It was just before I went to bed that I asked Mrs. Blessington if there had been anyone in this house since Uncle Baxter died. That had been the year 1838, almost fifty years ago, and she was already housekeeper then.
"No, my dear," she said quickly, fluffing the feather pillows. "Your father came that year as you know, but he stayed for no more than a month or two and then went on home."
"There was never a young man after that..." I pushed, but in truth I had little appet.i.te for anything to disturb the happiness I felt. How I loved the Spartan cleanliness of this bedchamber, the stone walls bare of paper or ornament, the high l.u.s.ter of the walnut-paneled bed.
"A young man?" She gave an easy, almost hearty laugh as with unerring certainty of her surroundings, she lifted the poker and stirred the fire. "What a strange thing for you to ask."
I sat silent for a moment looking in the mirror, as I took the last of the pins from my hair. It fell down heavy and warm around my shoulders. It felt good, like a cloak under which I could hide. But she turned as if sensing some uneasiness in me, and drew near.
"Why do you say a young man, Miss?" she asked. Slowly, tentatively, her fingers examined the long tresses that lay over my shoulders. She took the brush from my hands.
I felt perfectly foolish telling her the story, but I managed a simplified version, somehow, our meeting unexpectedly a devilishly handsome young man whom my father in anger had later called the master of Rampling Gate.
"Handsome, was he?" she asked as she brushed out the tangles in my hair gently. It seemed she hung upon every word as I described him again.
"There were no intruders in this house, then, Mrs. Blessington?" I asked. "No mysteries to be solved..."
She gave the sweetest laugh.
"Oh, no, darling, this house is the safest place in the world," she said quickly. "It is a happy house. No intruder would dare to trouble Rampling Gate!"
Nothing, in fact, troubled the serenity of the days that followed. The smoke and noise of London, and our father"s dying words, became a dream. What was real were our long walks together through the overgrown gardens, our trips in the little skiff to and fro across the lake. We had tea under the hot gla.s.s of the empty conservatory. And early evening found us on our way upstairs with the best of the books from Uncle Baxter"s library to read by candlelight in the privacy of our rooms.
And all our discreet inquiries in the village met with more or less the same reply: the villagers loved the house and carried no old or disquieting tales. Repeatedly, in fact, we were told that Rampling was the most contented hamlet in all England, that no one dared-Mrs. Blessington"s very words-to make trouble here.
"It"s our guardian angel, that old house," said the old woman at the bookshop where Richard stopped for the London papers. "Was there ever the town of Rampling without the house called Rampling Gate?"
How were we going to tell them of Father"s edict? How were we going to remind ourselves? But we spoke not one word about the proposed disaster, and Richard wrote to his firm to say that we should not be back in London till Fall.
He was finding a wealth of cla.s.sical material in the old volumes that had belonged to Uncle Baxter, and I had set up my writing in the little study that opened off the library which I had all to myself.
Never had I known such peace and quiet. It seemed the atmosphere of Rampling Gate permeated my simplest written descriptions and wove its way richly into the plots and characters I created. The Monday after our arrival I had finished my first short story and went off to the village on foot to boldly post it to the editors of Blackwood"s Magazine.
It was a glorious morning, and I took my time as I came back on foot.
What had disturbed our father so about this lovely corner of England, I wondered? What had so darkened his last hours that he laid upon this spot his curse?
My heart opened to this unearthly stillness, to an undeniable grandeur that caused me utterly to forget myself. There were times here when I felt I was a disembodied intellect drifting through a fathomless silence, up and down garden paths and stone corridors that had witnessed too much to take cognizance of one small and fragile young woman who in random moments actually talked aloud to the suits of armour around her, to the broken statues in the garden, the fountain cherubs who had not had water to pour from their conches for years and years.
But was there in this loveliness some malignant force that was eluding us still, some untold story to explain all? Unspeakable horror... In my mind"s eye I saw that young man, and the strangest sensation crept over me, that some enrichment of the picture had taken place in my memory or imagination in the recent past. Perhaps in a dream I had re-invented him, given a ruddy glow to his lips and his cheeks. Perhaps in my re-creation for Mrs. Blessington, I had allowed him to raise his hand to that red cravat and had seen the fingers long and delicate and suggestive of a musician"s hand.
It was all very much on my mind when I entered the house again, soundlessly, and saw Richard in his favorite leather wing chair by the fire.
The air was warm coming through the open garden doors, and yet the blaze was cheerful, made the vast room with its towering shelves of leatherbound volumes appear inviting and almost small.
"Sit down," Richard said gravely, scarcely giving me a glance. "I want to read you something right now." He held a long narrow ledger in his hands. "This was Uncle Baxter"s," he said, "and at first I thought it was only an account book he kept during the renovations, but I"ve found some actual diary entries made in the last weeks of his life. They"re hasty, almost indecipherable, but I"ve managed to make them out."
"Well, do read them to me," I said, but I felt a little tug of fear. I didn"t want to know anything terrible about this place. If we could have remained here forever... but that was out of the question, to be sure.
"Now listen to this," Richard said, turning the page carefully. ""Fifth of May, 1838: He is here, I am sure of it. He is come back again." And several days later: "He thinks this is his house, he does, and he would drink my wine and smoke my cigars if only he could. He reads my books and my papers and I will not stand for it. I have given orders that everything is to be locked." And finally, the last entry written the morning before he died: "Weary, weary, unto death and he is no small cause of my weariness. Last night I beheld him with my own eyes. He stood in this very room. He moves and speaks exactly as a mortal man, and dares tell me his secrets, and he a demon wretch with the face of a seraph and I a mere mortal, how am I to bear with him!""
"Good Lord," I whispered slowly. I rose from the chair where I had settled, and standing behind him, read the page for myself. It was the scrawl, the writing, the very last notation in the book. I knew that Uncle Baxter"s heart had given out. He had not died by violence, but peacefully enough in this very room with his prayer book in his hand.
"Could it be the very same person Father spoke of that night?" Richard asked.
In spite of the sun pouring through the open doors, I experienced a violent chill. For the first time I felt wary of this house, wary of our boldness in coming here, heedful of our father"s words.
"But that was years before, Richard..." I said. "And what could this mean, this talk of a supernatural being! Surely the man was mad! It was no spirit I saw in that railway carriage!"
I sank down into the chair opposite and tried to quiet the beating of my heart.
"Julie," Richard said gently, shutting the ledger. "Mrs. Blessington has lived here contentedly for years. There are six servants asleep every night in the north wing. Surely there is nothing to all of this."
"It isn"t very much fun, though, is it?" I said timidly, "Not at all like swapping ghost stories the way we used to do, and peopling the dark with imaginary beings, and laughing at friends at school who were afraid."
"All my life," he said, his eyes fixing me steadily, "I"ve heard tales of spooks and spirits, some imagined, some supposedly true, and almost invariably there is some mention of the house in question feeling haunted, of having an atmosphere to it that fills one with foreboding, some sense of menace or alarm..."
"Yes, I know, and there is no such poisonous atmosphere here at all."
"On the contrary, I"ve never been more at ease in my life." He shoved his hand into his pocket to extract the inevitable match to light his pipe which had gone out. "As a matter of fact, Julie, I don"t know how in the world I"m going to comply with Father"s last wish to tear down this place."
I nodded sympathetically. The very same thing had been on my mind since we"d arrived. Even now, I felt so comfortable, natural, quite safe.
I was wishing suddenly, irrationally, that he had not found the entries in Uncle Baxter"s book.
"I should talk to Mrs. Blessington again!" I said almost crossly, "I mean quite seriously..."
"But I have, Julie," he said. "I asked her about it all this morning when I first made the discovery, and she only laughed. She swears she"s never seen anything unusual here, and that there"s no one left alive in the village who can tell tales of this place. She said again how glad she was that we"d come home to Rampling Gate. I don"t think she has an inkling we mean to destroy the house. Oh, it would destroy her heart if she did."
"Never seen anything unusual?" I asked. "That is what she said? But what strange words for her to use, Richard, when she can not see at all."
But he had not heard me. He had laid the ledger aside and risen slowly, almost sluggishly, and he was wandering out of the double doors into the little garden and was looking over the high hedge at the oaks that bent their heavy elbowed limbs almost to the surface of the lake. There wasn"t a sound at this early hour of the day, save the soft rustle of the leaves in the moving air, the cry now and then of a distant bird.
"Maybe it"s gone, Julie," Richard said, over his shoulder, his voice carrying clearly in the quiet, "if it was ever here. Maybe there is nothing any longer to frighten anyone at all. You don"t suppose you could endure the winter in this house, do you? I suppose you"d want to be in London again by then." He seemed quite small against the towering trees, the sky broken into small gleaming fragments by the canopy of foliage that gently filtered the light.
Rampling Gate had him. And I understood perfectly, because it also had me. I could very well endure the winter here, no matter how bleak or cold. I never wanted to go home.
And the immediacy of the mystery only dimmed my sense of everything and every place else.
After a long moment, I rose and went out into the garden, and placed my hand gently on Richard"s arm.
"I know this much, Julie," he said just as if we had been talking to each other all the while. "I swore to Father that I would do as he asked, and it is tearing me apart. Either way, it will be on my conscience forever, obliterating this house or going against my own father and the charge he laid down to me with his dying breath."
"We must seek help, Richard. The advice of our lawyers, the advice of Father"s clergymen. You must write to them and explain the whole thing. Father was feverish when he gave the order. If we could lay it out before them, they would help us decide."
It was three o"clock when I opened my eyes. But I had been awake for a long time. I had heard the dim chimes of the clock below hour by hour. And I felt not fear lying here alone in the dark but something else. Some vague and relentless agitation, some sense of emptiness and need that caused me finally to rise from my bed. What was required to dissolve this tension, I wondered. I stared at the simplest things in the shadows. The little arras that hung over the fireplace with its slim princes and princesses lost in fading fiber and thread. The portrait of an Elizabethan ancestor gazing with one almond-shaped eye from his small frame.
What was this house, really? Merely a place or a state of mind? What was it doing to my soul? Why didn"t the entries in Uncle Baxter"s book send us flying back to London? Why had we stayed so late in the great hall together after supper, speaking not a single word?
I felt overwhelmed suddenly, and yet shut out of some great and dazzling secret, and wasn"t that the very word that Uncle Baxter had used?
Conscious only of an unbearable restlessness, I pulled on my woollen wrapper, b.u.t.toning the lace collar and tying the sash. And putting on my slippers, I went out into the hall.
The moon fell full on the oak stairway, and on the deeply recessed door to Richard"s room. On tiptoe I approached and, peering in, saw the bed was empty, the covers completely undisturbed.
So he was off on his own tonight the same as I. Oh, if only he had come to me, asked me to go with him.
I turned and made my way soundlessly down the long stairs.
The great hall gaped like a cavern before me, the moonlight here and there touching upon a pair of crossed swords, or a mounted shield. But far beyond the great hall, in the alcove just outside the library, I saw unmistakably a flickering light. And a breeze moved briskly through the room, carrying with it the sound and the scent of a wood fire.
I shuddered with relief. Richard was there. We could talk. Or perhaps we could go exploring together, guarding our fragile candle flames behind cupped fingers as we went from room to room? A sense of well-being pervaded me and quieted me, and yet the dark distance between us seemed endless, and I was desperate to cross it, hurrying suddenly past the long supper table with its ma.s.sive candlesticks, and finally into the alcove before the library doors.
Yes, Richard was there. He sat with his eyes closed, dozing against the inside of the leather wing chair, the breeze from the garden blowing the fragile flames of the candles on the stone mantel and on the table at his side.
I was about to go to him, about to shut the doors, and kiss him gently and ask did he not want to go up to bed, when quite abruptly I saw in the corner of my eye that there was someone else in the room.
In the far left corner at the desk stood another figure, looking down at the clutter of Richard"s papers, his pale hands resting on the wood.
I knew that it could not be so. I knew that I must be dreaming, that nothing in this room, least of all this figure, could be real. For it was the same young man I had seen fifteen years ago in the railway carriage and not a single aspect of that taut young face had been changed. There was the very same hair, thick and l.u.s.trous and only carelessly combed as it hung to the thick collar of his black coat, and the skin so pale it was almost luminous in the shadows, and those dark eyes looking up suddenly and fixing me with the most curious expression as I almost screamed.
We stared at one another across the dark vista of that room, I stranded in the doorway, he visibly and undeniably shaken that I had caught him unawares. My heart stopped.
And in a split second he moved towards me, closed the gap between us, towering over me, those slender white fingers gently closing on my arms.
"Julie!" he whispered, in a voice so low it seemed my own thoughts speaking to me. But this was no dream. He was real. He was holding to me and the scream had broken loose from me, deafening, uncontrollable and echoing from the four walls.
I saw Richard rising from the chair. I was alone. Clutching to the door frame, I staggered forward, and then again in a moment of perfect clarity I saw the young intruder, saw him standing in the garden, looking back over his shoulder, and then he was gone.
I could not stop screaming. I could not stop even as Richard held me and pleaded with me, and sat me down in the chair.
And I was still crying when Mrs. Blessington finally came.
She got a gla.s.s of cordial for me at once, as Richard begged me once more to tell what I had seen.
"But you know who it was!" I said to Richard almost hysterically. "It was he, the young man from the train. Only he wore a frockcoat years out of fashion and his silk tie was open at his throat. Richard, he was reading your papers, turning them over, reading them in the pitch dark."
"All right," Richard said, gesturing with his hand up for calm. "He was standing at the desk. And there was no light there so you could not see him well."
"Richard, it was he! Don"t you understand? He touched me, he held my arms." I looked imploringly to Mrs. Blessington who was shaking her head, her little eyes like blue beads in the light. "He called me Julie," I whispered. "He knows my name!"
I rose, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the candle, and all but pushing Richard out of the way went to the desk. "Oh, dear G.o.d," I said, "Don"t you see what"s happened? It"s your letters to Dr. Partridge, and Mrs. Sellers, about tearing down the house!"
Mrs. Blessington gave a little cry and put her hand to her cheek. She looked like a withered child in her nightcap as she collapsed into the straight-backed chair by the door.
"Surely you don"t believe it was the same man, Julie, after all these years..."
"But he had not changed, Richard, not in the smallest detail. There is no mistake, Richard, it was he, I tell you, the very same."
"Oh, dear, dear..." Mrs. Blessington whispered, "What will he do if you try to tear it down? What will he do now?"
"What will who do?" Richard asked carefully, narrowing his eyes. He took the candle from me and approached her. I was staring at her, only half realizing what I had heard.
"So you know who he is!" I whispered.
"Julie, stop it!" Richard said.
But her face had tightened, gone blank and her eyes had become distant and small.
"You knew he was here!" I insisted. "You must tell us at once!"
With an effort she climbed to her feet. "There is nothing in this house to hurt you," she said, "nor any of us." She turned, spurning Richard as he tried to help her, and wandered into the dark hallway alone. "You"ve no need of me here any longer," she said softly, "and if you should tear down this house built by your forefathers, then you should do it without need of me."
"Oh, but we don"t mean to do it, Mrs. Blessington!" I insisted. But she was making her way through the gallery back towards the north wing. "Go after her, Richard. You heard what she said. She knows who he is."
"I"ve had quite enough of this tonight," Richard said almost angrily. "Both of us should go up to bed. By the light of day we will dissect this entire matter and search this house. Now come."
"But he should be told, shouldn"t he?" I demanded.
"Told what? Of whom do you speak!"
"Told that we will not tear down this house!" I said clearly, loudly, listening to the echo of my own voice.
The next day was indeed the most trying since we had come. It took the better part of the morning to convince Mrs. Blessington that we had no intention of tearing down Rampling Gate. Richard posted his letters and resolved that we should do nothing until help came.
And together we commenced a search of the house. But darkness found us only half finished, having covered the south tower and the south wing, and the main portion of the house itself. There remained still the north tower, in a dreadful state of disrepair, and some rooms beneath the ground which in former times might have served as dungeons and were now sealed off. And there were closets and private stairways everywhere that we had scarce looked into, and at times we lost all track of where precisely we had been.
But it was also quite clear by supper time that Richard was in a state of strain and exasperation, and that he did not believe that I had seen anyone in the study at all.
He was further convinced that Uncle Baxter had been mad before he died, or else his ravings were a code for some mundane happening that had him extraordinarily overwrought.
But I knew what I had seen. And as the day progressed, I became ever more quiet and withdrawn. A silence had fallen between me and Mrs. Blessington. And I understood only too well the anger I"d heard in my father"s voice on that long ago night when we had come home from Victoria Station and my mother had accused him of imagining things.
Yet what obsessed me more than anything else was the gentle countenance of the mysterious man I had glimpsed, the dark, almost innocent, eyes that had fixed on me for one moment before I had screamed.
"Strange that Mrs. Blessington is not afraid of him," I said in a low distracted voice, no longer caring if Richard heard me. "And that no one here seems in fear of him at all..." The strangest fancies were coming to me. The careless words of the villagers were running through my head. "You would be wise to do one very important thing before you retire," I said. "Leave out in writing a note to the effect that you do not intend to tear down the house."
"Julie, you have created an impossible dilemma," Richard demanded. "You insist we rea.s.sure this apparition that the house will not be destroyed, when in fact you verify the existence of the very creature that drove our father to say what he did."
"Oh, I wish I had never come here!" I burst out suddenly.
"Then we should go, both of us, and decide this matter at home."
"No, that"s just it. I could never go without knowing... "his secrets"... "the demon wretch." I could never go on living without knowing now!"
Anger must be an excellent antidote to fear, for surely something worked to alleviate my natural alarm. I did not undress that night, nor even take off my shoes, but rather sat in that dark hollow bedroom gazing at the small square of diamond-paned window until I heard all of the house fall quiet. Richard"s door at last closed. There came those distant echoing booms that meant other bolts had been put in place.
And when the grandfather clock in the great hall chimed the hour of eleven, Rampling Gate was as usual fast asleep.