But why had Father never gone there? Why had he never taken us? And why on his deathbed, in those grim months after Mother's passing, did he tell my brother, Richard, that Rampling Gate must be torn down stone by stone? Rampling Gate that had always belonged to Ramplings, Rampling Gate which had stood for over four hundred years.
We were in awe of the task that lay before us, and painfully confused. Richard had just finished four years at Oxford. Two whirlwind social seasons in London had proven me something of a shy success. I still preferred scribbling poems and stories in the quiet of my room to dancing the night away, but I'd kept that a good secret, and though we were not spoilt children, we had enjoyed the best of everything our parents could give. But now the carefree years were ended. We had to be careful and wise.
And our hearts ached as, sitting together in Father's book-lined study, we looked at the old pictures of Rampling Gate before the small coal fire. 'Destroy it, Richard, as soon as I am gone,' Father had said.
'I just don't understand it, Julie,' Richard confessed, as he filled the little crystal glass in my hand with sherry. 'It's the genuine article, that old place, a real fourteenth-century manor house in excellent repair. A Mrs. Blessington, born and reared in the village of Rampling, has apparently managed it all these years. She was there when Uncle Baxter died, and he was the last Rampling to live under that roof.'
'Do you remember,' I asked, 'the year that Father took all these pictures down and put them away?'
'I shall never forget that.' Richard said. 'How could I? It was so peculiar, and so unlike Father, too.' He sat back, drawing slowly on his pipe. 'There had been that bizarre incident in Victoria Station, when he had seen that young man.'
'Yes, exactly,' I said, snuggling back into the velvet chair and looking into the tiny dancing flames in the grate. 'You remember how upset Father was?'
Yet it was a simple incident. In fact nothing really happened at all. We couldn't have been more than six and eight at the time and we had gone to the station with Father to say farewell to friends. Through the window of a train Father saw a young man who startled and upset him. I could remember the face clearly to this day. Remarkably handsome, with a narrow nose and well-drawn eyebrows, and a mop of lustrous brown hair. The large black eyes had regarded Father with the saddest expression as Father had drawn us back and hurried us away.
'And the argument that night, between Father and Mother,' Richard said thoughtfully. 'I remember that we listened on the landing and we were so afraid.'
'And Father said he wasn't content to be master of Rampling Gate anymore; he had come to London and revealed himself. An unspeakable horror, that is what he called it, that he should be so bold.'
'Yes, exactly, and when Mother tried to quiet him, when she suggested that he was imagining things, he went into a perfect rage.'
'But who could it have been, the master of Rampling Gate, if Father wasn't the master? Uncle Baxter was long dead by then.'
'I just don't know what to make of it,' Richard murmured. 'And there's nothing in Father's papers to explain any of it at all.' He examined the most recent of the pictures, a lovely tinted engraving that showed the house perfectly reflected in the azure water of its lake. 'But I tell you, the worst part of it, Julie,' he said shaking his head, 'is that we've never even seen the house ourselves.'
I glanced at him and our eyes met in a moment of confusion that quickly passed to something else. I leant forward:
'He did not say we couldn't go there, did he, Richard?' I demanded. 'That we couldn't visit the house before it was destroyed.'
'No, of course he didn't!' Richard said. The smile broke over his face easily. 'After all, don't we owe it to the others, Julie? Uncle Baxter who spent the last of his fortune restoring the house, even this old Mrs. Blessington that has kept it all these years?'
'And what about the village itself?' I added quickly. 'What will it mean to these people to see Rampling Gate destroyed? Of course we must go and see the place ourselves.'
'Then it's settled. I'll write to Mrs. Blessington immediately. I'll tell her we're coming and that we can not say how long we will stay.'
'Oh, Richard, that would be too marvelous!' I couldn't keep from hugging him, though it flustered him and he pulled on his pipe just exactly the way Father would have done. 'Make it at least a fortnight,' I said. 'I want so to know the place, especially if…'
But it was too sad to think of Father's admonition. And much more fun to think of the journey itself. I'd pack my manuscripts, for who knew, maybe in that melancholy and exquisite setting I'd find exactly the inspiration I required. It was almost a wicked exhilaration I felt, breaking the gloom that had hung over us since the day that Father was laid to rest.
'It is the right thing to do, isn't it, Richard?' I asked uncertainly, a little disconcerted by how much I wanted to go. There was some illicit pleasure in it, going to Rampling Gate at last.
''Unspeakable horror,'' I repeated Father's words with a little grimace. What did it all mean? I thought again of the strange, almost exquisite young man I'd glimpsed in that railway carriage, gazing at us all with that wistful expression on his lean face. He had worn a black greatcoat with a red woollen cravat, and I could remember how pale he had been against that dash of red. Like bone china his complexion had been. Strange to remember it so vividly, even to the tilt of his head, and that long luxuriant brown hair. But he had been a blaze against that window. And I realized now that, in those few remarkable moments, he had created for me an ideal of masculine beauty which I had never questioned since. But Father had been so angry in those moments… I felt an unmistakable pang of guilt.
'Of course it's the right thing, Julie,' Richard answered. He at the desk, already writing the letters, and I was at a loss to understand the full measure of my thoughts.
It was late afternoon when the wretched old trap carried us up the gentle slope from the little railway station, and we had at last our first real look at that magnificent house. I think I was holding my breath. The sky had paled to a deep rose hue beyond a bank of softly gilded clouds, and the last rays of the sun struck the uppermost panes of the leaded windows and filled them with solid gold.
'Oh, but it's too majestic,' I whispered, 'too like a great cathedral, and to think that it belongs to us.' Richard gave me the smallest kiss on the cheek. I felt mad suddenly and eager somehow to be laid waste by it, through fear or enchantment I could not say, perhaps a sublime mingling of both.
I wanted with all my heart to jump down and draw near on foot, letting those towers grow larger and larger above me, but our old horse had picked up speed. And the little line of stiff starched servants had broken to come forward, the old withered housekeeper with her arms out, the men to take down the boxes and the trunks.
Richard and I were spirited into the great hall by the tiny, nimble figure of Mrs. Blessington, our footfalls echoing loudly on the marble tile, our eyes dazzled by the dusty shafts of light that fell on the long oak table and its heavily carved chairs, the sombre, heavy tapestries that stirred ever so slightly against the soaring walls.
'It is an enchanted place,' I cried, unable to contain myself. 'Oh, Richard, we are home!' Mrs. Blessington laughed gaily, her dry hand closing tightly on mine.
Her small blue eyes regarded me with the most curiously vacant expression despite her smile. 'Ramplings at Rampling Gate again, I can not tell you what a joyful day this is for me. And yes, my dear,' she said as if reading my mind that very second, 'I am and have been for many years, quite blind. But if you spy a thing out of place in this house, you're to tell me at once, for it would be the exception, I assure you, and not the rule.' And such warmth emanated from her wrinkled little face that I adored her at once.
We found our bedchambers, the very finest in the house, well aired with snow-white linen and fires blazing cozily to dry out the damp that never left the thick walls. The small diamond pane windows opened on a glorious view of the water and the oaks that enclosed it and the few scattered lights that marked the village beyond.
That night, we laughed like children as we supped at the great oak table, our candles giving only a feeble light. And afterwards, it was a fierce battle of pocket billiards in the game room which had been Uncle Baxter's last renovation, and a little too much brandy, I fear.
It was just before I went to bed that I asked Mrs. Blessington if there had been anyone in this house since Uncle Baxter died. That had been the year 1838, almost fifty years ago, and she was already housekeeper then.
'No, my dear,' she said quickly, fluffing the feather pillows. 'Your father came that year as you know, but he stayed for no more than a month or two and then went on home.'
'There was never a young man after that…' I pushed, but in truth I had little appetite for anything to disturb the happiness I felt. How I loved the Spartan cleanliness of this bedchamber, the stone walls bare of paper or ornament, the high luster of the walnut-paneled bed.
'A young man?' She gave an easy, almost hearty laugh as with unerring certainty of her surroundings, she lifted the poker and stirred the fire. 'What a strange thing for you to ask.'
I sat silent for a moment looking in the mirror, as I took the last of the pins from my hair. It fell down heavy and warm around my shoulders. It felt good, like a cloak under which I could hide. But she turned as if sensing some uneasiness in me, and drew near.
'Why do you say a young man, Miss?' she asked. Slowly, tentatively, her fingers examined the long tresses that lay over my shoulders. She took the brush from my hands.
I felt perfectly foolish telling her the story, but I managed a simplified version, somehow, our meeting unexpectedly a devilishly handsome young man whom my father in anger had later called the master of Rampling Gate.
'Handsome, was he?' she asked as she brushed out the tangles in my hair gently. It seemed she hung upon every word as I described him again.
'There were no intruders in this house, then, Mrs. Blessington?' I asked. 'No mysteries to be solved…'
She gave the sweetest laugh.
'Oh, no, darling, this house is the safest place in the world,' she said quickly. 'It is a happy house. No intruder would dare to trouble Rampling Gate!'
Nothing, in fact, troubled the serenity of the days that followed. The smoke and noise of London, and our father's dying words, became a dream. What was real were our long walks together through the overgrown gardens, our trips in the little skiff to and fro across the lake. We had tea under the hot glass of the empty conservatory. And early evening found us on our way upstairs with the best of the books from Uncle Baxter's library to read by candlelight in the privacy of our rooms.
And all our discreet inquiries in the village met with more or less the same reply: the villagers loved the house and carried no old or disquieting tales. Repeatedly, in fact, we were told that Rampling was the most contented hamlet in all England, that no one dared-Mrs. Blessington's very words-to make trouble here.
'It's our guardian angel, that old house,' said the old woman at the bookshop where Richard stopped for the London papers. 'Was there ever the town of Rampling without the house called Rampling Gate?'
How were we going to tell them of Father's edict? How were we going to remind ourselves? But we spoke not one word about the proposed disaster, and Richard wrote to his firm to say that we should not be back in London till Fall.
