Stranger at the Manor by Mary Kingswood

6: A Lady At Dinner

Scalding tears fell unregarded down Phyllida’s cheeks. Beside her in the darkness, Mr Winslade lapsed into shocked silence by her revelations, and for that at least she was grateful. She could speak no more of it.

How foolish of her to be provoked into speaking of the matter at all! She had long since come to terms with her own shame, but he had said such things… such terrible things. To talk of marriage in that casual manner, as if it were nothing at all. ‘I never met a woman who would suit me so well as you,’ as if she were a new coat! And then he said he would like to kiss her and see what came of it… oh Lord, if he only knew how such words stung, even now! He was only being polite, she knew that, trying to be kind to her. She had been obliged to disabuse him of any notion that she was at all eligible to marry, but it still hurt so much.

“What was that?” he said.

A sound in the distance, above them, she thought. Someone was in the attic. They were looked for!

“Here!” Mr Winslade yelled. “We are down here!”

Footsteps overhead and gradually a wavering glow appeared through the jagged hole in the ceiling. The footsteps stopped.

“Peter? Miss Beasley?” Susannah’s voice.

“We are here,” he called back. “The boards are rotten. Take care!”

“I see the place where you fell. Are you hurt?”

“No, not at all.”

“But where are you?”

“I cannot tell you,” he said, “but we can find no door or way out.”

“Then you must come back up to the attic. Wait just a short time while I go and fetch help. I am afraid I must take the candle away, but I shall be back to rescue you very soon.”

The tap-tap-tap of her footsteps retreated and the faint glow disappeared, plunging them back into darkness again. Phyllida wiped her face with her sleeve, as they waited in silence. It was not long before Susannah returned, then several more people with candelabra. Then a long wait for a man with planks, hammer and nails to make a safe platform for the rescue operation. And finally, a ladder was lowered down and they were able to climb up, blinking, into the brilliance of many flickering candles and a cluster of servants behind Susannah.

“Goodness, look at the state of you both,” Susannah said. “Hot baths, Mrs Cobbett, straight away. Miss Beasley, Dr Broughton is sent for, and you will stay here for tonight.”

“No, no, I could not possibly—” she murmured, but half-heartedly, for she had to admit that a bath was a wonderful idea. She was coated from head to toe in dust and tiny splinters of glass and wood, and two or three places throbbed a little, giving warning of bruises yet to develop fully.

“I insist. You will not leave here until I am quite satisfied that you have recovered from your ordeal. Word has been sent to your brother. Do come this way. Robert, take care of Cousin Peter, if you please.”

“Mr Winslade cut his hand, I think,” she said.

“I will see that Dr Broughton knows of it,” Susannah said briskly.

In a hastily reopened bedroom, the maids still whisking holland covers from the furniture, Susannah helped Phyllida out of her filthy gown. Dr Broughton and Roland arrived while Phyllida, wrapped in a clean robe, waited for the bath to be filled. Their anxious faces lifted as they realised that she was unharmed, and they went off to poke and prod at Mr Winslade, who might prove to be a more satisfactory patient, with some visible injury for them to fuss over. Then she was able to relax into blissful hot water, and scrub every last particle of the attics out of her skin and hair.

Susannah and her lady’s maid returned with armfuls of gowns.

“We have raided Lilian’s wardrobe,” Susannah said cheerfully. “She was very much your size. They are a little more… um, bright than you customarily wear, but you will not mind just for once, I am sure.”

Phyllida stared at the array of vivid silks and satins, and her heart sank. “Did the late Mrs Winslade not own anything more… subdued?”

“Not a thing. Papa always liked her to wear strong colours, although I have to say that her own preference for delicate shades suited her better. But you have the ideal complexion for these. How about this gold? No? The red? What about this greeny-bronze? Is it not perfect for your colouring?”

It was indeed perfect. With only a token protest, Phyllida allowed herself to be persuaded into its softly rustling taffeta and net overskirt, far more sumptuous than anything she had ever worn before. Susannah and her maid together dressed her hair, and fastened a gold necklace around her neck and bracelets on her arms. When they showed her the result of their endeavours in the looking glass, she hardly recognised herself.

“I look like a lady,” she said in wonder.

“Very appropriate,” Susannah said briskly, with a satisfied smile.

That evening felt very strange to Phyllida. As soon as she entered the drawing room in her new finery, she understood the difference it made. Dr Broughton and Roland, who had arrived late enough to be invited to dinner, bowed over her hand with unusual courtesy and Mr Winslade— oh, she remembered that look! How many years was it since a man had gazed at her with such clear admiration in his eyes?

They sat at one end of the Manor’s long dining table, and as with all the most memorable dinners, the food was good, the wine was plentiful and the conversation was lively, never flagging for a moment. To Phyllida, intoxicated with the power of her elegant gown, everyone was witty and clever and sparkling. Mr Winslade related the tale of their fall through the attic floor in the drollest way that had everyone chuckling. He even told them of the vases, and the use to which they had been put, and they all roared with laughter. And when his eyes turned to Phyllida, as they seemed to do rather often, she saw that look again.

She felt as if she were floating, untethered from the earth, like a balloon. For a few hours, she was no longer Miss Beasley, the little-regarded sister of a country physician, a middle-aged spinster of no account, scuttling about in the corners of society. Here in the squire’s great house she could hold her head high and be somebody for a change. Tomorrow she would be glad to put on her own drab gown and be a mouse again, but for this one evening she was a bird of paradise. She was different.

~~~~~

Peter could hardly believe the change in Miss Beasley. She was vivacious, she was witty, she entertained the company… and she was beautiful. He had always known it, had seen the potential in her, but now that she was dressed as a fashionable lady, she could move in any society as an equal. He could scarce take his eyes off her.

She was beautiful inside, too. He had seen that in her at once, the innate goodness that led her to a multitude of good works. Had he not first encountered her hard at work in the church, singing hymns as she polished? And she had let slip other little acts of compassion. One day she had gone home early to ensure that some broth and a ham was sent to a sick mother in the village. After church, he had heard her enquire of a farmer how his ailing mother did, and promise to send a pot of beef tea for her. She knitted socks for the poor. There was a kindness in her that raised her above almost all other women in his regard. He thought so well of her, in truth, that he had even begun to consider her as the perfect wife for him.

And yet, how ironic. For all these years he had been a man of some wealth and could have married a dozen times over, yet had not been tempted, but now, when he was penniless, he had met a woman who encompassed everything that was admirable. He could not have her, and must never raise the subject again, for it clearly distressed her, but gracious, how much he wished he could court her!

It was a complete puzzle to him why she had so low an opinion of herself. Something had happened to make her believe herself unworthy to marry, but to speak of herself as wicked, and guilty of an unforgivable sin — that could not be true. It must be some minor offence that she had blown into some heinous crime, and he wished with all his heart that he could reassure her that she was a good, a worthy, a desirable woman. But since he could not speak of it, and she would not, it was impossible.

All night, as he turned this way and that in his bed, restless and bemused, he tried not to wonder about her offence, yet he could think of nothing else. Whatever could it be? In the sleepless dark of the nameless hours he decided it must be murder. Surely there was no lesser crime that could account for her words and her distress. Then he berated himself for his foolishness.

Eventually, with the sky already lightening with the dawn, he fell into a heavy sleep and so woke later than usual. When he reached the book room, he was startled to find Miss Beasley already hard at work. Even though he had known she was staying overnight, he had grown so accustomed to her habitual arrival time that he was momentarily taken aback. And she wore her usual brown dress, too, which was rather a disappointment after her stylish appearance the previous evening. But her smile as she looked up at him was as sweet as ever.

“Good morning, Mr Winslade.”

“Good morning, Miss Beasley. I trust you slept well?”

“Very well indeed. Such a remarkably soft bed, and every comfort provided. I wanted for nothing. How are you this morning? No ill effects from the fall?”

“None,” he said. “A small cut to one hand is the only injury, and Dr Broughton tended that for me.”

“Excellent,” she said, turning back to the heap of papers she was working through.

He sat down in his usual chair, and positioned his spectacles on his nose but he had never been less minded for routine work. The disappointment he felt at the reappearance of the drab gown was unexpectedly acute, and he was haunted afresh by the question of what unforgivable act the younger Miss Beasley had committed. But he could not ask… would never ask.

Still, there were things that needed to be said. He removed his spectacles again. “Miss Beasley, I should like to offer you my most heartfelt apology for the distress I caused you yesterday. I allowed the unusual circumstances of our situation to betray me into a most ungentlemanly intrusion. I do hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

“There is nothing at all to forgive, Mr Winslade.”

“You are all generosity, as always, but be assured that no word on that subject will pass my lips again.”

“Mr Winslade,” she said, “we are friends, are we not? I hope we are, and if that be so, then it seems to me that we ought to be able to speak to each other on any subject without being in constant fear of giving offence, and without the need for apology afterwards. I should hate to imagine you weighing up every word before it leaves your lips, in case I fall into strong hysterics.”

He smiled at her. “Any woman less likely to fall into strong hysterics is hard to conceive.”

“Well, I should hope so, since I have on many occasions been present when Roland has been dealing with putrid sores or broken limbs. I had to hold a boy down once while Roland set a broken leg, which was… difficult for all concerned. And I hope… I sincerely hope that I am always capable of conducting a rational conversation without looking for insult in every word. You intended none and I took none, so let us say no more about it.”

With a half-bow of acknowledgement, he replaced his spectacles and reached into the box for a fresh pile of papers, but before he could begin, the door opened and Susannah came in with a large roll of paper.

“Ah, you are both here. Excellent. I have been trying to work out what room it was into which you fell yesterday, but I am quite baffled,” she said, unfurling the paper and spreading it on the desk. They all reached across to hold down the corners. “This is the plan of the house, and here — just here — is the attic you were in. So that room must have been just here — either this service corridor and stairs, or possibly this bedroom, which was Mama’s before she became ill. But I have been into every part of that wing and there is no space where that room might be.”

“How intriguing!” Peter said at once. “But there must be a way into it.”

“Come and see,” Susannah said.

Peter set off confident that the secret would soon be revealed. Susannah had simply not applied the proper logic to it. But as they walked in growing bewilderment from room to room, he began to see her point. It was not merely that the door was hard to find. The problem was that there was nowhere for a door to be, no mysterious gap between rooms to accommodate the space into which they had fallen. No wall was thick enough to conceal it. Yet it existed.

Eventually, he came back to the narrow service corridor and stairs. “This is the right size,” he said. “Eight feet wide or so, and about twenty in length.” He looked up at the ceiling and pointed. “There. That is our secret room, I believe.”

“But that must be the attic,” Susannah said.

“No, I believe Mr Winslade is correct,” Miss Beasley said, with a hint of excitement in her voice. “The ceiling is low here, but in the rooms on either side…” She threw open the doors. “…they are much higher. There is a space concealed up there.”

“But how on earth would one get into it?” Susannah said. “The door would have to be halfway up the wall.”

“From the attic,” Miss Beasley said. “That is the only way, I believe.”

“Was there a trapdoor?” Susannah said.

“It is my belief,” Peter said slowly, “that there was no easy access to it. It was not meant to be discovered. Which means that we should examine very carefully all that is hidden there.”

They gathered candelabra and a lantern and made their way to the attic, where the ladder was still in place. Peter hopped down quickly, while the ladies descended more circumspectly. Peter tried hard not to watch, but he could not help noticing that Miss Beasley had remarkably trim ankles.

With some difficulty, and Peter running up and down the ladder, they got enough light down there to look around them. There to one side of the room was some large object wrapped in sacking, behind it several statues draped in rotted holland covers and in the corner were the vases, and a wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a very pretty design. Susannah lifted the lid.

“Papers. Letters, mainly, and some documents that look official, although the script is very hard to read. Italian, I believe. Or Latin. Peter, what do you make of it?”

“Without my spectacles, not very much, but the seal on that one suggests a legal document. I shall take them all down to the study and examine them there. But what can be beneath all this sacking, do you suppose? Some large object of irregular shape — furniture, perhaps. Shall I cut the bindings?”

“Please do,” Susannah said. “Let us see what was worth hiding away from the world for two hundred years.”

Peter pulled out his pocket knife and sawed through the thick ropes holding the sacking in place. The sacking itself was rotten and pulled away easily. Beneath it was a waterproof sheet, which was easily cut, and beneath that—

“Paintings!” Susannah cried. “Oh, but surely not? It cannot be… can it?”

They were leaning against the far wall, their backs outwards, arranged in neatly descending size, although they were all large, taller than Peter was. With some difficulty and Susannah’s help, he shuffled the nearest painting round so that they could see it. A religious allegory of some sort, and although he was no expert, Peter thought the brushwork was rather fine.

“Tintoretto,” Miss Beasley said, bending down to read the signature. “That is one of the names mentioned in the notebook. These must indeed be the Bartwell paintings.”

Peter whistled. “Can it be possible? That they were here all the time, hidden away in this secret place? How curious that would be — we have still not located the jewel box, but perhaps we have found the unfindable instead. We might be the first people to look at them in two hundred years.”

“We must hope the mice have not got to them,” Susannah said briskly. “Because if they have not, we are rich again, and so are you, Cousin Peter. You will get one tenth of it as a finder’s fee.”

“Miss Beasley was a finder, too,” he said at once.

“So she was. We shall all be rich,” she said, laughing.

~~~~~

Peter spent the rest of the day examining with a magnifying glass the documents found in the inlaid box, and determining to his own satisfaction that they documented the exact provenance of the paintings, tracing their origins all the way back to Italy and recording every sale.

He found an unused document box, wrote a neat label for it — ‘Bartwell Paintings ~ Provenance’ — arranged the documents in date order, and then made a list of them all. The task was so satisfactory that he hummed as he worked.

“‘God Moves in a Mysterious Way’,” Miss Beasley said, as she entered the room. “How appropriate.”

Peter laughed, carefully laying down his pen. “I thought so, yes. How goes the moving?”

“The paintings are all removed from the attic and brought into an empty bedroom. They are in remarkably good condition.”

“No mice?”

“Seemingly not, nor any decay, and of course they have not faded or darkened at all, being shielded from all light and smoke.”

“What do you think of them? Are you a lover of medieval art?”

“Well… I am no expert,” she said cautiously. “It hardly matters, however, since I suppose Squire Winslade will sell them off to restore his finances.”

“I imagine he will.” He hesitated. “What shall you do with your share of the proceeds?”

“Did Susannah mean it? About the finder’s fee?”

“Well, Cousin John said as much to me when he left here, and he wrote of it in a letter to her, so it is reasonable to suppose he meant it. It will make a difference… to both of us, I should think. It opens up… certain possibilities. Are you staying for dinner again?”

She would not stay, nor would she take the carriage, assuring him that she would enjoy the air after another day spent in the dusty attic. He decided that he would enjoy the air, too. For the first mile or so, they talked of the paintings, admiring the cleverness of hiding them in such a way that they lay undetected for two hundred years, and puzzling over why Lord Bartwell had wished them to be hidden at all.

“Perhaps he planned to reveal the secret at some time, but died before he could do so,” Peter said.

“More likely he felt that if he could not enjoy them, no one should,” Miss Beasley said.

“It may be that it was the only way to keep them safe,” Peter said. “Or perhaps it was meant as a joke — an amusing puzzle to be solved. He cannot have guessed how long it would take to find them. I am sure he was not so unkind as to want to keep them from the world forever.”

“You are determined to think the best of him,” she said mildly.

“Of course! Surely every one of us is good at heart?”

“Even the man who destroyed your bank?”

“Lord Silberry? But the fault was mine, for accepting the loan, not his. He did not mean to destroy the bank, you know. He fully intended to repay the loan, I am certain. He was merely unlucky. Ill advised perhaps. I hope I never think badly of anybody.”

A long pause, then her voice dropped to a mere whisper. “Not even me?”

“Especially not you!” he cried, stopping so abruptly that she was forced to stop too. “I cannot — I will not — accept that you are… what you said… a wicked person. Anyone less wicked would be impossible to find.”

Shaking her head, she turned and walked on. Peter berated himself. What a fool he was! He had distressed her again. But no, when he caught up with her she was composed.

“You are such a good person yourself, Mr Winslade,” she said, her tone calm, “that you see equal goodness in everyone around you. Because you are incapable of wickedness, you imagine the whole world to be as charitable as you. But it is not so, and I am the proof of it.”

It was the second time she had spoken so, and still he could not accept it. What great sin had she committed, to make her talk so? It was the not knowing that tore at him, that made him cry out in anguish, “Whatever did you do?”

She stopped, turned, looked him full in the face. And then she smiled.

“I had a child, Mr Winslade. I sinned against God, and bore a child out of wedlock.”

“God will forgive you,” Peter whispered. “He forgives all our sins, great and small.”

“Oh, yes! But you see, I cannot forgive myself.”