It was as though I could hear voices, whispering voices, voices of the Rooks fabricating tales about my father, gossip, rumour. But there was something there. Normally I should be afraid to stay in this house. Now, although I sensed more than I ever had before that atmosphere of doom which hung over it, it did not frighten me. Or perhaps I was so afraid of reality—of what might lie under the soil of the forbidden wood—that I could not feel this fear of the supernatural. There was so much that could be explained to the human mind going on around me—that was if one could piece the evidence together.
There was another flash of lightning, less brilliant than those which had gone before, and some seconds passed before I heard the thunder. The storm was moving away. It had become lighter.
I wondered why the door was not shut. We always locked the doors when we left. It was not as though it was empty of furniture. All Robert Frinton’s furniture had been left here when he died and had remained since. Carlotta had wished it that way and it had been her house and her furniture—left to her by the adoring Robert Frinton, uncle of the father whom she had never known.
I looked up the staircase and it was as though some force impelled me to mount it.
I did so slowly. I could still hear the rain pelting down outside. I looked into the gallery. There was no one there.
Someone must have forgotten to lock the door, I told myself. Why not go out? Go to comfort poor Tomtit, who would be waiting patiently for me in the outhouse.
But I went up the stairs. I was going to look through the house to see if anyone was there.
I had a fantastic idea that the house was beckoning me on; I could almost fancy it mocked me.
“Silly little Damaris, always such a child.”
That was like Carlotta’s voice.
“When I, as a child, went and explored the haunted house I hid in a cupboard. It was called Carlotta’s cupboard after that. Robert Frinton said he was reminded of me every time he used it.”
Carlotta had loved to tell me tales like that when she was younger but so very much my senior—seeming to be more so then than now.
Oddly enough my fear had left me, although never had the house seemed more sinister. It was simply because I was not really here. I was in the wood looking down at that patch of land which I believed to be Belle’s grave.
Now I had reached the first-floor landing. I thought I heard whispering voices. I stood still listening. Silence … deep silence.
I imagined it, I thought. It was easy to imagine voices with the rain pelting against the window and the wind sighing through the branches of the trees which would be completely leafless after this violent storm.
I opened the door of the bedroom which Carlotta had liked best of all. The room with the four-poster bed with the red velvet curtains, the bed where I had come across her lying and talking to herself.
I stepped into the room. I took a few paces forward and almost tripped over something lying on the floor. I looked down. There was enough light to show me a riding habit … dove grey with a hat with a little blue feather.
I gave a little gasp. At that moment a flash of lightning illuminated the room and I saw them clearly. Carlotta and Matt. They were lying on the bed … naked … They were entwined about each other.
I took one look and turned. I felt sick. I did not know what to do, what to think. My mind was a blank. As I shut the door the clap of thunder burst out.
I ran. I did not know where I was running. All I wanted to do was to get away. I could not bear to think of what I had seen, of what it implied. It revolted me, nauseated me.
I did not know where I was running. I was unaware of the rain beating down on me. I came to the gate of the forbidden land. Where to hide? Where to be alone with my jumbled thoughts? In there … there at the side of Belle’s grave.
I climbed the gate and went stumbling through the leaves. I flung myself down beside the disturbed earth. I lay there trying hard not to think of that scene in the bedroom.
It was dark. It was still raining but it was a softer rain now. I felt dazed and lost to the world. I was not sure where I was. Then I remembered. I was in the wood and Belle was murdered and I had seen something in the bedroom at Enderby which I could never forget. It had shattered my own personal dream; but it had done more than that. I did not want to know anymore. I wanted to forget. My father … my mother … my sister … I could not bear to be with them. I wanted to be alone … by myself … here in the forbidden wood.
My mind started to wander, I think, because I fancied I saw the will-o’-the-wisps dancing around me as though to claim me as one of their band. I was not afraid of them. I understood something of human unhappiness now. I just wanted to be wrapped round in nothingness. “Nothing, nothing,” I whispered. “Let it stay like this for ever.”
It was long after that night before I wrote again in my journal. They found me in the morning. It was my father who came into the wood looking for me and carried me home. Tomtit, sensing that something was wrong, had late that night left the hut and gone back to the Dower House. They were at that time very anxious about me and when he came back alone they were frantic with anxiety.
Then they searched … all through that night of rain and storm.
I had a raging fever and I came near to death. For a whole year I was in my bed. My mother nursed me with all the love and tenderness of which she was capable.
They didn’t question me. I was too ill for that. It was more than three months before I discovered that the Pilkingtons had left. Elizabeth had grown tired of the country, they said, and had left for London and put Grasslands up for sale. Matt had left a week or so after that terrible night.
My limbs were stiff even when I was recovered, and for a long time it was agony to move my hands. How devoted my mother was to me, how tender was my father. I found that I loved him just as much as I ever had, and we never spoke of Belle. I think he knew that I had gone to look for Belle and what I feared, for he had found me at that spot.
Carlotta did not come to see me. “She was here for a long time in the beginning,” said my mother. “She was so anxious about you. She wouldn’t go until she knew you were going to recover. I have never seen Carlotta so put about. Then she had to go home of course. She had been away so long. When you are well enough we will go to Eyot Abbass.”
Sometimes I thought I would never be well again. The pains in my limbs were excruciating at times and they were stiff when I tried to walk so that I tired easily.
My mother would read to me, my father played chess with me. They were anxious to show me I was their precious child.
So the time began to pass.
CARLOTTA
A Willing Abduction
FOR MONTHS I BELIEVED I should never forget that moment when on the night of the great storm my sister, Damaris, opened the door of the red room and saw me with Matt Pilkington. It was a bizarre scene with that sudden flash of lightning showing us there … caught flagrantly, blatantly, so that the truth could not be hidden.
To her I must have seemed the ultimate sinner. The adultress taken in adultery. I could never begin to explain everything to Damaris. She is so good; I am so wicked. Though I do not believe any living person is entirely good nor any entirely bad. Even I must have some good points, for I did suffer terrible remorse on that night when she was missing. When her horse came home without her I was frantic with anxiety and all through that night I suffered such fear and there was born in me a repugnance of myself which I had never experienced before. I even prayed: “Anything … anything I will do,” I murmured, “but bring her home.” Then she was found. I shall never forget the overwhelming relief when my father carried her into the house.