Виктория Холт - Lord of the Far Island

While we were in the country Philip insisted we go to Dead Man's 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: "It brings it all back, doesn't it? It'll always be one of my favorite places. You were a bit scared to come here alone, admit it, Ellen."

"Well, just a bit."

"I was a beast to make you."

"You were a horrid little beast quite often."

"But 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't it?"

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

"If rumor's true, quite a number."

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

"Come back," I shouted.

He obeyed, laughing. "Why, Ellen, you're really scared. You didn't think I was going to leap over, did you?"

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

"I'll speak about it. It's 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't know why I was aware of him, but I was. He gave me an uneasy feeling.

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

He looked about him. "On the bench, you mean?"

"Yes, he seems to be watching us."

"Well, he must be thinking how pretty you look."

"He seems interested in us."

Philip squeezed my arm.

"Of course he's interested in us. We're rather special people."

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

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't 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 Philip—all 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's lives. It was a sobering thought. I suddenly felt that I had been put into a cage—a 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: "Do you like it?"

"I haven't seen it yet. You can't judge a house by the hall."

"Come on then."

He took my hand and we went into the lower rooms; they were intimate—walls 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.

"We'll give our parties here," he said. "Rather elegant eh?"

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

"It's too big," I said, finding excuses.

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

"We shall need these rooms. There are the servants... to be accommodated, and we want a nursery. What's the matter? You want a nursery, don't you?"

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

"What do you mean... ghosts or something?"

"Of course not. It looks so ..." I floundered. "Empty!"

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

"I want to stay here... alone for a bit."

"Whatever for?"

"To feel what it's like to be here by myself."

"You 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't 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.

"Fe fi fo fum!" cried Philip. "I 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't shake off my uneasy feeling about the house in Finlay Square. I knew that Philip was eager to acquire it. He said we didn't want to spend months looking for houses. Buying a house was a lengthy matter at the best of times.

"We can always sell it if we don't like it," he pointed out. "We shall be wanting something bigger in due course, I daresay."

The house was to be his father's 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 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.