It was afternoon, about three o'clock, when I arrived at Finlay Square. It was warm and there were few people about. I stood near the gardens which formed the center of the square and looked at the house from across the road. Again I felt the odd misgiving. My impulse was to turn away at once, take the key back to the house agent and tell him that we had decided against the house. Philip would be disappointed but I could make him understand, I was sure.
Then it was as though some force was propelling me across the road. I didn't want to go, and yet the overpowering urge to do so was forcing me to. I would let myself in and go carefully through the house. I would make myself see that it was just an ordinary house. There was nothing different there from thousands of other empty houses.
As I opened the gate it gave what I thought of as a protesting whine; I was looking for omens, I told myself severely. Determined not to give way to such fancies, I went up the short path to the front door and let myself in. I closed the door behind me and stood in the hall. Then it came to me again—that strange feeling of foreboding. It seemed as though the house was telling me to go. It had no welcome for me. It had nothing to offer me but disaster.
I looked up at the tall ornamented ceiling and at the really rather beautiful curving staircase. It seemed to me as though the house was rejecting me.
I suppose I was a fanciful person, despite my firm intentions. Only such a one would have that recurring dream surely and try to read something into it. I supposed lots of people dreamed and forgot their dreams the next day. I was being foolish really.
I mounted the stairs slowly and deliberately and studied the rooms on the first floor—the entertaining rooms. They were elegant—long windows to the floor—typical of their period; the fireplaces were exquisite in their simplicity. Adam perhaps. I furnished it in my mind and imagined myself as the hostess—moving gracefully among the guests—a Carrington hostess, I thought with a curl of the lips. "Oh, good evening, Cousin Agatha. How good of you to come. Philip and I are delighted." And "Why, Mrs. Oman Lemming, how nice to see you and your daughters." (There were two of them, weren't there?) They would all be so delighted to be received at a Carrington evening. I wanted to laugh at the thought of the imitation I would give of them later to Philip.
Then I went upstairs. Our bedrooms would be here, and there was a small room which had been made into a bathroom. "There wouldn't be a great deal to be done," Philip had said. "The house is ideal, Ellen."
"The house is ideal," I repeated aloud. Then I stood listening. I fancied I heard mocking laughter.
I went up to the rooms which would be nurseries and the attics where the servants would be housed. I pictured white walls and a blue frieze of animals, and a little cot of white wood with a blue coverlet.
I was looking very far into the future. But that after all is what marriage was for, wasn't it? That was why the Carringtons wanted it. Philip must marry young because it seemed as though Rollo would never have children. Odd to think of Philip and myself as parents.
Then I felt my heart leap in terror. In the silence of the house I heard something. I stood very still listening. All was quiet. Had I imagined it? It is strange really how sometimes without sound one can be conscious of a presence. I had the uncanny feeling that someone was in the house. Then as I stood very still in the center of the room, I heard a sound. I had not been mistaken. Someone was in the house.
My heart began to hammer painfully. Who? It couldn't be Philip. I knew where he was. He had told me he had to go to his father's London office that day.
I listened. There it was again. A muffled sound; the creak of an opening door.
Then I heard footsteps on the stairs.
I found it difficult to move. I was as though petrified. It was absurd. The house was for sale; we had not definitely bought it, so why should not some prospective buyer come to look at it?
The footsteps came nearer. I stared in fascination at the door. Someone was immediately outside.
As the door was slowly pushed open I gasped; Rollo Carrington stood there.
"Why," he said, "I thought there was no one here."
"So... did I."
"I'm afraid I startled you."
"I...I heard someone below and ..."
He looked so tall and I remembered what Philip had said a long time ago about his being a Viking; he even had the appropriate name.
I had had a glimpse of him before but I felt I was seeing him for the first time. He exuded power and a sort of magnetism. I felt that if Rollo Carrington entered a room everyone must be aware of him.
I went on: "You are Mr. Carrington, Philip's brother. I am Ellen Kellaway, his fiancee."
"Yes, I know. Congratulations."
"Thank you. I didn't know you were in London."
"I arrived home last night. I had heard the news of your engagement, of course."
I wondered whether he had come home because of it.
"Philip has told me about the house. I said I'd look it over, so he gave me the key."
"I wanted to look over it on my own," I explained.
He nodded. "Naturally you are eager to see that it is suitable."
"Shall you advise your father to buy it?"
"I think it's very likely a sound proposition. I'm not sure yet of course."
He kept his eyes on me and I felt uncomfortable because it seemed as though he was trying to assess me, to probe my innermost thoughts; and I was not at all sure what he was thinking of me. As for myself, I could not stop thinking of him with that poor wife of his—a shadowy figure in my imagination—in those top rooms at Trentham Towers, and the decision which must have come to him that she must have a companion to watch over her.
It was impossible to imagine this man caught up in a passionate love affair, which there must have been to make him marry so hastily. I thought I detected a certain bitterness about his mouth. He was no doubt reviling fate for making his beautiful wife unsuitable and allowing him to discover this after he had married her. So cool, he looked, so much in command of himself—and I imagined of everyone around him—that I could not reconcile the story of his romantic tragic marriage with this man at all.
"Have you been round again?" he asked.
"Not properly."
"Shall we look at it together?"
"Yes, please."
"Come then, we'll start from the top."
He talked about the snares to look for. I was hardly paying attention. I just wanted to hear his voice, which was deep and authoritative; I wanted to know so much about him—everything; he seemed so mature compared with Philip and me; he talked of Philip as though he were a mere boy and it was clear that he considered me very young too.
"I've had some experience of buying property," he said. "One has to be careful. Caveat emptor, you know."
We went through the house, then out into the garden. We stood beneath one of the trees.
I looked back at the house. It seemed more menacing than ever and I felt a great desire to run away from it even though Philip's brother was beside me to protect me from any evil that might befall me.
He started to walk back into the house and I followed. It seemed to close in on me like a prison, and I found it so hard to shake off this feeling of foreboding that I was afraid I would show it. Rollo looked at me rather intently as though he were about to say something, then he changed his mind, or appeared to. He opened the front door and as we stepped out of the house a great relief swept over me.
"I'll call a cab," he said, "and take you home."
I don't know how to describe Rollo. There was something enigmatic and completely baffling about him. He was not nearly as good-looking as Philip. His features were more rugged, but he emanated power and a kind of magnetism. He was the sort of man who could slip quietly into a room and yet everyone would be aware of him and he gave the impression that whatever he did would be successful.