Menfreya in the Morning

1

To see Menfreya at its best was to see it in the morning. I discovered this for the first time at dawn in the house on No Man’s Island, when away to the east the scarlet-stained clouds were throwing a pinkish sheen on the sea, and the water which lapped about the island was like pearl-gray rippled silk.

The morning seemed more peaceful because of the night of fear through which I had passed, the scene more delightful because of my nightmares. As I stood at the open window, the sea and the mainland before me, with Menfreya standing on the cliff top, I felt as elated by all that beauty as by the fact that I had come safely through the night.

The house was like a castle with its turrets, buttresses and machicolated towers—a landmark to sailors, who would know where they were when they saw that pile of ancient stones. They could be silver-gray at noon when the sun picked out sharp flints in the walls and made them glitter like diamonds; but never did Menfreya look so splendid as when touched with the rosy glow of sunrise.

Menfreya had been the home of the Menfreys for centuries. I had secretly christened them the Magic Menfreys because that was how they seemed to me—different from ordinary people, striking in appearance, strong, vital people. I had heard them called the Wild Menfreys, and according to A’Lee—the butler at Chough Towers—they were not only wild but wicked. He had tales to tell of the present Sir Endelion. The Menfreys had names which seemed strange to me but not, apparently, to Cornishmen, for these names were part of the ancient history of the duchy. Sir Endelion had abducted Lady Menfrey when she was a young girl of not more than fifteen, had brought her to Menfreya and kept her there until her reputation was ruined and her family only too glad to agree to the marriage. “Not for love,” said A’Lee.

“Don’t make no mistake about that, Miss Harriet. It were the money that he were after. One of the biggest heiresses in the country, they say; and the Menfreys needed the money.”

When I saw Sir Endelion riding about Menfrey stow I thought of him as a young man, looking exactly like his son Bevil, abducting the heiress and riding with her to Menfreya — poor terrified girl, little more than a child, yet completely fascinated by the wild Sir Endelion.

His hair was tawny and reminded me of a lion’s mane. He still had an eye for the women, so said A’Lee; it was a failing among the Menfreys; many of them had come to grief —men and women—through their love affairs.

Lady Menfrey, the heiress, was quite unlike the rest of the family; she was fair and frail, a gentle lady who concerned herself with the poor of the district. She had meekly accepted her fate when she passed her fortune into her bus-hand’s bands. And with that, said A’Lee, he soon began to play ducks and drakes.

She proved to be a disappointment—apart from the money—for the Menfreys had always been heavy breeders, and she had only one son, Bevil, and then there had been a gap of five years before she produced Gwennan. Not that she had not made efforts in between. The poor lady had had a miscarriage almost every year, and continued to do so for some years after Gwennan’s birth.

As soon as I saw Bevil and heard that he was the image of what his father had been in bis youth, I knew why Lady Menfrey had allowed herself to be abducted. Bevil had the same coloring as his father and the most attractive eyes I had ever seen. They were of the same reddish-brown tint as his hair; but it wasn’t the color which made one aware of them. I suppose it was an expression. They looked on the world and everyone in it with assurance, amusement and an indifference as though nothing was worth caring deeply about. For me, Bevil was the most fascinating member of a fascinating household.

Gwennan, his sister, I knew best of them all, for she was my age and we had become friends. She had that immense vitality and the arrogance which appeared to be inherent. We used to lie on the cliffs among the sea pinks and gorse bushes and talk—or rather she talked and I listened.

“In St. Neot’s church there’s a glass window,” she once told me. “It’s been there for hundreds of years and on it there’s a picture of St. Brychan and his twenty-four children. There’s St Ive and Menfre and Endelient… . Menfre, that’s obviously us, and Papa’s name came from Endelient. And Gwennan was Brychan’s daughter; so now you know… ”

“And what about Bevil?”

“Bevil!” She spoke his name with reverence. “He’s named after Sir Bevil Granville, who was the greatest soldier in Cornwall. He fought against Oliver Cromwell.”

“Well then,” I said, knowing a little more history than she did, “he didn’t win.”

“Of course he won,” she retorted scornfully.

“But Miss James says the King lost his bead and Cromwell ruled.”

She was typically Menfrey; imperiously she waved aside Miss James and the history books. “Bevil always won,” she declared, and that settled it.

Now the walls of the house were changing color again; the rosy tint was fading and they were silvery in the bright dawn. I gazed at the outline of the coast, at the wicked rocks, sharp as knives and treacherous because they were so often covered by the sea. There was a range of rocks close to the island which were called the Lurkers. Gwennan said this was because they were often completely hidden from sight and were lurking in wait to destroy. any craft that came near them. No Man’s Island, a part of this chain of rocks, was about half a mile from the mainland and nothing more than a hump in the sea, being about half a mile hi circumference; but although there was only one house on it, there was a spring of fresh water, which, again said Gwennan, was the reason the house had been built there. There was some mystery about the house and a reason why no one wanted to live in it, which, I assured myself now, was a good thing; because if there had been a tenant, where should I have spent last night?

It was not a place I should have chosen had there been a choice. Now the house in which no one “wanted to live was filling with comforting light, but even so it was eerie, as though the past had been trapped here and resentfully wanted to catch you and trap you so that you belonged to it.

If I told that to Gwennan she would laugh at me, I could imagine the scorn in her high-pitched, imperious voice. “You! You’re too fanciful. It’s all because of your affliction.”

Gwennan had no compunction about openly discussing subjects which others pretended did not exist. Perhaps that was why I found her company irresistible, although at times it was hurtful.

I was hungry, so I ate a piece of the chocolate which Gwennan had brought for me, and looked about the room. At night the dust sheets had made ghosts of the furniture, and I had wondered whether I would prefer to sleep outside; but the ground was hard and the air chilly, and the noise of the sea, like murmuring voices, was louder and more insistent outside than in. So I had climbed the staircase to one of the bedrooms and lain fully dressed on the covered bed.

I went down to the big stone-floored kitchen; the flags were damp; everything was damp on the island. I washed hi the water I had drawn from the spring the day before; there was a mirror on the wall and as I combed my hair I gazed at my reflection, thinking that it looked different from what it did in my room at home. My eyes looked bigger; that was fear. There was a faint color in my cheeks; that was excitement. My hair was sticking out in all directions; that was because of a disturbed night. It was thick, straight hair that liked to be untidy—the despair of the numerous nannies whose unrewarding fate it had been to direct my childhood, I was plain, and there was no pleasure in looking at my image.

I decided to pass the time in exploring the house to assure myself that I really was alone. The strange noises which had tortured the night were the creaks of boards; the rhythmic advance and retreat of the waves, which could sound like breathing or whispering; or the scamper of rats, for there were rats on the island, Gwennan had said, which came from the ships wrecked on the Lurkers.

The house had been built by the Menfreys a hundred and fifty years ago—for like so much of the district the island belonged to them. There were eight rooms beside the kitchen and outhouses; and the place had recently been furnished, waiting for the tenant who could not be found.

I came into the drawing room with its casement window which looked out to sea. There was no garden, although it appeared that at some time someone had tried to make one. Now the grass grew in patches and there were gorse bushes and brambles everywhere. The Menfreys had not bothered with it and it was useless to, for at high tide the sea covered it.

Having no idea of the time, I came out of the house and ran down to the sandy cove, where I lay gazing at Menfreya and waiting for Gwennan.

The sun was climbing high before she came. I saw her in the cove, which belonged to the Menfreys and which, as a special concession, they allowed the public to use so that it would not be necessary to close part of the shore and force people to make a detour. Three or four boats were kept tied up there, and I watched her get into one and row over. In a short time it was scraping on the sand and, as she scrambled out, I ran to meet her.

“Gwennan,” I screamed.

“Ssh!” she answered. “Someone might hear you—or see you. Go into the house at once.”

She was soon with me, more excited than I had ever seen her; I noticed that she was wearing a cape inside which were enormous pockets, and these bulged with what I guessed to be the food she had promised me.

She was waving a newspaper in her hands. “Look at this,” she cried. “The morning paper. You’re in it! You … on the front page.”

She went to the table and spread out the paper on the dust sheet which covered it.

I stared at it. “M.P.’s daughter missing. Foul play cannot be ruled out, say police.” Beneath the headlines I read: “Henrietta (Harriet), thirteen-year-old daughter of Sir Edward Delvaney, M.P. for the Lansella district of Cornwall, disappeared from her London home two days ago. It is feared that she may have been kidnaped and will be held to ransom.”

Gwennan drew herself onto the table and hugged her knees; her eyes were almost hidden, as they were when her face was creased with amusement.

She pointed at me. “Well, Miss Henrietta (Harriet) Delvaney, you have become important, haven’t you? They’re searching for you. All over London they’re searching. And nobody knows where you are except you and me!”

It was what I had wanted, I supposed; so I had, in a way, achieved my purpose.

I laughed with Gwennan. People were talking about me; the police were searching for me. It was a wonderful moment. But experience bad taught me that wonderful moments did not last. They would find me, and then what would happen? It wouldn’t always be a sunny day. Gwennan would not stay with me. Dusk would come and I should be alone on the island.I had decided to run away on the night of the ball my father was giving in his town house, which was in a quiet Westminster square about five minutes walk from the Houses of Parliament. He had always said that it was part of his parliamentary duties to entertain lavishly and constantly, and whether we were in Westminster or Cornwall there were always guests: dinner parties and balls in London, shooting parties and house parties in Cornwall. Being only thirteen, I was excluded from these affairs. My place was in my own room, from which I would emerge to peer over the banisters down into the hall and gaze on the splendor, or stand at my window and watch the occupants of the carriages as they stepped forth and passed under the red-and-white awning which was set up for the occasion.

Throughout the day the preparations had been going on; thick red carpet had been laid on the steps which led to the front door and along the stretch of pavement on which guests would step when alighting from their carriages; two young women from the florist had been busy all the afternoon putting flowers in vases, and plants in every alcove, cleverly arranging some of them to look as if they were growing out of the walls; leaves and flowers had been entwined in the banisters of the curved and gracious staircase up to the first floor, which was as far as the guests would go.

“It smells like a funeral,” I said to my governess, Miss James.

“Harriet,” she answered, “you are being ghoulish.” And she looked at me with that pained expression which I knew so well.

“But it does smell like a funeral,” I insisted.

“You are a morbid child!” she muttered and turned away.

Poor Miss James. She was thirty and a lady without means of support; and in order to live she must either many or be governess to people like me.

The library was to be the supper room, and the flower decorations there were magnificent. A marble pond had been erected in the center of the room, and in it gold and silver fishes swam, and on the surface water lilies floated. There were draperies of rich purple, the Tory color. In the front drawing room, which was furnished in white, gold and purple, there was a grand piano, for there would be music tonight played by a famous pianist.

I should be able to gaze down at the guests as they mounted the stairs, hoping that none of them would look up and see their host’s daughter, who would he no credit to him. I should be hoping for a glimpse of my father, for it was at such times that I saw a different man from the one I knew. Past fifty, for he had married late in life, he was tall and his dark hair was white at the temples; he had blue eyes which were rather startling in his dark face, and when they looked at me they reminded me of ice. When he was being the host or talking to his constituents or entertaining las guests, those eyes sparkled. He was noted for his wit and the brilliance of his speeches in the House; his remarks were constantly being quoted in the papers. He was rich; and this was why he could afford to be a Member of Parliament Politics was his life. He had a private income from investments, but his great fortune came from steel somewhere in the Midlands. We never mentioned it; he had little to do with it; but it was the great provider.

He was Member for a division of Cornwall, find that was why we had a house near Lansella; we went from London to Cornwall, for when Parliament was not sitting there was the constituency to be “nursed”; and for some strange reason, where my father was, there was I too, though we saw little of each other.

Our town house had a large entrance hall, and on the ground floor the library, dining room and servants’ quarters; on the first floor were two large drawing rooms and the studies; above that were three guest rooms, one of them occupied by William Lister, my father’s secretary, besides my own and my father’s bedroom. On the top floor there were about six servants’ bedrooms.

It was a beautiful Georgian house, and its finest feature, as far as I was concerned, was the staircase, which curled like a serpent from bottom to top of the house and enabled one to look down from the top floor to the hall. But to me it was a cold house. Our house in Cornwall was the same. Any house where he lived would be like that … cold and dead. How different was Menfreya Manor; vital and warm, that was a house where anything could happen, a house that you would always dream of when you were away and never want to leave—a real home.

The London house was elegantly furnished to suit the architecture; so the furniture was eighteenth century and there were few concessions to our Victorian Age. I was always astonished when I went into other houses and saw their ornate furniture and crowded rooms and compared them with our Chippendale and Hepplewhite.

I have forgotten the names of the servants; there were so many of them. I remember Miss James, of course, because she was my governess, and Mrs, Trant the housekeeper and Polden the butler. Those are all the names I can think of— except, of course, Fanny.

But Fanny was different. I didn’t think of her as a servant Fanny was security in a frightening world; when I was bewildered by my father’s coldness I turned to Fanny for explanations; she could not give them, but she could offer comfort; she it was who made me drink my milk and eat my rice puddings; she scolded me and fretted over me so that I did not miss a mother as much as I otherwise would have. She had a sharp face with deep-set, dreaming eyes, hair that was a shade of grayish-brown, and scraped up to a knot on the top of her head so tightly that it looked as though it hurt, a sallow skin and a thin figure; she was about thirty-five and barely five feet tall, and she had always looked the same to me since I was a baby and first aware of her. She spoke with the tongue of the London streets, and when I grew older and she surreptitiously introduced me to those streets, I grew to love them as I loved her.

She had come to the house soon after I was born to act as wet nurse. I don't think they had intended to keep her, but I was apparently a difficult child from the first weeks and I took a fancy to Fanny. So she stayed on as my nurse, and although she was resented by Mrs. Trant, Polden and the nanny-in-chief, Fanny did not care about that—and neither did I.

Fanny was a woman of contrasts. Her sharp, cockney tongue did not fit the dreamy eyes; the stories she told me of her past were a mixture of fantasy and all that was practical. She had been left at an orphanage by persons unknown. “Just by the statue of St. Francis feeding the birds. So they called me Frances—Fanny, for short—Frances Stone. You see, it was a stone statue.” She was not Frances Stone now, because she had married Billy Carter; we didn’t talk much about Billy Carter. He was lying at the bottom of the ocean, she told me once, and she would never see him more in this life. “What’s done’s done,” she would say briskly. “And best forgot.” There were times when she gave herself up to make-believe, and a favorite game of ours when I was six or seven had been telling stories about Fanny before she was left by the statue of St. Francis. She told the stories, and I urged her on. She had been born in a house as grand as ours, but had been stolen by gypsies. She was an heiress, and a wicked uncle left her at the orphanage after substituting a dead child in her father’s house. There were several versions, and they usually ended with: “And we shall never know, Miss Harriet, so drink up your milk, for it’s time you was abed.”

She talked to me about the orphanage too, of the bells which summoned the children to inadequate meals; I saw them clearly in their gingham pinafores, their hands mottled with cold and blotched with chilblains; I saw them bobbing curtsies to those in authority and learning how to be humble.

“But we learned how to read and write, too,” said Fanny, “which is more than some will ever learn.”

“She scarcely ever talked of her baby though; and when she did, she would clutch me to her and hold my head down so that I shouldn’t see her face. “It was a little girl; she lived only an hour. It was all I’d gone through over Billy.”

Billy was dead; the baby was dead. “And then,” said Fanny, “I come to you.”

She used to take me to St. James’s Park, and there we would feed the ducks or sit on the grass while I persuaded her to tell more versions of her early life. She introduced me to a London I had never known existed. It was a secret, she said; for it would never do for any of Them—the people at home—to know where she took me on our outings. We went to the markets, where the costers had their stalls; gripping me tightly by the hand, she would pull me along, as excited as I was by these people who screamed the virtues of their wares in raucous voices which I could not understand. I remember the shops with old clothes hanging outside— the queer, musty, unforgettable smell; the old women selling pins and buttons, whelks, gingerbread and cough drops. Once she bought me a baked potato, which seemed the most delicious food I had ever had until I tasted roasted chestnuts hot from the embers.

“Don’t you tell anyone where you’ve been,” she warned me; and the secrecy made it the more exciting.

There was ginger beer, sherbet and lemonade to be bought, and once we tossed with a pieman. It was an old custom with piemen, Fanny told me; and we stood and watched a young coster and his girl toss the penny and lose, so that they got no pie; Fanny, greatly daring, tossed her penny and we won. We carried the pie to St. James’s Park and sat by the pond devouring every morsel.

“But you haven’t seen the market of a Saturday night That’s the time,” said Fanny. “Perhaps when you’re older …”

It was something to plan for.

I loved the market with its costermongers, whose faces portrayed all the parts one would find in a morality play. There was lust and greed, sloth and cunning in those faces; and occasionally saintliness. Fanny was most excited by the tricksters; she would want to stand and watch the juggler add the conjuror, the sword- and flame-swallowers.

Fanny had shown me a new world, which was right on our doorsteps, although so many people seemed unaware of it The only occasion when the two worlds met was on a Sunday afternoon when, sitting at my window, I would hear the bell of the muffin man and see him coming across the square with his tray on his head and the white-capped and -aproned maids running out to buy from him.

That was my life up to the night of the ball.

On such occasions everyone in the house was pressed into helping, and Fanny was called into the kitchen for the afternoon and evening; Miss James was helping the housekeeper, and I was alone.

My Aunt Clarissa was staying with us because my father needed a hostess. I disliked my Aunt Clarissa—who was my father’s sister—as much as she disliked me. She was constantly comparing me with her three daughters—Sylvia, Phyllis and Clarissa—who were all golden-haired, blue-eyed and, according to her, beautiful. She was going to be very busy bringing them out, and I was to join them in this fearsome necessity for all young ladies. I knew I was going to hate it as much as Aunt Clarissa dreaded it.

So the fact that Aunt Clarissa was in the house was an additional reason why I wanted to be out of it.

I had wandered about the house miserably all day, and on the stairs I met my Aunt Clarissa. “My goodness me, Harriet” she cried. “Look at your hair! You always look as if you’ve been pulled through a bush backwards. Your cousins don’t have trouble with their hair. They would never go about looking as you do, I can assure you.”

“Oh, they are the three graces.”

“Don’t be insolent, Harriet. I should have thought that you might have taken special pains with your hair, seeing that…”

“Seeing that I’m deformed?”

She was shocked. “What nonsense. Of course, you’re not But I should have thought you might …”

I went limping upstairs into my room. She mustn’t know how deeply I cared. None of them must, for then it would be quite unbearable.

In my room I stood before the mirror; I lifted my long gray merino skirt and I looked at my legs and feet. There was nothing to show that one leg was shorter than the other; it was only when I walked that I appeared to drag one behind the other. It had always been like that, from the disappointing day I was born. Disappointing! That was a mild way of expressing it It was a hateful day, a tragic day for everyone, including myself. I knew nothing about it until later, when I began to discover that I was not quite like other children. As if it was not bad enough to be the cause of your mother’s death, you had to be made imperfectly as well. I remember hearing it said of some great beauty—Lady Hamilton, I think—that God was in a glorious mood when he made her. “Well,” I retorted, “He must have been in a bad temper when He made me!”

Sometimes I wished that I had been born anyone but Harriet Delvaney. When Fanny took me into the park and I saw other children, I always envied them. I envied almost everybody—even the dirty children of the man with the barrel organ, who used to stand beside him looking pitiful while the little brown monkey held out the red cap for pennies. Everybody, I thought in those days, was more fortunate than Harriet Delvaney.

I had been told by several nannies under whom Fanny had served that I was a bad, wicked girl. I had a good home, plenty to eat a kind father, a good nanny, and I was not satisfied.

I did not walk until I was four years old. I was taken to doctors who meddled with my legs and had long discussions about what was to be done and shook their heads over me. I was given this treatment and that; my father used to come and look at me, and there was something in his eyes which told me he would rather look at anything than at me, but he forced himself to pretend he liked doing it.

I remember one day when I was hi the garden of my Aunt Clarissa’s house near Regent’s Park. It was strawberry time, and we had been eating the fruit with sugar and cream near the summerhouse. All the women had parasols and big shady hats to protect their complexions, and because it was Phyllis’s birthday there were several children on the lawn and they were running about playing together. I was seated on my chair with my offending, hateful legs stretched out before me. I had come in the carriage and been carried into the garden by one of the footmen and placed hi the chair where I might watch the other children.

I heard Aunt Clarissa’s voice: “Not a very pleasant child. I suppose one must make excuses …”

I did not understand what she meant, although I stored up the remark to ponder on later; when I think of that day I remember the scent of strawberries; the delicious mingling of fruit, sugar and cream, and legs … the strong legs of other children.

I can still recall the great determination which came to me as I almost fell out of the chair and stood on my own legs and walked.

It was a miracle, said the kind ones. Others thought I could have done it before and had been pretending all the time. The doctors were astonished.

I could only totter at first; but from that day I walked. I do not know whether I could have walked before or not; all I can remember is that sudden sense of determination and of gratifying power as I tottered toward those children.

I gradually learned my pathetic little story, mostly from the servants who had worked hi the house before my birth.

“She was too old to have children. Could you wonder … Having Miss Harriet killed her. Operation … Them instruments … Well, it’s dangerous. Lost her and saved the child. But there’s her with that leg. As for him … he was never the same again. Idolized her … Of course, they’d only been married a year or two. Whether it ‘ud have lasted, him being what he is … No wonder he can’t abide the child, though. Now, if she’d been like Miss Phyllis or one of her cousins … Makes you think, don’t it? Money ain’t everything.”

There was my story in those few words. Sometimes I imagined that I was” a saint who went about the world doing good and everyone loved me. They said: “Well, she’s no beauty, but one must make excuses and she’s very good.”

But I wasn’t good. I was jealous of my cousins with their pretty pink faces and their silky, golden hair; I was angry with my father who couldn’t abide me because my coming into the world sent my mother out of it. I was difficult with the servants because I was sorry for myself.

The only people with whom I felt I could be humble and perhaps learn to be good were the Menfreys; it was not that they took much notice of me, but to me they were the Magic Menfreys, living in the most exciting house I had ever seen, perched on the cliffs opposite No Man’s Island, which belonged to them and about which there was a story I had yet to discover. Our house was the nearest to theirs—much more modern—a mansion in which my father could entertain and look after the constituency. The Menfreys were his great friends. “They must be cultivated,” I had heard him say to his secretary William Lister. “They carry great influence in the constituency.” So the Menfreys were to be tended like, flowers in the greenhouse.

And it was only necessary to look at them—all of them— to believe in their influence. William Lister had said that they were larger than life. It was the first time I had heard the phrase, and it fitted well.

The family were very ready to be friendly with us; they worked for father during the elections; they entertained him, and he entertained them. They were the lords of the district, and when Sir Endelion told his tenants to vote, they voted and for the candidate he favored; if not, they need not expect to remain his tenants.

When we went to Cornwall some of the servants accompanied us, while Mrs. Trant and Polden stayed in London with a skeleton staff; Miss James, Nanny and Fanny, among others, came with us; and in Cornwall we had a resident butler and housekeeper—husband and wife, the A’Lees — who went with the furnished house we rented, which was very convenient.

I was allowed to go to tea at Menfreya, and Gwennan came to have tea with me at Chough Towers. She would ride over with one of the grooms from Menfreya, and it was during one of these visits that I learned to ride and discovered that I was happier in the saddle than anywhere else because then my defect was unimportant; I felt normal on horseback. The nearest I had ever been to complete pleasure was riding along those Cornish lanes, uphill, downhill, and I never grew in the least blase in my appreciation of the scenery. I always caught my breath in wonder when, reaching the top of a steep hill, I had a sudden glimpse of the sea.

I envied Gwennan for living permanently in such a place. She liked to hear about London, and I enjoyed telling her. In return I made her talk about Menfreya and the Menfreys, but most of all about Bevil.

As I stood in front of my mirror after the encounter with Aunt Clarissa on the stairs, I started to think of Menfreya with a longing which went so deep that it was like a pain.

I was leaning over the banisters. There was music in the front drawing room, but it was almost drowned by the hum of voices and the sudden bursts of laughter. It was as though the house had come to life; it was no longer cold; all these voices, all this laughter changed it.

I was in my flannelette nightgown with a red twill dressing gown over it; my feet were bare, for slippers could betray with the padding sound they made. It was not that any of the servants would have scolded me for peeping over the banisters, but that I liked to pretend I was not the least bit interested in my father’s entertainments.

Sometimes I dreamed that he sent for me and that I went limping into the room. The Prime Minister was there and he talked to me; he and everyone was astonished by my wit and understanding. My father’s eyes were warm and sparkling because he was so proud of me.

What a foolish dream!

That night, as I leaned against the banisters sniffing the beeswax and turpentine with which they were polished, I overheard the conversation between Aunt Clarissa and a man who was a stranger to me. They were talking about my father.

“Quite brilliant…”

“The P.M. seemed to think so.”

“Oh, yes. Sir Edward’s heading for the Cabinet. Mark my words.”

“Dear Edward.” That was Aunt Clarissa, “He deserves a little luck.”

“Luck! I should have thought he had had his share. He must be an extremely wealthy man.”

“He has never been happy since his wife died.”

“He has been a widower now for many years, has he not? A wife would have been useful to him. I wonder … he didn’t marry again.”

“Marriage was such a tragic experience, and in a way, Edward’s a born bachelor.”

“I hear there’s a child.”

I felt my face grow hot with fury at the note hi Aunt Clarissa’s voice as she said: “Oh yes, there’s a child. Henrietta. We call her Harriet.”

“There is some misfortune?”

Aunt Clarissa was whispering; then her voice was loud again. “I often think it was a pity she wasn’t taken and Sylvia left. Having the child killed her, you know. They had only been married a few years, but she was in her late thirties. They wanted a son, of course. And this girl …”

“Still, she must be a compensation to him.”

A cruel laugh. A whisper. Then: “It’s going to be my task to bring her out when the time comes. My Phyllis and Sylvia—named for her aunt—are about the same age, but the difference … ! How I shall find a husband for Harriet I do not know … in spite of the money.”

“Is she so very unattractive?”

“She has nothing … simply nothing.”

Fanny had told me that listeners never hear good of themselves. How right she was! I had heard that I was wicked, that I suffered from tantrums, that I should go to hell. This from my various nannies. But I had never heard anything that was quite so wounding as that conversation between Aunt Clarissa and the unknown man. For long afterwards I could not bear the smell of beeswax and turpentine because I associated it with abject misery.

I could no longer watch, so I left the banisters and sped to my room.

I had already learned that when one is very unhappy it is advisable to turn from one’s sorrow and plan something … anything that will make one forget. How stupid I was to dream as I did, for in those dreams I never saw myself as I actually was. I was always a heroine; even the color of my hair changed. Instead of being dark brown, it was golden; my eyes, instead of being green, were blue; my nose was neat and straight instead of tiptilted in a way which adds piquancy to some faces but merely looked incongruous with my dour expression.

Plan something quickly, I said to myself; and the answer came promptly: They don’t want me here, so I’ll run away.

Where to? There was only one place I wanted to run to. That was Menfreya.

“I’ll go to Menfreya,” I said aloud.

I refused to think of what I should do when I arrived because if I did, the plan would founder right at the start, and I must shut out the sound of cruel voices saying cruel words. I must do something quickly.

I could catch a train from Paddington. I had money in my moneybox which would be enough to buy the ticket, and that was all that mattered. All I had to think of now was getting to Menfreya; when I arrived I would make further plans. I could not stay in this house; every time I walked down the stairs I should hear those voices. Aunt Clarissa was worried about finding a husband for me. Well, I would save her that bother.

When should I go? How could I make sure of not being missed for long enough to be able to get on that train? It needed careful planning.

So while in the drawing rooms below me they listened to the music Papa had provided for the occasion and enjoyed all the delicacies that were served in the supper room, while they talked together of politics and my father’s chances in the Cabinet, I lay in my bed and thought of how I should run away.

My chance came the next day when everyone was weary. There were bad tempers in the kitchen; Miss James was irritable. I always thought that, since reading Jane Eyre, she thought that my father was going to marry her; and after occasions like last night’s party that possibility would seem more remote than usual. She retired to her room at six o’clock complaining of a headache, and this gave me my opportunity, so, calmly putting on my cape with the hood, the money, which I had taken from my moneybox, in my pocket, I slipped out of the house. I boarded an omnibus— the first time I had ever done this alone—and one or two people looked at me curiously, but I pretended to take no notice of them. I knew it was the right omnibus, because it said “Paddington” on the side, so I calmly asked for a ticket to the station. It was easier than I had imagined.

I knew the station because I had been there with Papa, although I had never before been there in the evening. I bought my ticket, but when I was told I had an hour and three quarters to wait before the tram came in, I was horrified. That was the longest hour and three quarters I bad ever known. I sat down on one of the seats near the barrier and watched the people, terrified that at any moment someone would come running in, searching for me.

But no one came, and in time the train was there. I boarded it, finding it very different from traveling first class with Papa. The seats were wooden and uncomfortable, but I was on the train, on my way to Menfreya, and that was all that mattered just at that time.

I sat in my corner seat and no one noticed me. I was thankful that it was night; I dozed and woke up to find we had come as far as Exeter; then I began to ask myself what I was going to do when I reached Menfreya. Was I going to walk into the hall to tell the butler that I had arrived for a visit? I imagined being taken to Lady Menfrey, who would immediately inform my father that I had come. I should be taken back, punished, forbidden ever to do such a thing again. And what would have been gained more than the preliminary excitement of the adventure?

How characteristic of me to rush into something and then ask myself where I was going. I was impulsive and foolish. No wonder they said I was difficult. I was hungry; I was tired and depressed. I wished that I was in my own room, even though Aunt Clarissa might come in at any moment and look at me in that way which told me she was comparing me with Phyllis or one of the others.

By the time we arrived at Liskeard I realized that I had done a very foolish thing. But I could not turn back now. When I traveled with Papa, A’Lee brought the carriage to the station and we drove the rest of the way. Now there was no carriage so I bought a ticket for the branch line. There was a train which met the London express. It was waiting so I hurried to it.

We waited in the station for almost half an hour, which gave me time to plan what I would do. While we made the short journey it occurred to me that, as so few people were on the train, I might be recognized and stopped. Although we didn’t travel on this line, Papa was well known in the district, and I may have been pointed out as his daughter.

At Menfrey stow I left the train. There were not more than a dozen people, and I huddled close to them as we passed the little barrier and lowered my head as I handed in my ticket. I was free. But what now?

I had to make my way to the sea and then walk about a mile along the cliff path. There would be few people out at this hour of the morning.

The little town of Menfrey stow was still sleeping. The winding, high street—which was almost all there was of it— was quite deserted; the curtains were drawn in most of the houses, and the few shops were bolted and barred. I smelt the sea and struck out towards the harbor where the fishing boats were anchored: and as I passed the fish shed where the catch was sold I saw the nets spread out and the lobster pots, and in spite of my uncertainty I experienced a moment of happiness. I always felt as though I belonged here, although I did not. for my father had not rented the house until he became M.P. for Lansella and its district, and that could only have been some six years before. I stepped carefully over the iron rings to which the thick, salty ropes were attached; I told myself I was foolish to have come to the harbor. The fishermen were often about in the early morning, and if I were seen my presence would be reported at once.

I took one of the side alleys and came back into the high street; this time I darted up one of the steep, cobbled turnings, climbed for five minutes, and then I was up on the cliffs.

The beauty of the scene made me pause for a few seconds to admire it; there was the coast in all its glory and below me the beach with the blue-green water very gently caressing the gray sands; a mile or so along this coast was Menfreya Manor and facing it No Man’s Island, where no one lived.

I started to walk, thinking about Menfreya Manor and the Menfreys. Soon I should see the manor. I knew the exact spot in the twists and turns of the cliff path where it would be visible. And there it was, grand, imposing, a kind of Mecca in my pilgrimage; the home of the Menfreys, the family which had owned it through the ages. There had been Menfreys there when Bishop Trelawny had been sent to the Tower; a Menfrey had supported the bishops and had gathered his retainers to join the twenty thousand Cornish-men who were going to know the reason why; I pictured Menfreys in feathered hats and lace-edged sleeves and breeches, with powdered hair and lace cravats; there were pictures of them in the gallery. I could think of nothing more exciting than being a Menfrey—though I knew I should be wiser to turn my thoughts to more practical matters.

I had reached the spot from where I could see the battlements. Gwennan had taken me up to the top of the tower on one of those occasions when Miss James had brought me over to tea. I could feel the thrill of looking down the steep gray wall to the cliff, down, down to the sea, and I could hear Gwennan’s voice: “If you want to die, all you have to do is jump straight down.” I had had a feeling that she might order me to do so hi that imperious Menfrey way and that, as they were so used to being obeyed, she might expect me to do it. They had been giving orders for many generations, whereas the Delvaneys had been doing so for only one. The steel business, which was so profitable, had been built up by my grandfather, who had begun as one of its humblest employees. Now, of course, Sir Edward Delvaney had forgotten all about his beginnings; he was polished, an educated man with a brilliant future; but although he was much cleverer than the Menfreys, I knew the difference.

I must be clever too. I must plan the next move. Gwennan often took an early morning ride and she came this way, for she had told me it was one of her favorite rides.

If I hid myself in a cave in the cliffs which we had discovered, I might see her. If not, I should have to make further plans. Perhaps it would be better to go to the stables and hide there. But I might meet some of the grooms; besides there were the dogs. No, I must take my chance and wait in the cave. If she were riding today she would most certainly come this way.

I waited for what seemed like hours, but I was lucky in the end. Gwennan came, and she came alone.

I called to her. She pulled up sharp and stopped.

When I told her, she was amused. It was she who thought of the island. It was an adventure which appealed to her. She had me at her mercy now and she was delighted.

“Come with me,” she said. “I know where to bide you,”

It was high tide so she rowed me over to the island, making me lie in the bottom of the boat for fear someone should see me.

“I shall see that you’re fed,” she told me. “And as no one else wants to live in the house, why shouldn’t you?”

That had happened the day before. Now here was Gwennan with the newspaper. I had not thought that my running away could be so important.

Gwennan said: “They were all talking about it at breakfast. Papa says that someone is going to demand a ransom for you. Thousands of pounds. Fancy being worth that!”

“My papa would never pay it He would be glad, really, to be rid of me.”

Gwennan nodded, conceding the possibility of this. “Still” she said wisely, “he mightn’t want the papers to know it, and so pay up.”

“But nobody’s asking. I’m not kidnaped.”

Gwennan was regarding me speculatively. “We’re in need of money, you know,” she said.

I laughed. “What! The Menfreys holding me to ransom. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It would,” sighed Gwennan, “if Sir Edward paid us the money. You know, we’re finding it bard to make ends meet That’s why this place has been furnished. Papa said he didn’t see why it shouldn’t be put to use. It’s been standing idle for years. So they painted it up a little, and they brought this furniture over. That was a year ago. We’ve been waiting for the first tenant And it’s you!”

“I’m not a real tenant I’m just hiding here.”

“Besides, you’re not paying rent Still, if there’s a ransom ...”

“There isn’t”

“No. But I’m not surprised you ran away. That hateful old Clarissa creature. I should have gone down and boxed her ears, if I’d been in your place.”

“You wouldn’t have been. You’re beautiful and no one could say those things about you.”

Gwennan slipped off the table on which she had been sitting and, uncovering one of the mirrors, studied her face. I limped over and we stood side by side, looking. She couldn’t help but be pleased with her reflection—round face, creamy skin, faintly freckled, tawny hair, tawny eyes and an en- i chanting little nose with wide nostrils which, I said, made j her look like a tiger.

“You always look as though you think people aren’t going to like you—that’s your trouble,” said Gwennan. ‘

“Well, why should I look any other way when they don’t?”

“It reminds them they don’t. They might forget it if you looked as if you didn’t know it Well, you’ll have to stay here. I’ll bring you food every day so you won’t starve. You’ll have to see how long you can hold out. How did you like spending a night on No Man’s?”

“Oh … it was all right.”

“Liar. You were scared.”

“Wouldn’t you have been?”

“Perhaps. It’s haunted, you know.”

“It isn’t” I said fiercely. It mustn’t be, and yet if it was, I didn’t want to hear about it; but on the other band, I couldn’t resist urging her to go on.

In any case Gwennan wasn’t going to spare me. “Oh yes, it is. Papa says there might be a tenant but for the whispers. People come and look at the house and then get to hear.”

She spent about an hour with me and when she went, promised to come back in the afternoon. She would have to be very careful not to arouse suspicions, for someone might wonder why she was suddenly interested in the island.

I should have been excited in her place; she had all the fun of it; I had all the difficulties.

I felt uneasy as twilight began to fall. I did not want to enter the house until I had to, so I sat leaning against the wall staring across the sea to Menfreya Manor … a comforting sight. There were lights in several of the windows. Bevil was probably there; I had wanted to ask Gwennan about him but I had refrained from doing so, for Gwennan had an uneasy habit of reading my thoughts and if she discovered that I was interested in her brother, she would be amused and not only tease me but exaggerate my interest.

It would soon be high tide and I watched the water slowly creeping nearer to the house. It came to within a few yards on this side, and on very high tides I had heard it reached the wall and flooded the kitchen. That was at certain times of the year, I believed, and it was not now. But the encroaching sea held less terror for me than the dark house.

Gwennan had brought me candles in the afternoon, and before it was quite dark I would go in and light a few. The more candles there were, the less uneasy I felt. Perhaps I would leave one burning in the bedroom all night; then, when I awoke startled, I would see where I was at once.

I had no watch so I did not know the time, but the sun had long disappeared and the first stars were beginning to show themselves. I watched them—one moment not there and the next there they were. I discovered the Plough and then looked for the other constellations which, I hod learned from Miss James, I could expect to find in the night sky. Fear was creeping closer, like the sea, like darkness. Perhaps if I went to bed and lay down I might sleep, for I had slept little for two nights.

I went into the house and hastily lighted the candles; then I carried one upstairs to the bedroom. I fancied the furniture leaped into place as I entered. I hastily looked about me and shut the door. Then, carrying my candle, I went cautiously to each grotesque hump and lifted the sheet, just to assure myself that it was only furniture beneath and that there was nothing hidden there but the pieces which had been brought over from Menfreya Manor to furnish the place for the hoped-for tenant I was foolish. The fear was within myself. If I could only drive it out of my mind, this would be merely a lonely house to me; I should lie on the bed and fall fast asleep.

I would try this; but I would leave the candle burning.

I lay on the bed as I had the previous night and closed my eyes, immediately opening them to see if I could catch something before it had time to hide. How foolish! Some people said you didn’t actually see ghosts, because seeing was a physical process and ghosts were not physical. You sensed them. And I sensed something in this house when darkness fell, I was sure.

I closed my eyes again and suddenly thought I was traveling on the train, and because I was so tired I slept.

I awoke terrified. The first thing I saw was the candle, and I knew that I had slept some time because of how much of it was burned. I sat up and looked about the room; it seemed as though the sheeted humps suddenly stood in the places they had occupied when I closed my eyes. I glanced at the window. It was still night Something had awakened me. A dream? A bad one, because I was trembling and my heart was bumping madly.

“Only a dream,” I said aloud. Then I was alert. Above the gentle murmur of the waves I heard a sound below. Voices … and then the creak of a door.

I leaped off the bed and stood staring at the door.

I was not alone on the island. I was not alone in the house.

Voices! Whispering voices! One deep, one of a higher pitch. I heard a sound that could have been a footstep.

“You’re imagining it” I whispered.

No. There was the creak of a stair, and the unmistakable sound of stealthy footsteps.

My heart was beating so loudly that it stopped my thinking. I was standing against the door listening. Those were undoubtedly footsteps on the stairs. Then I heard a voice, a female voice. “Let’s go. I don’t like it”

A low laugh—a man’s laugh.

One thing was certain. Whoever these were, they were no ghosts, and at any moment they would burst into the room. I ran to the dressing table and scrambled under the dust sheet. I had only just succeeded in biding myself when the door opened.

“Ah! Here we are!” said a voice I knew.

“A candle … a light, Mr. Bevil.” That was the woman.

“Whoever is in the house is hiding here,” said Bevil Menfrey.

He was pulling off the dust covers, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before he reached the dressing table.

I looked up at him, and even at such a moment I thought how magnificent he looked in candlelight. He had become older since I last saw him. He was indeed a man. He looked enormously tall, and the candlelight threw a long shadow of him on the wall with the smaller figure of the woman cowering behind him.

“Good God!” he cried. “It’s Harriet Delvaney. Come out you little wretch. What are you doing here?”

Then, stooping, he gripped me by the arm and pulled me up.

“Can’t say I admire your choice of a residence. How long have you been here?”

“This is the second night.”

He turned to his companion, and I saw that she was a young and pretty girl whom I did not know.

“Well. The mystery’s solved, then.”

“What are you going to do, Mr. Bevil?” asked the girl; and then I knew that she was one of the village girls who wouldn’t be invited as a guest to Menfreya, so I wondered what she was doing here at this time of night with Bevil.

“There’s only one thing to do. I’m going to row her straight back to the mainland; and well have to let her father know she’s found.”

“Oh … the wicked little thing!”

“And what about you?” I asked.

That made Bevil laugh again. “Yes,” he said, “what about you and what about me? No recriminations on either side, eh, Harriet?”

“No,” I said, not understanding, but suddenly almost happy—first, because I was not going to have to spend the rest of the night alone on the island, and secondly, because he was amused by what I had done and because I understood that, just as he had discovered me where I should not be, so bad I discovered him.

He looked down at me. “You shouldn’t have left the candle burning,” he said. “Very careless. We saw the flickering light in the window almost as soon as we landed.” His face was suddenly stern. “Do you know, Miss Harriet, that there’s great consternation about you. They’ve all but decided to drag the Thames.”

He was joking; but he was puzzled, and again I felt that glow of pleasure. Never before had I had his undivided attention; I could see that he had quite forgotten his companion.

We went down to the boat, and in a short time we had reached the mainland.

He said to the girl: “You go now.”

Her mouth slackened and she looked at him in surprise, but he said impatiently, “Yes, go.”

She gave him a rather sullen look and, lifting her skirts about her thighs, stepped over the side of the boat into the shallow water. Her feet were bare and she stood for a moment with the water lapping about her ankles to look back and see if Bevil was watching. He wasn’t He was looking at me, his hands resting on the oars.

“Why did you do it?” he said.

“I wanted to.”

“You ran away to spend a night on that island?”

“Not to do that.”

“How did you get there?”

I didn’t answer. I was not going to involve Gwennan.

“You’re an odd child, Harriet,” he said. “I suspect that you worry too much about things that are not half as important as you imagine them to be.”

“You can’t know how important my being lame is to me.” I was passionately angry suddenly. “You say it’s not important Nor is it to you. But you don’t have to limp about, do you? Of course, you can imagine it is not important It isn’t to you.”

He looked startled. “My dear Harriet, how vehement you are. People don’t like you less for being lame. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. But that’s not the question at the moment, is it? You have run away. There’s a great fuss about it. And now you are discovered. What are you going to do? You’re not planning to run away from me, are you? Because I shall catch you and bring you back. I want to help you.” He leaned towards me. His eyes were quizzical and not without tenderness, which warmed me and made me happy. “Was life impossible there?”

I nodded.

“Your father, I suppose.” He sighed. “My poor little Harriet I’m afraid I’ll have to take you back. I’ll have to say I found you. If I didn’t, I’d be an accessory after the fact or something like that. Who brought you over? Gwennan, I suppose. She’s been glowing with importance all day. So it was Gwennan!”

I did not answer.

“Honor bright,” he said. “Very creditable. Well, there’s nothing to be done but face the music. But tell me this: What were your intentions?”

“I don’t know.”

“You mean you just ran away without deciding where you would run to?”

“I came down here.”

“By train, I suppose. That was daring of you, But; you should have had a plan of campaign, you know. And what did you hope to achieve?”

“I don’t know.”

He shook his head. Then his face was suddenly tender again. “Poor Harriet, it must have been bad.”

“I heard Aunt Clarissa talking about the difficulty of finding a husband for me,” I blurted out “Because,” I added, “I was ...”

“Well, don’t let that worry you. Who knows, I might marry you myself.”

I laughed.

“I resent that,” he said mockingly. “Here I am making a perfectly reasonable suggestion, and you treat it with scorn.”

“Well,” I said, “it wasn’t serious.”

“People never treat me seriously. I’m too often flippant” He shipped the oars and, leaning towards me, kissed me on the forehead. I was fully aware then of the charm of the Men treys.

When he helped me out of the boat he held me for a moment, his face close to mine.

“Don’t forget,” he said, “there’ll be a row. But it’ll pass. Come on. Now we’ll go and face the music.”

The dogs started to bark as we crossed the courtyard.

The hall was dimly lighted by two gas jets in what looked like lanterns, and there was just enough light to show the vaulted ceiling and the armored figures at the foot of the staircase.

Bevil shouted so that his voice echoed up to the rafters. “Come and see what I have found. Harriet Delvaney! I’ve got her here.”

Then the household was alive. The sounds of voices started up everywhere.

Sir Endelion and Lady Menfrey came first; then some of the servants, and I saw Gwennan at the top of the staircase looking at me with wide, accusing eyes.

I felt relieved because the time had not yet come when I said to myself: What next? I felt excited because this night’s adventure had brought me closer to Bevil.

I sat in the library drinking hot milk.

Lady Menfrey kept murmuring: “Harriet, but how could you? Your poor father … frantic … quite frantic.”

“We’ve had to telegraph him,” Sir Endelion told me apologetically, pulling at his mustache. I thought then how much nicer sinners were. Sir Endelion wasn’t half as shocked as Lady Menfrey; nor had Bevil been.

Bevil sat on die table, smiling at me, as though he wanted to keep my spirits up. I couldn’t feel unhappy or frightened while he was there.

Gwennan had come in quietly so that she wouldn’t be seen and sent back to bed; she was watching me intently.

“What he will say I can’t imagine,” sighed Lady Menfrey. “At least we’ve done our best...”

“You’ll have to face the music, my dear.” That was Six Endelion, and he sounded just like Bevil.

“Exactly my words,” said Bevil. “Don’t let us repeat ourselves. I think that Harriet should go to bed and sleep; then she will be in better form for the musical interlude.”

“I’ve told Pengelly to have a bed prepared,” Lady Menfrey said.

“The room next to mine,” added Gwennan.

“Gwennan, my dear, what are you doing here? You should be in bed and asleep.” Lady Menfrey looked worried. Her family, I guessed, was a source of continual anxiety to her.

“Awakened by the arrival of Harriet,” said Bevil. “It must have been a great shock to her.”

“It was,” retorted Gwennan defiantly.

“Such a surprise?” asked Bevil.

Gwennan scowled at her brother.

“The last place you would have expected to find her.”

“You too?” suggested Gwennan. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have decided to go there tonight”

Sir Endelion burst into loud laughter; Lady Menfrey looked bewildered. I thought what an exciting household this was, and fervently wished that I belonged to it I could see that all except Lady Menfrey were taking a very lenient view of what I had done, and Lady Menfrey’s opinion did not count for much.

“Had I known Harriet was there, I should have gone there last night, I do assure you,” retorted Bevil.

I put my glass on the table.

“Gwennan,” said Lady Menfrey, “since you are here, perhaps you will take our guest to her room.”

I said good-night to Bevil, Sir Endelion and Lady Menfrey, and Gwennan and I mounted the staircase together; and even at such a time I could not help feeling thrilled to be in Menfreya.

“Your room’s next to mine,” she said. “I told Pengelly I wanted you to be there. So you didn’t tell ...”

“They know. There was nothing to tell.”

“About me, I mean.”

I shook my head.

The room they had given me was large—all the rooms were at Menfreya—with a window seat around a bay window which looked out to the island. On the double bed was a pink-flannel nightdress.

“One of mine,” pointed out Gwennan. “You’re to get undressed right away.”

I hesitated. “Go on,” she said. “Don’t be so prudish.”

I wriggled out of my clothes while she watched me, and when I was in bed she sat at the end bugging her knees, her eyes still on me.

“I’m not sure that you won’t go to prison,” she said. “After all, the police were brought in, and when that happens you never know.” I could see that while she taunted me her mind was busy with plans for my rescue. “But I don’t suppose that would happen. Your father would bribe them not to. I’m in for it, too. You see, they’ll want to know who took you over there and who robbed the pantry. Mrs. Pengelly missed that leg of chicken I brought you yesterday. And other things. Suspicion points to me … and I shall be in the dock with you. That should be a comfort Mamma and Papa will go into deep conferences, and a decision is about to be made. And, by the way, Bev will be furious with you.”

“Furious with me, why?”

“Because you spoilt his little adventure. Since Papa furnished the house, he uses it for his seductions. It’s romantic, and the ladies’ fear of ghosts adds a piquancy to the occasion. He can be bold and protective, and the purpose is achieved in half the time.”

“You’re making it up. How could you know?”

“My dear Harriet, all the Menfreys know about each other. It’s a gift we have. All the men are devastating attractive to women, and all the women to men. We can’t help it We have to go along with it.”

I looked at her and believed it was so; the thought saddened me.

“I’m tired,” I said. I wanted to be alone, to go over those moments when Bevil and I were in the boat together, to remember every word he bad said.

Tired!” cried Gwennan. “How can you be tired when you think of tomorrow. What a good thing I didn’t send that ransom letter.”

“There was no question of a ransom letter.”

“Wasn’t there? I’ve been drafting it You don’t think I’d let an opportunity like that pass. The Menfreys never miss their opportunities.”

“I don’t believe it.” I closed my eyes. “All right,” she said huffily and leaped off the bed. “Go to sleep and dream about tomorrow. I shouldn’t like to be hi your place, Harriet Delvaney. You wait till your father comes.”

Gwennan and I were watching for his carriage, so we saw it arrive. Very shortly afterwards I was summoned to the library.

Never had I seen his eyes so cold; never had he looked at me with such dislike; and never had I felt so ugly as I did when I limped into that room. Strangely enough, when I was aware of my deformity I fancied it became more obvious; and hi his presence I was always conscious of it.

“Come here,” he said, and as usual the tone in his voice when he addressed me made me feel as though cold water was being poured down my back.

“I am shocked beyond belief. I could never contemplate such ingratitude, such selfishness, such wickedness. How could you … even you—and I have learned that you are capable of many undutiful acts—but how could you be capable of such conduct!”

I did not answer. The last thing I could do was try to explain my reasons to him. I wasn’t entirely sure of them myself. Their roots were too deeply embedded; and I knew even at this time that those few ill-chosen words of Aunt Clarissa’s were not the entire reason why I had left home.

“Speak when I ask a question. Do not give me insolence as well as ingratitude.”

He took a step towards me and I thought he was going to strike me. I almost wished he would. I believed I could have endured a hot hatred rather than a cold dislike. “Papa, I … wanted to get away. I …”

“You wanted to run away? You wanted to cause trouble. Why did you come here?”

“I… I wanted to come to Menfreya.”

“The whim of a moment. You should be whipped … insensible.” His mouth twisted into an expression of distaste. Physical violence was repulsive to him, I knew. Any dog which disobeyed him was not corrected; it was destroyed. I thought then: He would like to destroy me. But he would never whip me.

He turned away from me as though he could not bear to look at me. “Everything you want is yours. You have every comfort. Yet you have no gratitude. You delight in giving us acute anxiety and causing trouble. When I think that it was to give you birth that your mother died …”

I wanted to scream at him to stop. I could not bear to bear him say this. I knew that he had thought it often, but to hear the words gave the horror deeper meaning. I could not bear it. I wanted to creep into a comer and cry.

Yet instead of the pain I felt, my face was forming itself into those ugly, obstinate tines, and I could not prevent it He saw this, and the loathing which was deep in him for this monster who had robbed him of a loved one that it might have life was temporarily unleashed. He took brief comfort in giving freedom to the bitter resentment which had been smoldering for years.

“When I saw you . .. when they told me your mother was dead, I wanted to throw you out of the house.”

The words were out. They hit me more cruelly than any whip could have done. He had crystallized the scene. I saw the ugly baby in the nurse’s arms; I saw the dead woman on the bed; and his face. I could even hear his voice: “Throw it out of the house.”

It was there forever in my mind. Previously I had guessed at his dislike; I had been able to delude myself that I had imagined it; that he was a man who did not easily express his feelings; that deep down he loved me. But that was over. Perhaps he was ashamed. His voice had softened a little.

“I despair of ever imbuing you with a sense of decency,” he said. “Not only do you make trouble for yourself but for others. The entire household has been disrupted. We have been invaded by reporters.”

He was talking to hide his confusion; and I was only half listening, because I was thinking of his anger when he looked at the baby in the nurse’s arms. “At least,” he said, “you must not abuse the hospitality of Menfreya any longer than necessary. We will leave at once for Chough Towers.”

Chough Towers was an early Victorian mansion about a mile from Menfreya. My father had rented it furnished from a family called Leveret, who had made a fortune from china clay which they quarried near St. Austell. The house was almost as large as Menfreya, but it lacked the character of the latter. It was an ugly house and, as I have said, always seemed cold and impersonal; but perhaps that was because my father had rented it, and it was his personality which had pervaded it; inhabited by a happy family, it might have been a happy house. The rooms were large and paneled, with big windows looking out on well-tended lawns; there was a large ballroom on the ground floor of fine proportions, at one end of which was a wide, oak staircase; everything that could have been done to give an air of antiquity to the place had been done. There was even a minstrels’ gallery, which I always thought looked incongruous in such a house; the conservatory was pleasant because it was full of colorful plants; but everything else was overornate and heavy; the baroque towers and battlements were false, and it was absurd to have called it Chough Towers, for I never saw a chough near the place. It was a showy imitation, pretending to be what it was not.

It was surrounded by a park, but the trees in the drive had obviously not been planted more than thirty years before; there were none of those tottery old yews one found at Menfreya. I was hi love with Menfreya, and perhaps I felt the difference more keenly than most Chough Towers was, I suppose, a beautiful house in a beautiful setting, but it had no echoes of the past, no secrets; it was just the outward sign of a self-made man’s desire to build himself a dwelling as grand as those enjoyed by people whom, a generation before, he would have been expected to bow to as the gentry. But a house is more than walls and windows—or even fine ballrooms and conservatories, a park and lawns.

It suited my father because he only spent a certain time of the year in the vicinity; and he was not sure that he wanted to buy a house there. If he lost his seat in the House, he would certainly not wish to retain Chough Towers. As we entered the house I was aware of the hushed atmosphere. I suspected that the servants were talking of me; perhaps some of them were peeping at me. I had become an object of interest because my name had been in the papers. It would be again—for the discovery of my whereabouts would have to be known, since there had been such concern about my disappearance.

“You will go straight to your room and remain there until you are given permission to leave it,” said my father. And how glad I was to escape.

I was a prisoner. I was to have only bread and milk until further notice. None of the servants was to speak to me. I was in disgrace.

I was defiant and pretended I didn’t care, but my feelings alternated between misery and elation.

I would sometimes be able to shut out all memory of anything but Bevil, sitting there in the boat. I could see his strange eyes alight with tenderness—no, mockery really. “I might marry you myself …” He was joking; and yet perhaps not entirely. In any case in my present state it was pleasant to delude myself into believing that he might have meant it. It was a gay and happy dream.

Then there was the other—dark, gloomy; the death chamber, the shriveled-faced baby; I had seen newborn babies and thought them ugly, and surely I would have been particularly so. I could picture the mad impulse of a normally restrained man. I could feel the revulsion, the longing to be rid of the unwanted creature whose coming had cost so dear.

On the second day of my captivity my father came to my room. My spirits rose because I saw that he was dressed for departure.

“You will remain in your room for a week,” he said, “and I hope that you will be considerably chastened at the end of that time. Has it occurred to you that your life might be cut short at any moment. I should like you to consider during the next days that you are heading for eternal damnation, For your own sake—I know you are too selfish to do it for mine—reform your ways. You will remain here until it is time for you to go away to school.”

I was too astonished to speak. I was suddenly torn from the contemplation of hell’s torments to consider an entirely new life. School!

“Yes,” he went on, “you are in desperate need of discipline.

If at school you are disobedient, you will be severely punished. Miss James was too lenient with you, I fear. She will be leaving us now, of course.”

I thought of Miss James packing her bag and crying discreetly because she was frightened of the future. Poor Miss James! She would haunt me for weeks to come in spite of the alarming prospect before me.

“So she is to be dismissed …”

“You see bow your thoughtless actions affect others.”

A frightening thought occurred to me. Fanny! What of Fanny?

I whispered her name under my breath, but he heard me.

“She remains. She will be employed hi another capacity. And when you are on holiday you will need a maid.”

Waves of thankfulness! Fanny was safe. Why had I not thought of what the consequences might have been to her before I ran away. My father was right I must think before I acted.

He continued: “It is my earnest wish that you should learn a little selflessness. This wantonly thoughtless action of yours has caused me great trouble. Remember it; and should you ever feel tempted to be so wicked again, pray consider, for you will not find me as indulgent next time.”

“You are going away, Papa,” I said.

“I. am going to get on with the work which you interrupted.”

He looked at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to take me in his arms and kiss me. To my amazement I realized that I wanted him to.

If he had, I should have cried; I should have told him how unhappy I was, how sorry that I had had to be born, how I would willingly go back into that limbo where unborn babies were and stay there, if by doing so I could bring my mother back to him.

That was one part of me; the other part hated him.

And the part that hated was uppermost; it showed itself in my sullen expression.

He turned and left me.

The atmosphere in the house was considerably lifted when he went.

Within almost an hour A’Lee was unlocking my door. He was carrying a tray which was covered by a cloth and as he came in he said: “Well, Miss Harriet, the master be gone back to London and us be alone again.”

He set down the tray, winked at me and whipped off the cloth to disclose a Cornish pasty, golden brown, hot and savory, fresh from the oven, and a glass of cider; and with it was a large slice of raisin cake.

“It was all Mrs. A’Lee could lay her hands on at a minute’s notice.”

“It looks delicious.”

“And tastes so, if I know Mrs. A’Lee.”

“But I am supposed to be on bread and milk.”

“Me and Mrs. A’Lee, we never did like the sound of that.”

I sat down at the table and cut the pasty. The savory steam made my mouth water, and A’Lee looked on with satisfaction.

“Well now that be an end to that bread and milk nonsense.”

“My father would be furious if he knew. You’d be dismissed ... both you and Mrs. A’Lee.”

“Not we two. We go with the house, don’t ‘ee forget. He never did like us. We ain’t like his London butler, I reckon.” A’Lee took the cloth which covered the tray, folded it over his arm and minced round the room. His attempts to mimic the overrefined accents of Polden, whom he had seen once or twice when Polden had come to Chough Towers to superintend some special occasion, were so wide of the mark that they made me laugh, as A’Lee had intended they should.

“No,” he said, “we be good enough for Mr. Leveret and we be good enough for ‘ee.”

“Don’t you wish that Mr. Leveret had continued to live here?”

“Oh, them was the days. Mr. Harry may come back. But he be so busy now down to St. Austell and in other parts, they do say. Reckon we belong to be working for the Leverets rather than fine, fancy gentlemen from London, like …”

“Like my father? You don’t want to work for him, do you, A’Lee?”

“Well he do have a nice little maid for a daughter.”

“And she at least likes you better than that stupid Polden.”

“Well she be a real right lady, she be.”

We laughed together.

“That be my own brew of cider. I'd make it for Mr, Leveret. Mr. Harry, he got drunk on it one day. Not much more than eight he were. He come sniffing round the barrel and I didn’t know that he’d been helping himself. That were a time, that were. Don’t ‘ee get too much of a taste for it. Miss Harriet. It be real beady stuff.”

“Not much chance. I’m going away to school.”

“Yes, so we be hearing. Well, you’ll be back, I reckon. And her's to go with ‘ee, so there’ll be fireworks, like as not”

“Who?”

“Miss Gwennan up at Menfreya.”

“Oh … A’Lee! Is it true?”

“You be real proper pleased.”

“It makes all the difference.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Them Menfreys …”

“You don’t like them much, do you, A’Lee.”

“Oh, ‘tain’t rightly a matter of liking or not liking. They’m wild. And they’m made for trouble. Twas due to Menfrey trouble that you be here … sitting on that chair enjoying Mrs. A’Lee’s pasty like it be a nectar of the gods—which it might be, for that there couldn’t have tasted much better, I’ll be bound.”

“Due to Menfrey trouble? But why?”

“Well, why be you here? Because your father, Sir Edward Delvaney, he be the Member. For nigh on seven years he’s been the Member. But before that it was always a Menfrey who went to Parliament in London for us. There was never no foreigner here till these last seven years.”

“Sir Endelion was the Member for Lansella then?”

“Of course, he were. And his father before him. Ever since there was Members it’s been the Menfreys for Lansella.”

“And why did Sir Endelion give up?”

“Why, bless you, my dear, he didn’t so much give it up as it gave him up. The Queen, they do say, be terrible strict, and her wouldn’t have any of her ministers with a bad name, you see. And Sir Endelion, he were something big up there in London. Might have been one of the real heads but for this. Prime Minister, say … or some such thing.”

“What was the scandal?”

“The usual. You never have to ask what, when it’s Menfreys, my dear. It’s who?”

“A woman?”

A’Lee nodded. “Regular scandal Up in London too.

Down here we be used to them. The Menfreys was always good to the girls who got into trouble through them. Find them husbands most likely or homes for the babies. But this were in London. Some very high-born lady, and her husband divorced her because of Sir Endelion.”

“Poor Lady Menfrey!”

“Oh, she be a gentle lady, she be. She forgive him like; and he come back to her. But that didn’t suit the Queen. Nothing would suit her but that Sir Endelion resign, so resign he did; and for the first time any of us remember, we didn’t have a Menfrey up in Parliament for us. That’s how your father came.”

‘They don’t seem to mind.”

‘There’s some that say he be nursing the seat for Mr. Bevil.”

“So … he will go into politics.”

“Well, Menfreys always has. Must have a say in the Government, says they. They’re regular ones for having their say. Mr. Bevil, hell come back, I reckon. All in time. And then there’ll be a Menfrey up hi London for Lansella.”

I finished the cider and swallowed the last of the raisin cake.

That was good, A’Lee,” I said; and I was thinking of poor Lady Menfrey and how angry she must have been—or sorry. Unhappy, in any case. I could imagine Sir Endelion coming back to Menfreya, turned out of Parliament because of scandal.

No wonder they were called the wild Menfreys.

Later that day Gwennan came to see me.

“As soon as I heard your father had gone I came over,” she said. “We’re to go to school … together. We’re undisciplined, and they can’t control us. What fun! They would never have thought of sending us if you hadn’t run away. This is the end of all that”

“It’s not the end,” I contradicted. “How could going away and starting a new life be the end of anything?”