The letters are written by Lady Sophia to Sir Charles who was over in Dublin at that time, engaged on business connected with property in that city which had been left to him by his great-uncle Lord Maynooth.
The plans for the reconstruction of Maryiot Cells had evidently reached completion, and demolition work was to begin in a matter of a few weeks, when Lady Sophia would remove herself and her family to Beechlands Grove, which fortunately or unfortunately (according to whether you consider it from Lady Sophia’s or Mr Wedgeworth’s point of view) was within driving distance of Maryiot Cells.
Probably Sir Charles was not altogether sorry to miss the final stages of the running battle between his lady and his architect. His long, handsome face, as depicted in his portrait, which is a pendant to that of his wife, is perfectly amiable but lacks her conquering air.
Lady Sophia was a devoted wife and mother, and she wrote often and affectionately to her absent lord. The first few letters, of which the following is a typical specimen, deal with the daily happenings at Maryiot Cells, trivial in themselves but important to this fond and united couple.
March 9th 1782.
‘My dearest husband,
I give you a thousand thanks for your kind letter which was vastly welcome. It vexed me to learn that you had such a bad crossing, but I rejoice to hear that, thanks to your cousin’s claret and your own excellent constitution, you were totally rec
overed from the effects of it when you wrote to me. Anything that causes you uneasiness, however slight, must cause uneasiness to your wife who loves you better than herself. Pray, my dear Sir Charles, regard your health as my most precious possession and treat it accordingly.
Our sweet lambs are well and send their duty and kisses to dear Papa. Your daughter Elizabeth – the baggage! – desires me to remind Papa to bring her a pretty toy from Dublin. The new footman is a dolt. I thought ’twas not possible to find anyone stupider than Samuel, but events have proved me wrong. However he appears to take the utmost pains to please, poor creature, so I shall endeavour to bear with him.
Lady Roxley called this morning desiring to carry me with her to visit the “nouvelle mariée”, but I resisted her solicitations, for to tell the truth, I dare not leave this place for a moment in case Mr Wedgeworth should profit by my absence to plan “quelque bêtise”.4
I have made it tolerably clear to him, I believe, what I require of him, that is to say to carry out my ideas (and of course yours too, my love) not his own. I find that his opinion agrees with mine lately in a way that I would not have believed possible when we first entered into this building project. I must confess that I had a few words with him yesterday over the extra windows in the boudoir, Mr W. maintaining that he would risk his reputation extremely by consenting to any such thing, but upon my assuring him that I held my comfort far dearer than any man’s reputation (and why, pray, should I mope in darkness during the winter months to please any man?) he hauled down his colours, as brother Jack* would say.
I believe it will not be long now before the work of pulling down this antique and incommodious building will begin. I am more in love with the idea of our fine new house than ever, am ready to endure every inconvenience to obtain it, and pray God that He will spare us and our children to enjoy many happy years together in it.
Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton Page 6