Christabel Connalt would be very erudite, strict, no doubt, and determined to make a scholar of me. Emily Philpots had never achieved that. Looking back, I realized that she was rather ineffectual and with the cunning of children, Carl and I had known it, for before Carl went off to the rectory for tuition, she had taught him too. We had plagued poor Emily sorely. Carl had once put a spider on her skirt and then shrieked at her. He had then removed it with a show of gallantry for which I reprimanded him afterwards, telling him that the incident showed he had a deceitful nature. Carl had folded his palms together and looked heavenwards, and in a fair imitation of Jasper had declared he had done what he did for old Philpots’ sake.
I had built up a picture of Christabel Connalt in my mind. Brought up in a vicarage, she would be religious of course, and more censorious of the customs and manners which prevailed in the country even, than Emily Philpots. She would be middle-aged, verging on elderly, with greying hair and steely eyes which missed nothing.
I shivered and was sure I should look back nostalgically on the weak rule of Emily Philpots.
She and Sally Nullens had talked continuously of the newcomer. When I went into Sally’s sitting room, which Carl called “Nullens’s Parlour,” I was aware of an atmosphere of growing tension and mystery. The two women would sit over the fire, heads close together, whispering. I knew that Sally Nullens was a firm believer in witchcraft, and whenever anyone died or developed a mysterious illness always looked round for the ill-wisher. Carl used to say that she regretted that the days of the witch finders were over.
“Can’t you imagine old Sal going round examining the pretty maidens … just everywhere, for the marks of their lovers? They’re succubi or is it incubi for girls?”
Carl might have been the despair of the Reverend George Helling where Greek and Latin were concerned but he was very knowledgeable about the facts of life. Even though he was not yet ten years old, he had an eye for the young serving girls and he liked to speculate on who was doing what with whom.
Sally Nullens said: “He’s another like his father. Up to tricks before they’re out of swaddling.”
An exaggeration, of course, but it was true that Carl was progressing fast along the road to manhood-a fact which pleased my father and bore out Sally’s words that Carl was another such as he had been.
My thoughts were running on, propelled by the contemplation of the change Christabel Connalt would bring.
“The master seemed glad to bring her in,” I had heard Emily Philpots say to Sally when they were sitting together in Sally’s room. Sally mending and Emily doing some fine feather stitching on one of my mother’s petticoats.
As the remark was followed by a sniffing which I knew from the past meant an indication that there was something profound behind it, I had been guilty of listening. This was because it concerned my father, and about him I had this obsession to which I have already referred.
“And who is she, I should like to know?” went on Emily.
“Oh, he gave all that up. Mistress wouldn’t stand for it.”
“There’s some as never gives up. And it wouldn’t surprise me …”
“Walls,” said Sally portentously, “they have ears. Doors too. Is anyone there?”
I went in and said I had brought my riding skirt which I had torn the day before and would Sally mend it please?
She cast a significant look at Emily and took the skirt.
“Nice and muddy too,” she commented. “I’ll give it a sponge. It’s one body’s work looking after you, Mistress Priscilla.”
It was sad in a way. It made me want to comfort her. She was always stressing how useful she was and demanding to know how we should get along without her. Now Emily Philpots would be the same. I knew they were both preparing to dislike the newcomer.
I gazed at the roses, valiantly clinging to life although their season was over; and they reminded me of those two aging women.
I looked towards the house and saw it afresh. Eversleigh Court, the family home.
It really belonged to Edwin, although my father managed the estate and everything would collapse without him. He was a proud man. I wondered whether he resented Edwin.
Edwin had everything-the title and the estate, and it would have been so much more suitable if my father had had it because he was the one who had saved it during the Civil War by posing as a Cromwellian and fooling everyone, just that he might keep the estate in order. Edwin had not been born then. My mother called him the Restoration Baby. His birthday was January of the year 1660, so his arrival into the world was only a few months before the King’s return.
It was a gracious old house and, as such houses always do, gained with the years.
