Inside, a middle-aged man dressed in slacks and turtleneck sat with his feet propped on a littered desk.
«I dropped in,» said Latimer, «to inquire about the house down the road. The one with the brick drive.»
«Oh, that one,» said the man. «Well, I tell you, stranger, I can’t show it to you now. I’m waiting for someone who wants to look at the Ferguson place. Tell you what, though. I could give you the key.»
«Could you give me some idea of what the rent would be?»
«Why don’t you look at it first. See what you think of it. Get the feel of it. See if you’d fit into it. If you like it, we can talk. Hard place to move. Doesn’t fit the needs of many people. Too big, for one thing, too old. I could get you a deal on it.»
The man took his feet off the desk, plopped them on the floor.
Rummaging in a desk drawer, he came up with a key with a tag attached to it and threw it on the desk top.
«Have a look at it and then come back,» he said. «This Ferguson business shouldn’t take more than an hour or two.»
«Thank you,» said Latimer, picking up the key.
He parked the car in front of the house and went up the steps. The key worked easily in the lock and the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. He came into a hall that ran from front to back, with a staircase ascending to the second floor and doors opening on either side into ground-floor rooms.
The hall was dim and cool, a place of graciousness. When he moved along the hall, the floorboards did not creak beneath his feet as in a house this old he would have thought they might. There was no shut-up odor, no smell of damp or mildew, no sign of bats or mice.
The door to his right was open, as were all the doors that ran along the hall. He glanced into the room—a large room, with light from the westering sun flooding through the windows that stood on either side of a marble fireplace. Across the hall was a smaller room, with a fireplace in one corner.
A library or a study, he thought. The larger room, undoubtedly, had been thought of, when the house was built, as a drawing room. Beyond the larger room, on the right-hand side, he found what might have been a kitchen with a large brick fireplace that had a utilitarian look to it—used, perhaps, in the olden days for cooking, and across from it a much larger room, with another marble fireplace, windows on either side of it and oblong mirrors set into the wall, an ornate chandelier hanging from the ceiling. This, he knew, had to be the dining room, the proper setting for leisurely formal dinners.
He shook his head at what he saw. It was much too grand for him, much larger, much more elegant than he had thought. If someone wanted to live as a place like this should be lived in, it would cost a fortune in furniture alone. He had told himself that during a summer’s residence he could camp out in a couple of rooms, but to camp out in a place like this would be sacrilege; the house deserved a better occupant than that.
Yet, it still held its attraction. There was about it a sense of openness, of airiness, of ease. Here a man would not be cramped; he’d have room to move about. It conveyed a feeling of well-being. It was, in essence, not a living place, but a place for living.
The man had said that it had been hard to move, that to most people it had slight appeal—too large, too old—and that he could make an attractive deal on it. But, with a sinking feeling, Latimer knew that what the man had said was true. Despite its attractiveness, it was far too large. It would take too much furniture even for a summer of camping out. And yet, despite all this, the pull—almost a physical pull—toward it still hung on.
He went out the back door of the hall, emerging on a wide veranda that ran the full length of the house. Below him lay the slope of ancient birch, running down a smooth green lawn to the seashore studded by tumbled boulders that flung up white clouds of spume as the racing waves broke against them. Flocks of mewling birds hung above the surging surf like white phantoms, and beyond this, the gray-blue stretch of ocean ran to the far horizon.
This was the place, he knew, that he had hunted for—a place of freedom that would free his brush from the conventions that any painter, at times, felt crowding in upon him. Here lay that remoteness from all other things, a barrier set up against a crowding world. Not objects to paint, but a place in which to put upon his canvases that desperate crying for expression he felt within himself.
He walked down across the long stretch of lawn, among the age-striped birch, and came upon the shore. He found a boulder and sat upon it, feeling the wild exhilaration of wind and water, sky and loneliness.
The sun had set and quiet shadows crept across the land. It was time to go, he told himself, but he kept on sitting, fascinated by the delicate deepening of the dusk, the subtle color changes that came upon the water.
When he finally roused himself and started walking up the lawn, the great birch trees had assumed a ghostliness that glimmered in the twilight. He did not go back into the house, but walked around it to come out on the front.
He reached the brick driveway and started walking, remembering that he’d have to go back into the house to lock the back door off the hall.
It was not until he had almost reached the front entrance that he realized his car was gone. Confused, he stopped dead in his tracks. He had parked it there; he was sure he had. Was it possible he had parked it off the road and walked up the drive, now forgetting that he had?
He turned and started down the driveway, his shoes clicking on the bricks.
No, dammit, he told himself, I did drive up the driveway—I remember doing it. He looked back and there wasn’t any car, either in front of the house or along the curve of driveway. He broke into a run, racing down the driveway toward the road. Some kids had come along and pushed it to the road—that must be the answer. A juvenile prank, the pranksters hiding somewhere, tittering to themselves as they watched him run to find it.
Although that was wrong, he thought—he had left it set on ‘Park’ and locked. Unless they broke a window, there was no way they could have pushed it.
The brick driveway came to an end and there wasn’t any road. The lawn and driveway came down to where they ended, and at that point a forest rose up to block the way. A wild and tangled forest that was very dark and dense, great trees standing up where the road had been. To his nostrils came the damp scent of forest mold, and somewhere in the darkness of the trees, an owl began to hoot.
He swung around, to face back toward the house, and saw the lighted windows. It couldn’t be, he told himself quite reasonably. There was no one in the house, no one to turn on the lights. In all likelihood, the electricity was shut off.
But the lighted windows persisted. There could be no question there were lights. Behind him, he could hear the strange rustlings of the trees and now there were two owls, answering one another.
Reluctantly, unbelievingly, he started up the driveway. There must be some sort of explanation. Perhaps, once he had the explanation, it would all seem quite simple. He might have gotten turned around somehow, as he had somehow gotten turned around earlier in the day, taking the wrong road. He might have suffered a lapse of memory, for some unknown and frightening reason have experienced a blackout. This might not be the house he had gone to look at, although, he insisted to himself, it certainly looked the same.