Lord of the Far Island (8 page)

It was a Carrington tradition to have boys, and in view of Rollo misfortune in marriage Philip and I were to be the ones to produce the all-important male Carringtons. There was a certain implication that Philip and I should not delay too long before producing the first grandson.

The thought of having a baby thrilled me and there was not a cloud in my sky during those first weeks after the dance. I think I really believed it would go on like that forever.

We went down to the country for a week as the Carringtons wanted to celebrate our engagement among their friends there. I had always been attracted by the house from the first moment I had seen it, but now that I was to be a member of the family and it would occasionally be my home too, I was more than ever excited by it.

Trentham Towers was an old mansion dating back to Tudor times, although a great deal of reconstruction had been done on it during later periods. Built on a hill, it looked imperiously down on the countryside in what I had thought of as a true Carrington manner. But since I had been taken into the family I realized I had maligned them. It was Cousin Agatha who had given me my opinion of them. No family could have welcomed me more warmly, which was really very remarkable considering the circles in which they moved.

I told Philip I wanted to look over the house and, catching my excitement, as he often did about something which in the ordinary way would have been of little interest to him (it was one of his most endearing characteristics), he was delighted to show me. I was familiar with the gardens, which I had explored thoroughly during my childhood, and it was the house which interested me.

He took me through the great hall to the chapel, then to the dining room, where the portraits of his mother family were displayed.

After that he led me down a stone spiral staircase and, throwing open a heavy oak door, he explained: his is the old armory. It now our gun room.

hat a lot of weapons!I cried. hope theye just for ornament.

He laughed at me. heye used now and then during the season. I a crack shot, I can tell you.

hate shooting things,I said vehemently.

don suppose you mind partaking of a succulent pheasant now and then,he said. He had opened a case lined with red satin, in which was a silver-gray pistol and a place for another.

sn that a beauty?he demanded.

scarcely call it that.

hat your ignorance, my darling.

here the other one? There should be two, shouldn there?

h, that in a safe place.

hat do you mean by that?

hat if I alone in a wing of the house? Stealthy footsteps creeping along the corridor. The door opens slowly and in comes a man in a mask. He going to steal the silver, the pictures, the family treasure. What do I do? I feel under my pillow. I draw out my pistol. ands up, villain,I cry. And what happens? What can he do against me and my little beauty? The family treasure is saved and all because of this.He touched the pistol lovingly before he closed the case.

ou don really keep a pistol under your pillow, do you, Philip?

ntil we are married, yes. After that I shall have you to protect me.

ou are an idiot,I said. nd I don like these guns and things. Let continue exploring.

our wish is law,answered Philip. ome on.

I loved the old butteries and storing houses. I was enchanted by the room in which Queen Elizabeth was reputed to have slept; there was even the four-poster bed which she was said to have used. The most delightful room was the solarium with its sunny aspect. It was here that I turned to Philip and said: hen shall I meet Rollo wife?

Philip looked uneasy. e don meet her. We don even talk about her. It the most unfortunate thing and so unlike Rollo. One couldn imagine him involved in anything like that. He always been so wrapped up in the business finance and all that every bit as much as my father perhaps more. Theye always dashing about the world, discussing the market. It seemed to me that they didn think about anything else. And then to marry like that!

t was a hasty marriage then?

t must have been. I didn hear anything about it until it was a fait accompli. Then after the honeymoon he found out.

ound out what?

never heard the details. I just knew she wasn the sort who could mix in society his sort of society. She wasn one of us. She would be a hindrance in his career. There was also a rumor that she drank too much.

nd this didn come out until after?

suppose soor he wouldn have married her.

should have thought some of it would have been obvious. Not being able to meet people, for instance.

ell, he must have been infatuated with her. It a common enough story. He married in haste and when all the excitement wore off he realized his mistake.

t seems so odd that that should have happened to him. He seems the last person to be carried away by his emotions.

eople are often not what you think. Youe sure you know someone and then you find they do the last thing you expect them to. That how it was with Rollo. In any case it was a ghastly mistake and he keeps her out of the way. She lived in this house at one time. He engaged a companion for her. But it was difficult with the family coming down as they did. So now she somewhere else.

here?

don know. We don talk of it. It Rollo affair. He wants it that way.

e must be very unhappy.

ou never know with Rollo. But don speak of it to my mother. It upsets her. Everyone upset by it most of all Rollo, of course, but he doesn show it much. He never did show his feelings.

wonder what she feels like being kept away from the familyknowing that theye ashamed of her.

he probably doesn care. People like that can be insensitive.

ou said she was once in this house.

es, for a while Rollo kept her here. There was a very good woman who looked after her and then when it seemed impossible they left here.

like to see the rooms she occupied.

hatever for?

e just a feeling I like to.

heye right at the top.

ome on,I commanded. how me.

We mounted the oak staircase with its delicately carved banisters, and came almost to the top of the house. A spiral staircase took us right there. These lacked the lofty ceilings of the lower rooms and were much smaller. There were four of them together sort of apartment with connecting doors. Two of these were bedrooms. One for Rollo wife, I thought. One for her companion.

I am sensitive about dwellings and as I stood savoring the atmosphere I fancied I could detect suffering in these. I shivered, and Philip said : oue cold.

o, just a shiver.

hy are you shivering then?

omeone walked over my grave, as they say.

et go down.

ot just yet. I want to linger awhile. I wonder what she felt like up here. Perhaps she was trying to be different so that Rollo and his family wouldn be ashamed of her.

ome on. Let go down. Youe running on again. I can tell you anything more about her. We don talk of her. She Rollo affair.

ers too,I reminded him. I went to the bed and touched the quilt, then the back of a chair. She had lived with these things. I wanted to know about her, to see her. Perhaps I could talk to her, help her in some way.

We don talk about these things, Philip had said. But that was the Carrington way of life. When something was unpleasant you pretended it didn exist. I could never be like that and I couldn stop thinking about Rollo wife.

While we were in the country Philip insisted we go to Dead Man Leap. We walked through the woods together and came to the spot near the path where there was a wooden seat. We sat down and Philip said: t brings it all back, doesn it? Itl always be one of my favorite places. You were a bit scared to come here alone, admit it, Ellen.

ell, just a bit.

was a beast to make you.

ou were a horrid little beast quite often.

ut you were such a know-it-all that you had to be brought down a peg or two sometimes. It does seem a bit weird here, doesn it?

wonder how many people have sat on this seat and thought about jumping over.

f rumor true, quite a number.

Philip stood up to go to stand at the edge of the path as he used to.

ome back,I shouted.

He obeyed, laughing. hy, Ellen, youe really scared. You didn think I was going to leap over, did you?

thought you might show off once too often. There ought to be a rail of some sort up there.

l speak about it. It our land, you know.

I was surprised that he remembered to do so, and before we left London an iron rail was put up.

Back in London, Philip and I liked to walk in the Park and talk about our plans. There we could often escape from people who wanted to come up and congratulate us and be quite alone, so we made the most of it. We would wander along by the Serpentine into Kensington Gardens and right across to the other side of the Park. It was in the Park that I was aware of a man watching us. There was nothing very remarkable about him except his unusually bushy eyebrows. He had come along very quietly, it seemed, and seated himself on one of the benches not far from us.

I don know why I was aware of him, but I was. He gave me an uneasy feeling.

o you see that man over there, Philip?I asked.

He looked about him. n the bench, you mean?

es, he seems to be watching us.

ell, he must be thinking how pretty you look.

e seems interested in us.

Philip squeezed my arm.

f course he interested in us. Wee rather special people.

The man got up and walked away; and we forgot him.

The House in Finlay Square

We went to see a house in a Knightsbridge square. I was so excited when Philip produced the key and we went in. It was a tall white Queen Anne house with a garden in front and four stories. There is something about empty houses which is almost personal. They can be welcoming or forbidding.

I don think I have any special perception, merely an overcharged imagination perhaps, but this house affected me as the top rooms of the Carrington country house had done: It was the reverse of welcoming. There was something about it that was alien, and for the first time in my new-found happiness a coldness touched me. Was it because the house represented a reality and the rest had been dreams?

I was to spend my life with Philipll the years ahead would be with him; we should grow old together, grow like each other. We should be the most important people in each other lives. It was a sobering thought. I suddenly felt that I had been put into a cage pleasant gilded cage, it was true, but outside was the world which I had never yet explored.

I looked at Philip. He was saying eagerly: o you like it?

haven seen it yet. You can judge a house by the hall.

ome on then.

He took my hand and we went into the lower rooms; they were intimatealls closing round me. No, I thought. No!

He ran up the stairs dragging me with him. The rooms on the first floor were light and airy. I liked them better.

el give our parties here,he said. ather elegant eh?

We went up again. There were more big rooms and on the top floor more, and above that attics.

t too big,I said, finding excuses.

He looked startled. By Carrington standards it was quite small.

e shall need these rooms. There are the servantsto be accommodated, and we want a nursery. What the matter? You want a nursery, don you?

es, I do very much. But I just feel there is something not quite right about it.

hat do you mean ghosts or something?

f course not. It looks so I floundered. mpty!

He laughed at me. hat do you expect it to be, you goose? Let look all round. Come on.He was enthusiastic. he right house is not so easy to find these days,he went on. he sooner we get a place, the sooner we can get married. Let look downstairs again.

want to stay here alone for a bit.

hatever for?

o feel what it like to be here by myself.

ou ass,he said, like the Philip of our childhood. But he went downstairs.

I stood there in the center of the room. I looked out of the long narrow window. There was a garden, small of course, with two trees in it, and a round flower bed.

I tried to imagine myself alone in this house.

It was a strange feeling. I just knew that I didn want to come here. It was the same feeling that I had in the dream. How very odd, I thought, and disturbing, because I knew this could never be the house for me.

I went down the stairs to the room below and was standing at the window and looking out on the garden when there was a movement behind me. Hands encircled my throat. I gasped out in terror.

e fi fo fum!cried Philip. am the ghost of the last tenant. I was found hanging from the rafters.

He swung me round to face him.

He kissed me: and we were both laughing.

He took my hands and we raced down the stairs.

I couldn shake off my uneasy feeling about the house in Finlay Square. I knew that Philip was eager to acquire it. He said we didn want to spend months looking for houses. Buying a house was a lengthy matter at the best of times.

e can always sell it if we don like it,he pointed out. e shall be wanting something bigger in due course, I daresay.

The house was to be his father wedding present and I hated to curb his enthusiasm. It was not even that I could find anything definite to dislike about the place; but it was a fact that from the time we looked over it my happiness became a little clouded. Oddly enough I had the dream again, which was surprising because I had so recently had it on the night before the dance.

I became so obsessed by the house that one day I went to the house agent and asked if I could have a key to look it over alone. When they knew who I was they reminded me that Mr. Carrington already had a key. I explained then that I wanted to look it over by myself. So I got another key.

It was afternoon, about three olock, 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.