Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton

by Rowland Hughes

  Mrs Munce looked heavenwards. ‘Ah, yes, milady, indeed. The cares and responsibilities of a country mansion – ’ You would have thought that Mistress Nan Munce had lived the best part of her life in the stillroom and the herb garden.

  ‘And pray what can I show you your ladyship? I have the sweetest collection of lace and frilled pinners here, as worn in Paris, that I would especially commend to your ladyship’s attention. A settee or double pinner5 is in the very last degree modish for dressing the head and would suit your ladyship to perfection. I am trespassing on a milliner’s preserves, of course, but I cannot remain indifferent to my customers’ heads. Heads are of prime importance in a woman of fashion, as your ladyship will agree, and your ladyship has such a beautiful shade of hair. What a delight it must be for your ladyship’s maid to dress it! Or if your ladyship is interested in new materials, here is a length of incarnadine satin that was surely made for your ladyship. Imagine it trimmed with a silver parchment lace and worn with a cloth of silver waistcoat! Oh, milady, that would be sweetly pretty!’

  She babbled on in professional ecstasy.

  Lady Skelton fingered the incarnadine satin casually. She said, ‘Yes, I will have the satin and the cloth of silver for a waistcoat too. But I did not come here to buy stuffs.’

  ‘No, milady? Gloves, perhaps? I have a collection of scented gloves that could not be surpassed by any merchant on the Exchange.’

  Lady Skelton smiled gently. She said, ‘No, nor gloves neither. Mrs Munce, it is the secret whisper of some that you keep even more interesting wares than these in your back parlour.’

  Mrs Munce folded the satin with expert neatness. She put her head archly on one side.

  ‘You have been hearing of my complexion milk?’

  ‘Yes – and other things.’

  There was a silence. Mrs Munce regarded Lady Skelton narrowly. Then she said in matter-of-fact tones, ‘Will your ladyship do me the favour of coming to the other room?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Mrs Munce led the way into a small back parlour. The room itself was dark and pokey, but it looked out into a very pleasant little walled garden with a chestnut tree in it. The greenness and flowery brightness of the closed plot was almost startling in contrast to the sombre little room.

  Mrs Munce excused herself for a few minutes, and returned presently with a silver tray and a dish of chocolate which she offered to Lady Skelton.

  ‘Now, milady, what can I do for you?’

  ‘I want your help.’

  Mrs Munce smiled deprecatingly. ‘My poor services are your ladyship’s to command. But is there really anything that I can do for your ladyship? A lady of your exquisite beauty will never make me believe that she is in need of one of my little love-potions!’ She scanned Barbara’s slender, untroubled figure knowingly.

  Lady Skelton rose with a swift and graceful movement and went to a gilt mirror that hung on the wall. Leaning forward, she adjusted the black patch, in the shape of a tiny heart, that she wore near her left nostril. Behind her own reflection she could see that of Mrs Munce.

  She said slowly and very deliberately, as she stretched her long neck backwards and tilted up her face, the better to see the patch:

  ‘No, I do not want anything to draw a man to me, Mrs Munce. I want something to send a man away, Mrs Price.’

  The face behind her in the mirror was the colour of cheese. She heard a rustling sound and turned round in a flash. Mrs Munce’s hands were plucking at her taffety skirt, her mouth was working.

  She said in a choking voice, ‘I don’t understand you.’

  Lady Skelton gave a little laugh. ‘Oh yes, I think you do. I want a little powder that would impart a heavenly flavour to a possett – or let us say, a broth. Do you understand me better now?’

  7

  DARK DESIGNMENTS

  ‘…Murder though it hath no tongue, will speak

  with most miraculous organ.’1

  AFTER THAT LITTLE jaunt to Buckingham, young Lady Skelton led as blameless, dutiful and dull a life as even Hogarth (or for that matter her most spiteful female friend) could wish. She had always been an indifferent if fairly competent housewife, performing her duties as lady of the manor with a languor that betrayed her boredom, leaving as much as could decently be left to the charge of her capable housekeeper, Mrs Sampson.

  Now a transformation had come over her. No more lie-abed habits. She rose at five or six in the morning, and nearly every hour of her day was profitably employed. With a lace apron tied over her gown, her chatelaine of keys jingling from her waist, she spent many hours in the stillroom, distilling fragrant perfumes and essences – elder flower water for sunburn, rosemary to wash the hair, pastes for whitening the hands, red rose-water for medicinal purposes, and the more homely wines, ginger, elderberry, currant and cowslip. She supervised more actively than heretofore the work of the buttery, dairy, laundry, poultry-yard, flower and herb garden. A housemaid or laundrymaid, engaged in her morning’s work, would be aware of a shadow falling across the threshold of the room and, looking up, would be startled to see young Lady Skelton standing there, watching her with her strange green eyes. At the time this had seemed no more momentous than a spur to a flurried display of industry, but in years to come it was something to tell their grandchildren by the winter fireside.

  On fine days, with a lace veil over her face to keep off the flies, Lady Skelton stood patiently with her maids among the currant bushes, gathering the bead-like fruit. On wet days she entered in a vellum bound book a number of prescriptions that she had collected or that had been thrust upon her by elderly relations. For a quinsy – ‘Take a silk thread dipped in the blood of a mouse, and let the party swallow it down…’ Against bubonic plague – ‘Take half of a handful of rew, likewise of madragories, featherfew, sorrel, burnet and a quantity of the crops and roots of dragons, and wash them clean and seethe them with a soft fire in running water…’2

  And needlework. Her fingers were seldom idle. Even on sunny days she strolled no farther than the pleasure ground or paradise, as it was called, where, seated in an arbour, her nimble fingers made the piece of satin or canvas on her lap blossom into a mimic garden of silken flowers.

  Apart from these housewifely preoccupations she showed, to Hogarth’s gratification, active signs of her changed heart. She became assiduous in her devotions, attending church twice a day as well as family prayers. As she knelt on her dark red velvet cushion, hardly more conscious of the chaplain’s prayers than she would have been of the droning of bees on a summer’s day, she was aware that her sister-in-law Paulina, that silent, self-contained girl, was watching her with a quizzical, perhaps cynical curiosity. Barbara did not care. She had no wish to win Paulina’s affection or esteem. She seldom thought of Paulina, except to wonder how soon she would marry (for her presence in the house, unobtrusive though it was, somehow irked her) and was indifferent to Paulina’s opinion of her. But when Hogarth gave her a commending glance from beneath his shaggy eyebrows she experienced a real glow of satisfaction.

  To Hogarth, Lady Skelton’s very appearance testified to the improved health of her soul. Since she had given up her evil way of life she had acquired a new bloom, a glossiness and an air of soft youthfulness that even the austere Hogarth could not help but find appealing. Indeed, after the strain, feverish excitement and late hours of the last few months, Barbara did not find this period of enforced repose unwelcome.

  It happened that this was the time of year when, with Hogarth’s aid, she was accustomed to look into the household accounts, or rather that part of them that came into her province, a long and tedious business. Accordingly she summoned him to the little wainscot room and, seated at a gate-legged table, allowed him to lead her, docile and bewildered as a child, through a maze of figures (for her early education had been concerned more with lute playing, needlework and Italian sonnets than with mathematics) – the wages of the female servants, from the majestic Mrs Salmon and Lady Skelton’s own
waiting-maid, to such lowly figures as Joan-about-the-house or Mag-in-the-kitchen; the money spent on groceries, tea, coffee, and sweetmeats, on yards of holland for sheets, on aprons and tippets for the maidservants and frieze for their cloaks, on ‘women’s triflings’, combs, pins, laces, thimbles and the like, bought from itinerant pedlars, and on silk for a quilted carpet for the table in the withdrawing-room, pintado printed with oriental scenes for the bedchambers, and green leather gilded hangings for the winter parlour.3

  After a while Lady Skelton would say, ‘Enough, good Hogarth. Enough for today. My head is wonderfully heavy, yes, and my heart is heavy too. Hogarth, I feel myself much sunk at present under the hand of Providence. Sometimes I wonder if Heaven will indeed overlook my past sins and keep me from the sad end that I deserve.’

  Hogarth was not immune from the besetting foible of his sex – vanity. In his case it took the not ignoble form of believing that it was his special gift and mission to save errant souls. He could therefore no more remain indifferent to such an appeal than a hound could ignore the huntsman’s horn. Laying down his quill pen he strove with all the eloquence and earnestness at his command to dispel Lady Skelton’s doubts, begging her not to put her trust in her own repentance however lively (this would indeed be a most dangerous conceit), but to seek grace from a Higher Source. ‘I would not have you abate your penitence by one thought or sigh, my lady,’ he assured her, ‘for this is a sweet-smelling ointment that you can offer to your Maker, but neither would I have you indulge too much in despair, for despair is of the devil.’

  Lady Skelton professed herself much comforted and solaced by those godly discourses and by the prayers which Hogarth, his honest face buried in his hands, offered up on her behalf.

  His zeal and fervour (on top of the household accounts), though edifying, was exhausting for them both and so Lady Skelton, after these spiritual exercises, was accustomed to offer the good man some light refreshment which she had ready on a side table – a cup of sack or fruit syrup and a manchet of bread.4 Hogarth partook of this standing up for, true to his word, he treated Lady Skelton, in spite of the parlous condition of her soul, with all the deference due to an honoured mistress.

  It was about this time that Hogarth showed the first symptoms of his illness, being seized in the night with vomiting and cramps in the stomach. Hogarth was not a man to allow ill health to interfere with his work, and he struggled on for some time before he would admit that the bouts of sickness and pain which gripped him with increasing frequency were anything more serious than a bad attack of colic. He continued to help Lady Skelton disentangle her household accounts, to administer to her seasonable and comforting words and assist her virtuous meditations, though sometimes it was all that he could do to stand upright in her presence or to partake of the drink which she courteously offered him.

  ‘This will not harm your stomach – poor Hogarth,’ she would say, fixing her eyes on him with a look of concern. And, as he drank it down with an effort, he thought how greatly her character had altered for the better since her conversion to grace. Even before his discovery of her misdeeds he had been obliged (in spite of his natural respect for his master’s wife) to regard her as a proud, light-minded and wilful lady, hardly fit, in his opinion, to be the spouse of the estimable Sir Ralph. Now there was a gentleness and meekness, as well as a pensiveness, in her demeanour that testified most pleasantly to her change of heart.

  The morning came when Hogarth was no longer able to wait upon his mistress, being too much prostrated by sickness and cramps to rise from his bed. Lady Skelton shared her husband’s concern over their faithful servant’s illness. As lady of the manor, it was her duty to minister to the invalids in the household. As a rule she was content to leave such doctoring as was necessary to her mother-in-law, who was only too ready to try her skill on any sufferer. But now she took entire charge of the sick steward, had him moved to a bedchamber in the main part of the house where she could more conveniently attend to him, and prepared all his nourishment – the broths, paps and caudles5 considered suitable for an invalid – with her own hands. Old Lady Skelton was disconcerted, and somewhat offended, to find herself superseded by her daughter-in-law in a sphere that she had been accustomed to consider exclusively her own. She begged Barbara not to over-tax her own frail health with this sedulous nursing and, when Barbara suavely ignored her advice, had to content herself with looking over her collection of nauseating prescriptions, and grumbling to Agatha Trimble how she would have treated Hogarth had she had the nursing of him.

  Sir Ralph had nothing but approval for Barbara in her new role. Hogarth was a valued servant, a man in whom Sir Ralph had absolute confidence and trust. No effort should be spared to restore him to health. Moreover this was how he liked his wife to be – not an elusive, unaccountable creature with something disconcerting even about her beauty, but bustling, efficient, occupied in a truly womanly task.

  As for Hogarth he was deeply grateful to his mistress for her care, comparing her in his mind with Dorcas,6 and other ministering women of Scripture. For her sake, because he believed that her regenerate soul needed his continued care, he made piteous but vain efforts to get well.

  Hogarth was dying. This was obvious even to Sir Ralph, who was bluffly optimistic as a rule about everyone’s health except his own. Old Lady Skelton wiped away a tear as she thumbed her prescriptions. ‘Take twenty-four swallows − alas, poor Hogarth!’ ‘I fear that neither swallows nor anything else will save the poor fellow now from great pains, a lingering death and a thousand other inconveniences,’ said Agatha Trimble with lugubrious relish.

  The physician summoned from Buckingham looked grave when he saw the sick man. He had seen nothing like this before – the running at the nose and eyes, the brownish colour of the skin – this was something more deadly than colic or food poisoning. He spoke learnedly and at some length about the four humours, blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy, and of how when the delicate balance between them was upset illness inevitably resulted, ordered an opiate for the patient to relieve his pain and went away shaking his head.

  The weather had broken, the heavy sullen rain of late summer turned the gardens and park into a dripping greenness, darkened the old house and added to the gloom of its inmates. The household moved about with mournful steps and spoke with hushed voices. Hogarth was liked and respected. Even the younger servants, who laughed at his pious talk and ways, knew him to be a just and kindly man. He had been in charge of Sir Ralph’s ‘family’ for so long it was hard to imagine Maryiot Cells without him.

  Though everyone had given up hope of his recovery – his arms and legs were now partially paralysed and he was prostrated by vomiting and pain – young Lady Skelton never slackened in her care of him. She looked wan, there were dark shadows under her eyes as she moved about the sickroom, a gallant, gracious figure, in the opinion of the household, battling forlornly with the angel of death.

  And Hogarth himself? As he lay there behind the curtains of his bed in the stuffy, darkened sickroom, submerged in awful weakness, many thoughts, some hazy, some startlingly clear, drifted through his clouded mind. He knew that he was about to die and death itself held few terrors for him. Death was a commonplace, the one great certainty in an uncertain world, and its very certainty gave it an awful dignity and reassurance. Who was he, a man of fifty, without wife or children, to shrink from death when he had seen young infants, blooming maidens, lusty young men fall like autumn leaves from life’s tree? His faith, however narrow and interwoven with human complacency, was sincere and did not fail him in this dread hour. He was ready, in all humility, to submit the account of his life to his supreme Master.

  But there was something that troubled him – young Lady Skelton and her reclaimed soul. Even when she was not actually bending over his bedside holding a cup to his lips, he could see her green eyes regarding him pleadingly – with meekness – with mockery? No! God forbid – with true remorse and penitence.

  He had b
een privileged to set her erring feet on the straight and narrow way. Would she have the spiritual strength to stay there? Soon she would have to stand alone. He would not be there to guide and encourage her, to wrestle in prayer on her behalf. He saw her eyes again staring at him – how green they were – how strangely shaped – insolent – sly – cat’s eyes. No one would share her secret now. She would have to bear the burden of it alone – would have to carry it down with her to her grave. She was saying to him, ‘You promise that my ugly secret will die with you?’ Her voice was meek but her sleepy eyes were full of menace. And suddenly the mists of his pain and weakness cleared, and he knew.

  Paulina, passing by the door of the sickroom, heard his feeble cry and hurried in. She parted the bedcurtains and bent over him. Sweat had broken out on his discoloured forehead, his wasted hands were clutching at the bedclothes, his eyes were full of entreaty.

  ‘Hogarth, what is it? A drink?’

  He gasped, ‘No, Sir Ralph − quick. I must tell him.’

  ‘I will fetch him at once.’

  She turned and found herself face to face with Barbara.

  Barbara gave her an angry look. ‘What are you doing here, Paulina? Why did you not call me? I will attend to him.’

  Paulina said bluntly, ‘He does not need your attentions. He wants Sir Ralph.’

  ‘Sir Ralph? Why? He is wandering in his mind. He must sleep now. Later when he is rested he shall see Sir Ralph.’

  Paulina said, ‘I am going now to fetch my brother.’

  The two young women faced each other, tense as duellists. There was the sound of voices and footsteps in the passage. Paulina ran to the door. ‘Brother, is it you? Come quickly. Hogarth wants you. There is no time for delay.’

  The sickroom, dim from its shrouded curtains and the rain and falling dusk outside, seemed full of people. Old Lady Skelton, Agatha Trimble, Aunt Doll, had followed Sir Ralph. Even Cousin Jonathan, hearing the commotion, had lumbered in.