The Mystery of Ashleigh Manor. A romance

Front matter

THE MYSTERY OF ASHLEIGH MANOR. Jl glamana. BY' ELIZA RHYL DAVIES. " Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles ; infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets." Macbeth. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, 1874. (All Rights Reserved. ) PAGE CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER - - I I. ASHLEIGH MANOR - - - - 8 II. CONTAINING A SHORT ACCOUNT OF MY EARLY LIFE - - - - - 20 III. I INTRODUCE MYSELF TO MRS. MERTON AND MEET MY PUPIL - - - - 34 IV. THE LEGEND OF THE ANGELS' COURT - - 65 V. IN THE DRAWING-ROOM - - 90 VI. I FIND MR. MERTON VERY PLAIN-SPOKEN - 106 VII. JANE WAKEFIELD - 122 VIII. MY HERMITAGE - - 1 46 IX. THE HOUSEKEEPER LEAVES - - 159 X. MRS. MERTON TRIES ON A NEW DRESS - - I 72 XI. IN WHICH I PUT SOME PERTINENT QUESTIONS TO JANE WAKEFIELD - - - 217 XII. HOW MR. MERTON RECEIVED MY APPEAL - Contents. IV PAGE

CHAPTER XIII. IN WHICH ARE RELATED THE PARTICULARS OF

A QUARREL ----- 249 XIV HOW MR. MERTON WAS AFFECTED BY MY DIS CLOSURE ----- MANOR. Jt Romance. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. HERE died some years ago, in the village of D — — , in Kent, an aged woman, whose history had defied the inquisitiveness of two generations of gossips. Her name was Mrs. Dart rell. At the time of her death she could certainly not have been less than eighty years old ; and it was computed by a reference to some of the graybeards of the place, that she had lived at D — — for upwards of fifty-nine years. Who her husband had been ; what her ante cedents were ; whether her real name was Dartrell or not ; why she lived in such strict VOL. I. I Alanor. 2 privacy ; were questions which had been often asked, but never answered. Nobody knew anything about her. Nobody visited her. Not that her face was unfamiliar.

Chapter I. Ashleigh Manor

|N the south-eastern coast of England, about a mile from the sea, there stands, and will probably' stand for many years to come, a curiously built house called Ashleigh Manor. In what year the house was built is not known. The complications of what I must call its " style " would puzzle an architect to discriminate. The nucleus of the building was probably a small house constructed in a pre-Elizabethan age. The posterity of the first occupant of the place multiplying, wings were added to enlarge the accommodation. To these wings fresh apartments were added yet ; and still more rooms were found necessary. Step by step, new wings, new cham bers, new abutments planted their encroach ing feet upon the land. By the time the Ashleigh Alanor. 9 builders had finished with their additions, the house had become as heterogeneous as a dozen different styles of architecture could make it.

Yet despite the complexities of its ornature and fashion, the house — if, indeed, such a composite babel of a building can be called a house — is one to be admired. In the first place it is wonderfully picturesque. Its ruggedness would, perhaps, better harmonise with a mountainous district than with the flat, verdant, highly-cultivated plains which stretch with long and easy undulations to the cliff. Time has wielded his magic brush, and made the building lovely with a hundred mellow tints. Many windows flash back the sparkling beams of the sun. To the right the wings are castellated. To the left they stand with plain level tops, decreasing in height, and terminating in a single spacious apartment. The house is situated in the centre of a large park, which represents but a small portion of the whole estate.

Elm and chest nut and oak tower high and completely shut out the building from the highway. To do it justice, you must stand full in the centre of the avenue, and choose a summer evening for your inspection, when the trees are heavy and slumberous with leaves, and when the wester- The Alystery of Ashleigh Alanor. 10 ing sun levels its crimson rules of light upon the castellated wings, turning their windows into ruby-coloured flames, and steeping the upper stories in purple, but leaving the eastern side cold, and gloomy and rugged in the cool and darkling shadows. It was on a summer's evening when I received my first impression of Ashleigh Manor. Though full of timidity and embarrassment as I crept with a beating heart along the well-crushed gravel of the avenue, I had yet sufficient nerve to admire with delight the imposing spectacle of the house as it rose in its solemn strength and splendid ruggedness before me.

The rooks were cawing over head ; but there was a deep stillness under the twilight of the trees, where the velvet sward stretched like a carpet, green and cool and moist. The upper windows of the house were resplendent with crimson suns, each with a little glory radiating from it like burning threads of gold. At the first blush the building looked larger than it was. It seemed to me a confused pile of masonry, heaped with a certain rich artistic negligence : a rude and rugged poem in stone. The hall door was small, but solid and studded with nobs of black iron like the portal of a dungeon. Ashleigh Alanor. 11 Four short but massive and handsome pillars supporting a covered arch of stone formed the portico. On either side the door were two tall windows, of which the burnished, many-paned glass lay level with the wall, like the windows of the red-brick Georgian school of building.

With the flint-work stretching a few feet beyond these windows terminated the original house — the nucleus of the present pile. From its narrow dimensions it was easy to guess the prodigious amount of masonry of which it had been the parent. What was I, a young girl of eighteen, drooping under the weight of a small bag, doing alone in that avenue ? My answer is, I had been engaged as governess by Mrs. Merton. I felt very nervous. I had walked from Ashleigh, where the coach had set me down : and having passed through the ordeal of cer tain interrogatories from the black-browed janitor who guarded the entrance to the estate, was now timorously advancing to the house. My heart beat quickly. I was very young and inexperienced : and the spectacle of the great wing-flanked building oppressed me with a troublesome sense of insignificance and Manor. 12 unworthiness.

What reception should I get ? Would not Mrs. Merton think me very bold and self-satisfied to consider myself qualified to hold the place of governess in such a lordly house as hers ? The moment my eye rested on the building, I involuntarily exclaimed, " Had I known it was such a great place, I should never have dared accept the lady's offer." It was too late, however, to draw back now. I mounted the short flight of steps and pulled the bell with a nervous hand. After a long interval which made me imagine that I had come to the wrong door — I was sure that there was another entrance by having re marked a carriage-drive branching off from the avenue along which I had advanced — the door was opened and a man-servant stood forth dressed in a suit of black. He looked at me ; I looked at him. I hardly knew what to say, how to introduce myself.

He glanced civilly enough from my face to my bag, and with a short cough asked what I might want. " I am Miss Malcolmson, the governess ;" I replied. "Oh, please step in, miss," he exclaimed with alacrity "You ought to have come to the other door, round by the west wing, Ashleigh Manor. 13 miss, and you wouldn't have been kept wait ing." I entered and found myself in a narrow hall, strangely out of keeping with the size of the house. A few sombre pictures in gloomy frames hung around it, and made it yet narrower by their projection. Light was admitted by a small stained glass window. I cast my eyes around and saw that there were several doors ranged on either side of the hall. I could not help wondering that the last architect who had dealt with Ashleigh Manor had not enlarged the hall into a proper correspondency with the dimensions of the building.

I could see no staircase ; with its range of closed doors the hall, or passage rather, was a veritable cul de sac. The footman led me to the uttermost door of the left-hand range and admitted me into a small room plainly furnished, and asked me to be seated whilst he went and told Mrs. Saunders that I was come. Who Mrs. Saunders was I knew not ; Mrs. Merton was the name of the lady I had corresponded with. Meanwhile the footman left the room, causing me to wonder where the staircase could be. Facing me was a grim picture Alanor. 14 whose outlines disclosed themselves when my eyes got used to the dim and slowly-dying light. It was a portrait of the celebrated Erasmus of Rotterdam, by whom painted I never gathered; doubtless a copy, and pro bably a poor one, or I question if it would have been hung in an out-of-the-way ante room.

The background was a dead black, the features of the man were yellow and famished like those of a corpse, but his eyes were small and keen and glared upon me with imperturbable severity under the ugly skull cap. In about ten minutes' time the door opened and a well-dressed woman entered. I made sure that she must be the mistress and rose and bowed to her. She was dressed in black silk with a gold chain round her neck, and had rather a stern face, but not wholly unpleasing even at the first view. She curtsied in return to my bow in a very friendly way, and said, " Miss Laura expected you two hours ago." I answered timidly, " I walked rapidly, madam ; I suspect the coach was late." " Oh, pray don't madam me, miss," cried she, heartily. " I am only plain Mrs. Saun- Ashleigh Manor, 15 ders, the housekeeper.

If you have walked from Ashleigh you must be tired. I thought Mrs. Merton would have sent a carriage to meet you, but I wouldn't name it to her, and when you know her you'll understand why. I suppose your luggage will follow ?" "Yes." " Let me carry that bag for you, miss, I was about to beg her not to be at that trouble when she cut me short by taking the bag and going to the door by which she had entered. I followed her. She entered ano ther small room, which communicated with another room yet. "It will take you a week to find your way about," said she, laughing. " The house is like a maze. But there are bells in some of the rooms, and you can always ring should you ever find yourself at a loss. Though after all you won't have anything to do with this part of the house. Mr. and Mrs. Merton occupy the west wing."

We passed through these rooms and I then found myself in a spacious square chamber, furnished like a hall, with a narrow staircase. We went up that staircase which was almost dark, and reached a landing from which three passages diverged. t The Mystery of Ashleigh Manor. 16 I could not help exclaiming, " What a curious house ! It is like the cata combs under Rome." " We are not out of the old part of the building yet," she replied. " The rooms are large and handsome in the wings. I have always said that master ought to knock all these old passages and rooms into a large hall. There would be quite enough rooms left to lodge a regiment of soldiers in. All this part is never occupied." She took the left hand passage, and having walked some distance down it, she turned and went up a staircase.

" Here is your bedroom," she said, halting before a door. " At the end is the room in which you will hear Miss Laura her lessons. It is a very cheerful room; I will show it to you presently." She then ushered me into my bedroom. A fine large apartment it was, with no less than four windows in it. It was at the back of the house and overlooked a wide extent of the grounds. It was comfortably but not very richly furnished. The bedstead was an almost new four-poster, for which I was thank ful, having an insuperable objection to those gaunt black pieces of furniture in whose grim Ashleigh Alanor. 17 arms one is so often compelled to lie in old fashioned houses. The window curtains were of green chintz; the carpet was a warm thick Brussels; there were a few cheerful oil paint ings, sea and country pieces, around the walls, and some pretty china, with a handsome clock, on the mantelpiece.

" I think you'll be comfortable here," said Mrs. Saunders. " The room is very cheer ful in the morning, for it gets the sun upon it." " I am sure I shall be very comfortable," I answered. " This will be Miss Laura's room," she continued, going to a door which led from my apartment. I peeped in and saw a pretty little bedroom. " Does she always sleep there?" I asked. " No, she sleeps now near her mamma. It is Mrs. Merton's wish that Miss Laura should be with you. Before I leave you to see if Mrs. Merton has come in, would you like to look at your sitting-room?" I answered, "Yes," and she led me down the passage and into a large semi-circular chamber filled with red velvet chairs and couches, with an immense old-fashioned mirror over the mantelpiece. At the end of the room was VOL. I. The Alystery of Ashleigh Alanor. 18 an oak bookcase lined with volumes; and in the centre a walnut-wood table, on which stood a very elegant bronze-stemmed candle lamp.

There were two tall windows furnished with lace curtains. Through them I saw the red sun throbbing behind the trees, streaking the deep evening sky with gorgeous tints of rose and gold and green. " This is a beautiful room," I exclaimed, looking around. " I like it very much." " It is meant for you, miss. It will be your living-room. You and Miss Laura will breakfast and dine here. Of an evening, I believe, you will go to the drawing-room and sit with Mr. and Mrs. Merton until it is time to go to bed." The programme suited me. I felt that I should be very independent with this hand some cheerful room to myself. " Now," said Mrs. Saunders, " I'll go and tell Mrs. Merton you have come, while you take off your things. She is sure to want to see you as soon as ever she hears that you are here : and as she's very impatient, perhaps you won't mind being ready for me by the time I come back."

" I will take care to be ready," I replied. I returned to my bedroom, whilst she went Ashleigh Manor. 19 down stairs. It took me a very few moments to remove my bonnet and smooth my hair. but it was nearly a quarter of an hour before Mrs. Saunders returned to conduct me down stairs. Let me take advantage of the interval to detain you in a brief chat about the causes which had led to my undertaking the position of governess to Miss Laura Merton, of Ash leigh Manor. -■>

Chapter II. Containing

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF MY EARLY LIFE. T is true enough and natural enough, too, that people are always anxious to see you independent when your de pendence is a tax upon their income. Papa and mamma are the only persons who do not sincerely grudge the bread they cut and the butter they spread for you. Beyond them, little kindness is done that is not charity. And what charity is more acidulated than that which comes from relations ? How bitter is an aunt's bread ! how tasteless a cousin's mutton ! how unpalatable the flavour of the cup which even, God help us ! a sister's, a brother's hand proffers ! It should be other wise — but is it ? Who truly represent and substantially compose what is called, the hard, cold world ? Are they not your relations ? Ask yonder old man of business who helped him in his early struggles.

Was it Mary his sister, Jack his old playmate and cousin, Uncle Darby and Aunt Joan, folks who could have helped him had they chosen ? Or was it Smith, and Jones, and Brown ? Be independent of your relations and they will coax and court, flatter and fawn, and talk of you to their friends, and have you at their tables, and press gifts upon you. But be in want, and they will shun you, their doors will be closed against you, your faded shawl is the signal for downcast eyes, your worn coat serves you like an invisible mantle if they meet you in the streets. Or at most their charities will be of such a souring kind as will make you despise and scorn yourself for not having fortitude enough to remain hungry in the independency of want — for poverty has its freedom : is not the wide world the beg gar's home ? — rather than touch the niggardly gift they offer with wrinkled noses and averted faces.

My mother and father dying when I was eight years old, I was made pretty keenly to feel how cruel and galling is the dependence that owes its support to the care of relations. I was taken charge of by my aunt, my mo- 77/f Mystery of Ashleigh Alanor. 22 ther's sister. Mrs. Wellwood was of a very different nature from my mother. Had she married a kind and loving husband I daresay she would have been much more womanly in many respects, with softer and fairer opinions of the world, and a more genial address. But, unhappily, Mr. Wellwood, who died six years after their nuptials, had been a man of a very coarse nature, though sprung from a respectable Dorsetshire family. His temper, which was naturally violent, had been aggra vated by drink, a vice which in those days was esteemed a decoration. That fashion has been reversed in this age ; and I am told that drunkenness is considered by gentlemen as low and unmanly as swearing and ill-manners towards women.

Mr. Wellwood had been a flourishing far mer when he courted my aunt, and she had been greatly applauded by her father and mother for accepting his hand. Whereas my mother had been guilty of the unpardonable sin of marrying for love ; which is another way for saying that Mr. Malcolmson was poor. Yet poor as he was, he contrived to sup port his wife and child whilst he lived without being indebted to his relatives for a single farthing. And had his health been better Ave should have made a far more respectable figure than we did ; though we could well afford to dispense with superfluous splendour, since the brightest and most imperishable wealth was ours — I mean love ; a more de voted couple than my father and mother never came together, and although I was but eight years old when I found myself an orphan I still clearly remember the deep and happy love that shone in their eyes when they looked on one another, and the world of tenderness and kisses they showered upon me, the little sunny-haired pledge of their pure affection.

Though my aunt had a great deal more money than my mother when she began her married life, she was far from happy. Shortly after her baby was born, Mr. Wellwood began to indulge in that intemperate habit of drink which afterwards cost him his life. Then commenced a very sorrowful career for Mrs. Wellwood. Her husband neglected his farm: and in proportion as the value of his property decayed his taste for extravagance increased : so that in a few years he had lowered a flourishing concern which had yielded him no less than twelve hundred a year into a mort gaged jeopardised estate, fromwhich the family barely drew a sufficient income to enable them to support life with decency. His death un questionably saved my aunt and her son from absolute beggary ; for when his complicated affairs were examined the lawyers discovered, after the property had been sold and the credi tors paid, enough money would remain to yield the widow an income of about two hundred a year ; which was a very tolerable living in those days of cheap comforts and moderate house-rents.

But my aunt had been made poor in another sense than that implied by the loss of money. She had had her good nature spoiled, her temper soured, and her heart made sullen beneath the dark shadow which her husband's behaviour and loose course of life had thrown over her. I ought, perhaps, to think kindly of her, for she took me in when I was friendless and alone in the world and kept me for ten years. Yet I should be very hypo critical were I to pretend to recall her with any degree of tenderness. She treated me with great harshness. She always gave me to know in the most heartless and passionate way that I was a dependent, a pauper, who had no right to be eating her son's bread. I should have been less broken-spirited by her Aly Early Life. 25 treatment had we been alone, for her outbreaks though frequent were not incessant.

Some times I went a month without hearing from her that I was a beggar : and these breathing spaces would have given me time to have plucked up my heart again, for a child's spirit cannot be long depressed. But her son took up her song when she had ceased, and baited and worried and wounded me incessantly with his insinuations or down-right charges of pauperism and dependence. This son was named Henry. Nature had supplemented the character which he inherited from his father, with a few original qualities un possessed by either parent. He could lie with astonishing gravity and assurance : and as lies generally presuppose something vicious or wrongful to conceal, so when I assure you that he was constantly telling falsehoods you may judge how numerous were the naughty actions of which he was guilty.

Mrs. Wellwood did not send him to school ; nor was he regularly taken to church. He was much neglected, and so was I, for the matter of that. Happily for me, I was somewhat a precocious child, and thanks to my mother's careful training I was as far advanced at eight years of age as a good many girls are at sixteen. Having nothing to do all day long at my aunt's, I read and studied a great deal, and by this means got to lay in a larger stock of information than I should have acquired had I been sent to school ; for I studied for my pleasure and understood and relished what I read ; whereas had I had a teacher I might have been put to many un palatable and therefore unprofitable tasks. I will hurry over this part of my life. It has nothing to do with my story, nor is the memory of it at all agreeable.

I will not positively affirm that my aunt treated me cruelly, but she made me suffer a very great deal through my sensitiveness. She was a passionate woman, and did not at all care what she said, nor reflect how her bitter words might rankle and fester in my young heart. All those hard years were spent by me in an anxious longing for liberty — one deep desire to get away from my hard-hearted relatives. The mother gave all the love she was capable of feeling to her son. I cried a great deal in secret, and was for ever planning to leave the house, and seek a living in the world. There were times when, had I been offered a servant's place, I should unhesitatingly have accepted it. To make matters worse, when I was in my seven teenth year, my cousin took it into his head to fall in love with me.

Had he been an honest, kind-hearted young man I should have liked him none the worse for the com pliment he paid me — though, let his character have been what it would, I never could have had any other feeling towards him than that of cousinly kindness. He was not only de formed in the legs, but exceedingly plain in the face, being, indeed, a grotesque portrait of his father who, in his palmiest days, was never tolerable-looking. But Master Henry not only drank like his father before him, but was abnormally passionate, deceitful, and sinister in his nature ; besides, he had treated me with great cruelty when I had first come to live with his mother, and I could not for give him for it. It took me some time to understand the nature of the change that came over him when he fell in love ; I could not guess what he meant by following me about with his eyes, and staring at me, and breathing quickly when he took my hand on meeting in the morning or parting at night.

But one day he came home flushed with drink, and find ing me alone, sat down by my side, and in a Manor. 28 tearful voice said that he was in love with me, and asked if I would marry him. I hardly knew how I answered. I was much disgusted by his manner, and heartily offended at his daring to fall in love with me. At all events my reply made him terribly angry ; he swore at me after the manly and genteel fashion of those days, and left me. What he told his mother I know not. I don't think she suspected what had passed between us, but I noticed that her severity towards me increased from that day, and I clearly saw the time was at hand when it would be quite impossible for me to remain any longer under her roof. One morning I accidentally found a news paper which Master Henry had brought home Avith him, probably from one of the alehouses, and, in looking over it, I came across an ad vertisement for a governess.

Up to that moment the notion that I might get my living by teaching had never entered my head. But when I read that advertise ment, and observed how slight were the quali fications demanded, and how the age of the person wanted corresponded with my own, I determined to answer it. I remember that I was so greatly excited I could scarce hold my pen, and several sheets of letter paper were destroyed before I could produce a composition that satisfied me. I wrote with all the candour of a young and inexperienced girl. I told the advertiser who my parents were, that I was an orphan, that my acquirements were limited, but that what I knew I knew thoroughly ; that I was very anxious to earn a living for myself, and that I was quite sure I would suit if she would but grant me a trial. I gave the missive to the letter-carrier when he called, and for five days lived in a torture of suspense.

Then came the answer. The letter was sealed with an imposing crest, and I blushed at my intrepidity when I read my own name on the packet. My aunt was present ; she eyed the letter sullenly, but made no comment. The terms of the enclosure were sufficiently brief: " Mrs. Merton presents her compliments to Miss Malcolmson, and begs to inform her that she will be happy to entertain her appli cation for the situation offered in the adver tisement referred to, if Miss Malcolmson will send her a testimonial from the clergyman of the parish in which she resides. On receipt of the testimonial Mrs. Merton will, if she Alanor. 30 finds it desirable, enter into other particulars respecting the situation." This was the answer. I read it with a flushed face and beating heart ; and making an effort to steady my voice, said to my aunt, " I have been thinking for some time that I have no right to burden you with my support any longer.

I saw an advertisement the other day for a governess, and answered it. Here is the lady's reply." I handed her the letter. She read it, and said to me, in a more friendly tone than I ever remembered her using to me before, " I am glad you are making this effort. It has also occurred to me for some time that my income will hardly sustain the charge of your keep much longer. Harry has grown extravagant, and things are much dearer than they were when you first came to me. Mr. Marlow," she added, mentioning the name of the vicar, " will give you the testimonial you require, I am sure. You are regular at church, and that must have pleased him. If you like I will also write a letter to Mrs. Merton which you can enclose. You may leave it to me to sound your praises." I saw that she was delighted at the prospect of getting rid of me ; but I had not her bad taste to let her see how rejoiced I was at the prospect of leaving her.