He started to talk about the island then; he had arrived only yesterday, and had not even visited the villas of Tiberius and San Michele yet. But he had heard of Angelo’s studio and the wonderful works of art to be picked up there; and so this had been his first excursion.
Father was flushed with pleasure; but I wasn’t quite sure whether to believe him or not.
“And when I came and found that Angelo was Mr. Frederick Farington who spoke English like the native he is, I was even more delighted. My Italian is appalling, and the boasts of ‘English spoken here’ are often … well a little boastful. Please, Miss Farington, do tell me what I ought to see while I stay here.”
I started to tell him about the villas, the grottoes, and the other well-known attractions. “But,” I added, “it always seems to me after coming back from England that the scenery and the blue of the sea are the island’s real beauties.”
“It would be nice to have a companion to share in my sightseeing,” he said.
“Are you traveling alone?” I asked.
“Quite alone.”
“There are so many visitors to the island,” I said consolingly. “You’re sure to find someone who is as eager to do the tours as you are.”
“It would be necessary, of course, to find the right companion … someone who really knows the island.”
“The guides do, of course.”
His eyes twinkled. “I wasn’t thinking of a guide.”
“The rest of the natives would no doubt be too busy.”
“I’ll find what I want,” he assured me; and I had a feeling that he would.
He went over to the bronze Venus and began fingering it again.
“That attracts you,” I commented.
He turned to me and studied me as intently as he had the bronze. “I’m enormously attracted,” he told me. “I can’t make up my mind. May I come back later?”
“But of course,” said Father and I simultaneously.
He did come back. He came back and back again. In my innocence I thought at first that he was hesitating about the bronze Venus; then I wondered whether it was the studio that attracted him because it probably seemed very bohemian to him, full of local color and totally unlike the place he came from. One couldn’t expect people to buy every time they came. It was a feature of our studio and others like it that people dropped in casually, stopped for a chat and a drink, browsed about the place and bought when something pleased them.
What disturbed me was that I was beginning to look forward to his visits. There were times when I was sure he came to see me, and there were others when I told myself that I was imagining this, and the thought depressed me.
Three days after his first visit I went down to one of the little beaches on the Marina Piccola to bathe, and he was there. We swam together and lay on the beach in the sun afterwards.
I asked if he was enjoying his stay.
“Beyond expectations,” he answered.
“You’ve been sightseeing, I expect.”
“Not much. I’d like to, but I still think it’s dull alone.”
“Really? People usually complain of the awful crowds, not of being alone.”
“Mind you,” he pointed out, “I wouldn’t want any companion.” There was a suggestion in those long eyes which slightly tilted at the corners. I was sure, in that moment, that he was the type whom most women would find irresistible, and that he knew it. This knowledge disturbed me; I myself was becoming too conscious of that rather blatant masculinity and I wondered whether I had betrayed this to him.
I said rather coolly: “Someone was asking about the bronze Venus this morning.”
His eyes shone with amusement. “Oh well, if I miss it, I’ll only have myself to blame.” His meaning was perfectly clear and I felt annoyed with him. Why did he think we kept a studio and entertained people there if not in the hope of selling things? How did he think we lived?
“We’d hate you to have it unless you were really keen about it.”
“But I never have anything that I’m not keen about,” he replied. “Actually though, I prefer the figure of the younger Venus.”
“Oh … that!”
He put his hand on my arm and said: “It’s charming. Yes, I far prefer her.”
“I simply must be getting back,” I told him.
He leaned on his elbow and smiled at me, and I had a feeling that he knew far too much of what was going on in my mind, and was fully aware that I found his company extremely stimulating and wanted more of it—that he was something more to me than a prospective buyer.
He said lightly: “Your father tells me that you’re the commercial brains behind the enterprise. I bet he’s right.”
“Artists need someone practical to look after them,” I replied. “And now that my mother is dead …”
I knew that my voice changed when I spoke of her. It still happened, although she had been dead three years. Annoyed with myself as I always was when I betrayed emotion, I said quickly: “She died of T.B. They came here in the hope that it would be good for her. She was a wonderful manager.”
“And so you take after her.” His eyes were full of sympathy now and I was pleased out of all proportion that he should understand how I felt. I thought then that I had imagined that streak of mischief in him. Perhaps mischief was not the right description; but the fact was that while I was becoming more and more attracted by this man, I was often conscious of something within him that I could not understand, some quality, something which he was determined to keep hidden from me. This often made me uneasy while it in no way decreased my growing interest in him—but rather added to it. Now I saw only his sympathy, which was undoubtedly genuine.
“I hope so,” I answered. “I think I do.”
I still could not control the pain in my voice as I remembered, and pictures of the past flashed in and out of my mind. I saw her—small and dainty, with the brilliant color in her cheeks, which was so becoming but a sign of her illness; that tremendous energy which was like a fire consuming her—until the last months. The island had seemed a different place when she was in it. In the beginning she had taught me to read and write and to be quick with figures. I remembered long lazy days when I lay on one of the little beaches or swam in the blue water or lay on my back and drifted; all the beauty of the place, all the echoes of ancient history were the background for one of the happiest existences a child could know. I had run wild, it was true. Sometimes I talked to the tourists; sometimes I joined the boatmen who took visitors to the grottoes or on tours of the island; sometimes I climbed the path to the villa of Tiberius and sat looking over the sea to Naples. Then I would come back to the studio and listen to the talk going on there; I shared my father’s pride in his work; my mother’s joy when she had succeeded in making a good sale.
They were so important to each other; and there were times when they seemed to me like two brilliant butterflies dancing in the sunshine, intoxicated with the joy of being alive because they knew that the sun of their happiness must go down quickly and finally.
I had been indignant when they told me I must go away to school in England. It was a necessity, my mother pointed out, for she had reached the limit of her capabilities, and although I was a tolerable linguist (we spoke English at home, Italian to our neighbors, and, as there were many French and German visitors to our studio, I soon had a smattering of these languages) I had had no real education. My mother was anxious that I should go to her old school, which was small and in the heart of Sussex. Her old headmistress was still in charge and I suspected that it was all very much as it had been in my mother’s day. After a term or two I became reconciled, partly because I quickly made friends with Esther McBane, partly because I returned to the island for Christmas, Easter, and summer holidays; and as I was a normal uncomplicated person I enjoyed both worlds.
But then my mother died and nothing was the same again. I found out that I had been educated on the jewelry which had once been hers; she had planned
for me to go to a university, but the jewelry had realized less than she had hoped (for one quality she shared with my father was optimism) and the cost of my schooling was more than she had bargained for. So when she died I went back to school for two more years because that was her wish. Esther was a great comfort at that time; she was an orphan who was being brought up by an aunt, so she had a good deal of sympathy to offer. She came to stay with us during summer holidays and it helped both Father and me not to fret so much with a visitor in the studio. We said that she must come every summer, and she assured us she would. We left school at the same time and she came home with me at the end of our final term. During that holiday we would discuss what we were going to do with our lives. Esther planned to take up art seriously. As for myself, I had my father to consider, so I was going to try to take my mother’s place in the studio although I feared that was something I should never be able to do entirely.
I smiled remembering that long letter I had had from Esther, which in itself was unusual, for Esther abhorred letter writing and avoided it whenever possible. On the way back to Scotland she had met a man; he was growing tobacco in Rhodesia and was home for a few months. That letter had been full of this adventure. There had been one more letter two months later. Esther was getting married and going out to Rhodesia.
It was exciting and she was wonderfully happy; but I knew it was the end of our friendship because the only bond between us now could be through letters which Esther would have neither time nor inclination to write. I did have one to say that she had arrived, but marriage had made a different person of Esther; she had grown far from that long-legged untidy-haired girl who used to walk in the grounds of the little school with me and talk about dedicating herself to Art.
I was brought out of the past by the sight of Roc Pendorric’s face close to mine, and now there was nothing but sympathy in his eyes. “I’ve stirred up sad memories.”
“I was thinking about my mother and the past.”
He nodded and was silent for a few seconds. Then he said: “You don’t ever think of going back to her people … or your father’s people?”
“People?” I murmured.
“Didn’t she ever talk to you about her home in England?”
I was suddenly very surprised. “No, she never mentioned it.”
“Perhaps the memory was unhappy.”
“I never realized it before but neither of them ever talked about … before they married. As a matter of fact I think they felt that all that happened before was insignificant.”
“It must have been a completely happy marriage.”
“It was.”
We were silent again. Then he said: “Favel! It’s an unusual name.”
“No more unusual than yours. I always thought a roc was a legendary bird.”
“Fabulous, of immense size and strength, able to lift an elephant … if it wanted to.”
He spoke rather smugly and I retorted: “I’m sure even you would be incapable of lifting an elephant. Is it a nickname?”
“I’ve been Roc for as long as I can remember. But it’s short for Petroc.”
“Still unusual.”
“Not in the part of the world I come from. I’ve had a lot of ancestors who had to put up with it. The original one was a sixth century saint who founded a monastery. I think Roc is a modern version that’s all my own. Do you think it suits me?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I think it does.”
Rather to my embarrassment he leaned forward and kissed the tip of my nose. I stood up hastily. “It really is time I was getting back to the studio,” I said.
Our friendship grew quickly and to me was wholly exciting. I did not realize then how inexperienced I was, and imagined that I was capable of dealing with any situation. I forget then that my existence had been bounded by school in England, with its regulations and restrictions, our casual unconventional studio on an island, whose main preoccupation was with passing visitors, and my life with my father, who still thought of me as a child. I had imagined myself to be a woman of the world, whereas no one who could lay a true claim to such a description would have fallen in love with the first man who seemed different from anyone else she had met.
But there was a magnetism about Roc Pendorric when he set himself out to charm, and he certainly was determined to charm me.
Roc came to the studio every day. He always took the statuette in his hands and caressed it lovingly.
“I’m determined to have it, you know,” he said one day.
“Father will never sell.”
“I never give up hope.” And as I looked at the strong line of his jaw, the brilliance of his dark eyes, I believed him. He was a man who would take what he wanted from life; and it occurred to me that there would be few to deny him. That was why he was so anxious to possess the statue. He hated to be frustrated.
He bought the bronze Venus then.
“Don’t think,” he told me, “that this means I’ve given up trying for the other. It’ll be mine yet; you see.”
There was an acquisitive gleam in his eyes when he said that and a certain teasing look too. I knew what he meant, of course.
We swam together. We explored the whole island and we usually chose the less well-known places to avoid the crowds. He hired two Neapolitan boatmen to take us on sea trips and there were wonderful days when we lay back in the boat letting our hands trail in the turquoise and emerald water while Guiseppe and Umberto, watching us with the indulgent looks Latins bestow on lovers, sang arias from Italian opera for our entertainment.
In spite of his dark looks there must have been something essentially English about Roc because Guiseppe and Umberto were immediately aware of his nationality. This ability to decide a person’s nationality often surprised me but it never seemed to fail. As for myself there was little difficulty in placing me. My hair was dark blond and there was a platinum-colored streak in it which had been there when I was born; it had the effect of making me look even more fair than I was. My eyes were the shade of water, and borrowed their color from what I was wearing. Sometimes they were green, at others quite blue. I had a short pert nose, a wide mouth and good teeth. I was by no means a beauty, but I had always looked more like a visitor to the island than a native.
During those weeks I was never quite sure of Roc. There were times when I was perfectly happy to enjoy each moment as it came along and not concern myself with the future; but when I was alone—at night, for instance—I wondered what I should do when he went home.
In those early days I knew the beginning of that frustration which later was to bring such fear and terror into my life. His gaiety often seemed to be a cloak for deeper feelings; even during his most tender moments I would imagine I saw speculation in his eyes. He intrigued me in a hundred ways. I knew that given any encouragement I could love him completely, but I was never sure of him, and perhaps that was one of the reasons why every moment I was with him held the maximum excitement.
One day, soon after we met, we climbed to the villa of Tiberius and never had that wonderful view seemed so superb as it did on that day. It was all there for our delight as I had seen it many times before—Capri and Monte Solaro, the Gulf of Salerno from Amalfi to Paestum, the Gulf of Naples from Surrento to Cape Miseno. I knew it well, and yet because I was sharing it with Roc it had a new magic.
“Have you ever seen anything so enchanting?” I asked.
He seemed to consider. Then he said, “I live in a place which seems to me as beautiful.”
“Where?”
“Cornwall. Our bay is as beautiful—more so I think because it changes more often. Don’t you get weary of sapphire seas? Now, I’ve seen ours as blue—or almost; I’ve seen it green under the beating rain and brown after a storm and pink in the dawn; I’ve seen it mad with fury, pounding the rocks and sending the spray high, and I’ve seen it as silky as this sea. This is very beautiful, I grant you, and I don’t think Roman emperors ever honored us in Cornwall with their vil
las and legends of their dancing boys and girls, but we have a history of our own which is just as enthralling.”
“I’ve never been to Cornwall.”
He suddenly turned to me and I was caught in an embrace which made me gasp. He said, with his face pressed against mine, “But you will … soon.”
I was conscious of the rose red ruins, the greenish statue of the Madonna, the deep blue of the sea, and life seemed suddenly too wonderful to be true.
He had lifted me off my feet and held me above him, laughing at me.
I said primly, “Someone will see us.”
“Do you care?”
“Well, I object to being literally swept off my feet.”
He released me and to my disappointment he did not say any more about Cornwall. That incident was typical of our relationship.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
MISTRESS OF MELLYN. Copyright © 1960 by Victoria Holt, renewed 1988. Reprinted with the permission of Patricia Hamilton. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
eISBN 9781429994163
First eBook Edition : April 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holt, Victoria, 1906-1933
Mistress of Mellyn / Victoria Holt. p. cm.
1. Governesses—Fiction. 2. Widowers—Fiction. 3. Family secrets—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6015.13 M57 2009
823’.914—dc22
2008042617
First published by Doubleday & Company, Inc.
First St. Martin’s Griffin Edition: January 2009