Free Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Rowland Hughes Page A

intensely as she longed to unburden herself to some sympathetic listener, Nanny’s dictum, ‘Tell one, tell all’, fortified her resolve to keep total silence. In answer to all the solicitous enquiries she only said (praying that the untruth might be forgiven her) that while out on her walk she had stumbled and fallen down, and that the shock had made her feel a little seedy, but that she would be quite set up after a rest.
    Happily her secret dread that the appearance foreboded some evil to the bridal pair was unfounded. But having once determined to keep silence, Isabella thought it wisest to continue to do so. It had all been so horrible, not at all the kind of thing that one wished to connect with one’s dear home, or, for that matter, with the universe. She wished that she could have consulted some really wise, experienced clergyman – someone like Dean Farrar 7 for instance – but unfortunately Mr Henderson, though a most worthy and earnest man and most helpful about Isabella’s classes for young boys, was not at all the kind of person to whom you would go for enlightenment on so weird and unpleasant a matter.
    So in the end, Isabella’s journal remained her sole confidant.
    To her account of her experience she added, rather unexpectedly, this quaintly worded prayer that is carved above the family crest over the fireplace in the Great Hall of Maryiot Cells:
    â€˜Therefore O Lord, in Thee is my full hope and trust that Thou wilt mee defend from sin, the world and deville, who goeth about to catch poor sinners in their snare and bring them to that place where grief and sorrow are.’

3
LADY SOPHIA MET HER MATCH
    â€˜Stubborn unlaid ghost.’
1
    I N ONE OF the attics of Maryiot Cells there was, till the recent fire which destroyed the house, a large, wooden antique chest, painted in the Dutch fashion with neat landscapes and bunches of spring flowers, and furnished with a massive double lock. In this chest there lay, among title deeds, letters, estate maps, and other family relics accumulated throughout several centuries, detailed plans for the complete rebuilding of Maryiot Cells. These plans were drawn out in 1781 by Mr Josias Wedgeworth, an architect of no little repute at that period. 2
    It is evident from the bundle of letters which accompany the plans that, though his patron was nominally Sir Charles Skelton, who had succeeded to his father’s title and estates the previous year, it was in fact Sir Charles’s wife, Lady Sophia Skelton, who was the prime instigator and director of this ambitious architectural scheme. ‘Her ladyship desires me most particularly …’ ‘With regard to the Folly, her Ladyship is most earnest in her wish …’ ‘It is her Ladyship’s intention …’ These and similar phrases appear frequently in the letters which Sir Charles addressed to the (doubtless) harassed architect.
    The scheme may be fairly described as ‘ambitious’, for it embraced a reconstruction of the ancient manor houseof Maryiot Cells so drastic as to entail, for all intents and purposes its demolition (though it seems that the beautiful Long Gallery was to be partially spared). In place of the irregular, rambling, venerable and inconvenient house with its twisting staircases and narrow passages, its clustering chimneys, stone obelisks, gables and mullioned windows, whose Tudor frame incorporated elements of its medieval origin, there was to arise a no less inconvenient but modern and hence classical mansion, with all the frigid magnificence of a portico designed in the Ionic order, supporting a pediment, colonnades, niches in the corridors for the reception of classical statues, lofty ceilings depicting mythological amours and so on. 3
    That Lady Sophia had the means to carry out this bold project is explained by the fact that she was the only child and heiress of the wealthy Earl of Terrall; that she had the energy and