Page 6 of The Book of Lost Stories
She read and reread them, especially those of Mrs Radcliffe, who had, for some reason, ceased to produce any more afterThe Italian, and Alys became quite an expert onUdolphoand an intimate ofThe Castle of OtrantoandRackrent. In fact, she could probably have found her way around either blindfolded.
This had been her apprenticeship and she now felt fully ready to embark on her own novel. As to those other vital requisites of the genre – romantic scenery and gloomy mansions – well, there were rocky and precipitous outcrops enough to please anyone in Yorkshire. If she had not actually visited Priory Chase, the family seat of the Rayvens, romantically built among the ruins of an abbey, she had heard enough about it to fire her imagination.
Caves too … Alys adored caves, and had several times persuaded the owner of a local one to let her descend into theStygian gloom where, lantern in hand, she would examine the pallid and interesting accretions formed by the slow dripping of water from the roof.
Emerging with a sudden start from her reverie, Alys recollected that both Lady Basset and Sir Walter Scott’s newly publishedMarmionawaited her at the Hall.
Picking up her pace, she cut through the wilderness past the hermitage, where old Jethro, in a hooded robe, was gloomily seated on a rock whittling something and did not even look up to pass the time of day when she called out a cheerful greeting.
It showed a rank ingratitude for the many fresh eggs she had bestowed on him, but she supposed a surly and reclusive nature was a requisite for the position of hermit.
2
Pursuits
The air seemed to move about Malvina and she could have sworn that the ghost of a kiss lightly touched her lips. Her eyes flew open: the monkish figure stepped back from the moonlight that came through the narrow windows, the dark shadow cast by the cowl of his long robe rendering him eerily faceless.
‘Pray, sir, who – who are you?’ she whispered. ‘And what do you mean by me?’
The Travails of Lady MalvinabyORLANDO BROWNE
Alys found Lady Basset lying upon her daybed as usual, her exceedingly plump form enveloped in a dashingly diaphanous pink negligée quite unsuited to her figure, languidly eating sugarplums and reading a letter. A glass of brandy, with which she dosed herself against all manner of imaginary ills, stood on a little table at her elbow.
She had developed an interestingly delicate constitution as compensation for a life of unrelieved tedium, for Sidlington Hall was isolated and her husband’s interests largely consisted of estate management and hunting. Although rather snubbed by the wives of the half-dozen neighbours within visiting distance, she was good-natured to a fault and always happy to see her stepson’s friends, even though she found them rather serious young men, disinclined to fun and frolic. Her husband’s hunting cronies also voted her a very good sort, for she kept an excellent table and always retired immediately after dinner, leaving them to their carousals.
‘HasMarmionarrived, Aunt?’ Alys asked eagerly, as soon as she had greeted her.
Pug, who had sat up and barked at Alys in a token sort of way, settled back down again next to his mistress and began trying to lick powdered sugar off his snub nose with a triangular pink tongue.
‘Yes, it is there on the table, together with some book about the Lake District which I havenorecollection of ordering,’ Lady Basset said, without much interest, for while a thrilling tale filled her with such fearful pleasure that she could resist the enveloping vapours of sleep for quite as much as an hour, poetry with no exciting narrative set her yawning in a trice.
She resumed the reading of her letter, for she maintained a voluminous correspondence with an old friend from her days on the stage who lived a life of much greater interest in London, although, in Alys’s opinion, Lady Crayling’s letters only served to make her aunt the more dissatisfied with her lot.
‘Do you know, Alys, that although Eliza is received in several great houses and married a lord, some of the nobility are still too high in the instep to acknowledge her? Titus Hartwood,your maternal grandfather, among them,’ she said now. ‘She writes that the widow of his younger brother – and I dare say there were twenty years between them – has gone to live with him in Albemarle Street, together with her daughter, Arabella.WilliamHartwood married late, so Lavinia Hartwood must be about my age, and her daughter still in the schoolroom. There is a son, too, who Eliza says is exceedingly handsome, besides being his uncle’s heir, but he resides in bachelor lodgings near St James’s Street.’
‘Oh?’ Alys said, looking up from the table where she was eagerly examining the new books. ‘How odd it is to have such close relatives about whom I know nothing, excepting only from hearsay.’
‘I believe your grandfather had a partiality for me at one time, for he would haunt the green room when I was there,’ Lady Basset said complacently, ‘but a greater nipcheese in these affairs there never was, and so several of the girls warned me, so I …’
To Alys’s regret, she broke off before she could impart any more interesting insights into her grandfather’s character or, indeed, her own scandalously exciting past.
‘Might I borrow this book about the Lakes, if you do not like it?’ Alys thought that the volume might give her ideas for the background of her novel, which was to be set in the imaginary kingdom of Galbodia at some nebulous time in the mists of antiquity.
‘Yes, do take it …’ Lady Basset agreed, once more returning to her letter. She heaved a great sigh, dislodging a sugarplum from the filmy drapery covering her massive bosom.
‘How lucky Eliza is! She goes to routs and masquerades, drives her own carriage in the park and can go shoppingwhenever she pleases … and indeed, when Sir Ralph asked me to marry him, I thought my life would be much the same. But no, here I have been stuck in this wilderness ever since.’
Even Alys had heard of some of the doings of the notorious Lady Crayling, since Miss Grimshaw had numerous family in London who, although quite genteelly engaged in professions rather than of theton, were sufficiently well connected to hear the lateston dits. She was not in the least surprised that Sir Ralph refused to allow his wife to visit London with him on his infrequent visits to that metropolis.
‘Just listen to this,’ Lady Basset said now, for she often read passages of her letters aloud, entirely forgetting that her audience was a green girl of eighteen. Alys had learned the most scandalous things, for Lady Crayling appeared to have no moral scruples about anything.
Remember what larks we had in the old days, Lydia, when his lordship used to ferry us up the river to his house at Kew, to dance for The Brethren in that heathenish underground temple he had constructed? We thought we would die of cold, changing into those thin veils in the shell grotto! Well, you would stare if I told you what goes on when most of the girls leave, except that now I am a Sister of the Order (no Covent Garden nun!) I am constrained to secrecy under threat of the direst punishment should I betray their—
Here she seemed to recollect her audience, for she stopped suddenly and laid the letter aside for later perusal, leaving Alys filled with curiosity to know more about this mysterious Brethren, not to mention the meaning of the phrase ‘Covent Garden nun’.
A mere two pages ofMarmionsufficed to put her aunt to sleep, and then Alys could not resist picking up the letter and, with wide eyes, reading more. She was, however, disappointed to discover that the rest of it was filled with Lady Crayling’s complaints about her husband’s ‘bits of muslin’, addiction to gaming and the prowess of her young lover.
She was just puzzling over the precise nature of ‘Blue Ruin’ and ‘Cribb’s Parlour’ when Lady Basset gave an unladylike snort and muttered something. Guiltily, Alys laid the letter down again – but really, sheneededto know more of the wide world, especially now, when such knowledge could add a new dimension to her work.
