If I had said Yes to Raymond, I should now be thinking of my coming marriage. Granny and I would have been making excited plans.
I wished it were so. I was a fool.
I went up to Ann Alice's room and sat there.
"If I had never found your journal everything would have been different," I said to Ann Alice, as though she were there. I often felt as though she were. "Philip would not have become obsessed with the need to find the island. He would still be with us, I should be getting ready for my marriage to Raymond. You have changed everything for me, Ann Alice."
How silent it was. Nothing ... but the gentle moaning of the wind rustling the leaves in the yew that was just outside the newly opened window. I could imagine I heard voices in the wind. But then I was always imaginative in this room.
Granny was right. The past was done with. It was folly to let it impinge on the present. It had been such a shock to discover that Raymond's ancestors had been involved with mine. Two of his had murdered Ann Alice, and Freddy ... little Freddy of whom there was not much written but who seemed to have been a rather charming boy... was his greatgrandfather. Raymond must have been rather like Freddy when he was a boy. Yet Freddy had been the child of murderers.
Again and again I wished I had never discovered the journal. I wished that I had never discovered the connection between our two families. There must be many things in life which it is better not to know.
I was sitting in that room close to the window thinking of Ann Alice on that night when suddenly I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Slowly, laboriously, they were coming along the corridor.
In that moment I was Ann Alice. I sat there staring at the door. I saw the handle slowly turn. I was reliving it all again. Between me and that girl there was certainly some mystic bond.
Slowly the door opened. I was expecting him ... that evil man. I had conjured up a picture of what he looked like—rather flashily handsome with thick sensual lips and dark fierce eyes, greedy eyes, who stretched out to take what he wanted and did not care whether he crushed anyone who stood in his way.
I gave a little gasp as Granny M stepped into the room.
"Up here again!" she said. "Why, you look quite white and scared out of your wits. You're as bad as the servants with their ghosts... only they do have the sense to keep away from the place."
She came in and sat on the bed and the room immediately assumed an air of normality.
"What are you doing up here? You're always up here. For two pins I'd have it closed up again."
"I have a sort of compulsion to come," I told her. "I heard your steps on the stairs and I thought for a moment..."
"You thought I was someone returned from the dead! Really, child, you've got to stop all this. It's a parcel of nonsense. You're working up something which is just a fantasy. If it hadn't been for that storm..."
"I often say that. If it hadn't been for the storm ..."
"Well, it's no use saying that now. It happened and there is an end to it. Why do you come here? You're becoming obsessed by what you read in that journal."
"Well, you see Granny, first I found her grave... and then her journal, and now there is this discovery about Freddy's being Raymond's greatgrandfather. It's like a pattern."
"It's all very logical, my dear. We agreed on that. Little Freddy went in for map making ... naturally he would, having learned something about it in his childhood and become fascinated by it as so many do. What his parents got up to is no concern of ours. It's all long ago. People did all sorts of things then which we wouldn't do now. We met Raymond because he is in the business, and as there are not so many of us around, that's natural enough. There is nothing mystical about it at all. Get that out of your head. You've got a lot of imagination and sometimes that can be a bad thing. Stop thinking about it. It's over and done with. And when I think that you refused Raymond because of some fanciful ideas ... it just makes me wonder how I brought you up. It does really. There's Philip goes off on some wild-goose chase..."
She was silent. We looked at each other. Then I went to her and for a moment we clung together.
She extricated herself almost immediately. She never believed in giving way to emotion.
"We have had a very pleasant visit," she said, "and now we've come home and we miss it all. I shall ask Raymond to come for the weekend. No use asking the brother and father. I daresay they will be expected to go down to Buckinghamshire. But I am sure everyone will understand if I ask Raymond. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
I agreed that I would.
"You should see him more often. You should get away from all those morbid imaginings. Perhaps then you will come to your senses."
"I hope so, Granny."
"My dear child, so do I."
Raymond was at our house a good deal. Spending weekends with us had become quite a habit. He said his family would very much like it if we went to them for another visit.
Although I wanted to, I was still unsure, and I did not want to face that expectancy again until I could give a definite answer. It seemed unfair to Raymond, who was kind and understanding. Sometimes I almost said: 'Til marry you as soon as you want me to."
I could talk to him on any subject... except one, and that was my knowledge of the wickedness of his ancestors. That I could not speak of and until I did there must be a barrier between us. There were times when I thought of it in the clear light of day that it seemed quite nonsensical. I just had this horrible fear that I should look for traits of Desmond Featherstone in him... and find them. I had this uncanny feeling that Ann Alice was warning me.
It was nonsense, of course. I had just allowed myself to become obsessed by the discovery of the grave and the closed room—and the journal which had explained so much.
When I rode with Raymond, when he dined with Granny and me and some of our friends, everything seemed different. I was pleased when he excelled in discussion, when everyone said what a charming person he was, and when Benjamin Darkin and he talked together and the old man showed him such respect. Surely that was loving.
I think Granny was a little exasperated with me. A wedding prospect would have taken her mind off Philip. Marriage and, in time, babies. That was what she would have liked.
Sometimes I thought I could, and then would come those dreams... those rather fearful dreams, particularly that one which recurred, the one when I was in the room, heard the footsteps on the stairs, and the coming of Raymond who turned into Desmond Featherstone*
I seemed to hear a voice within me saying: "Not yet. Not yet." And in my more fanciful moments I imagined that it was Ann Alice who spoke to me.
October had come. It was a year since Philip had gone. Both Granny M and I were dreading the anniversary of his departure. She made sure that Raymond was with us on that day. I must say that that helped considerably.
We got through it and then it was November... dark gloomy days... the sort of days when memories came back.
We were invited to spend Christmas with the Billingtons and this we did.
We could not have had a more delightful Christmas although it was inevitable that we should think of past Christmases when Philip was with us. We neither of us mentioned him on Christmas Day. It was a sort of unspoken pact between us. As was to be expected, all the old customs were carried out. Great fires roared in the grates. There were quantities of seasonal food; and much merriment in which the whole neighbourhood seemed to join.
The younger members of the family all went riding on Boxing morning and Grace, Basil, and James followed their usual custom of losing themselves, so that Raymond and I were alone together.