That night, we laughed like children as we supped at the great oak table, our candles giving only a feeble light. And afterwards, it was a fierce battle of pocket billiards in the game room which had been Uncle Baxter’s last renovation, and a little too much brandy, I fear.
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 appetite 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 luster 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 glass 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 classical 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.