It was cold as iron here but, at last, we ascended a flight of stone steps, went through a baize door, and into a wood-panelled corridor. Several closed doors stood on one side,
and, on the other, windows in stone embrasures looked down into the court. The walls were lined with portraits, whose eyes seemed to follow me, staring down, and I had an uneasy sense that all around us and behind doors, hidden in corners, standing back in the shadows, faces watched, saw us pass, took note. But, when I looked, there was no one.
We stopped in front of a door, and the porter set down my bag. ‘Here is your set, sir. Everything you should require. Dr Dancer is away until tomorrow, sir, but I am to conduct you to the library after breakfast, which I will bring. And so, sir, I bid you goodnight.’ He leaned forward, through the doorway, and switched on a light. ‘At the top of the two flights. There is a bell, sir, connecting to the lodge, should you require anything.’
‘Thank you.’ I picked up my bag. ‘Thank you very much.’
But he was already off down the corridor; the baize door sighed shut and I was left alone in the silence that seethed like dust, settling around me.
A steep flight of stairs led ahead, twisted sharply round and narrowed even more for a second, shorter flight, at the top of which was another baize door. My footsteps trod heavily on bare boards and I was half-expecting to come out into some dingy attic furnished with spartan iron bedstead in the style of a school dormitory, without comforts of any kind. It was still bitterly cold and a draught came through cracks on every side. I reflected that, since my arrival in England, I had spent much time climbing stairs up to strange rooms, wondering what lay ahead, and I was becoming, after so many odd, unnerving events, more and more wary and apprehensive. I need not have been.
On pushing open the door, I found myself at once in a most pleasing and comfortable sitting room. The lamps were lit, a fire burned brightly in the grate, with a brass hod full of coal beside it and logs neatly stacked on either side.
There was a desk and a fine mahogany table, deep armchairs, books in the bookshelves, a good Persian rug, bowls of fruit and nuts on a sideboard – I felt as if the room had been waiting like a friend, for my arrival, and I sat down, still in my overcoat, closed my eyes and, involuntarily, a great sigh of relief and contentment rose up from deep within me, and I shed, as I exhaled, all the anxiety, weariness, fear – yes, it had been a form of fear that I had been so bowed down and cramped by all that day and for several days past.
And, as I sat, from across the roof-tops a gentle bell chimed and then sounded the hour, and the sound was a sweet one, lulling me even further into tranquillity.
The rest of the set, when I bestirred myself to explore it, consisted of a small bathroom, and a bedroom more plainly, but nonetheless adequately, furnished and equipped, and containing a long carved and gilded mirror, fixed to the wall opposite the window. The sight of it made me start. I had seen the mirror before, it was so familiar that I thought back to my Guardian’s bungalow, all those years before, wondering if perhaps one like it had hung there, but I was sure that it had not, there had been nothing so ornate in that sober little house. I stared at the mirror again, puzzled, tracing over every scroll and curlicue, certain that I had done so many times before, searching in the depths of my memory. But I was forced to give up, I had no clue as to where I had previously seen it.
From the sitting room window, as I parted the heavy velvet curtains and looked down, I could just make out snow-covered gardens and playing fields, stretching away into the darkness. But the bedroom overlooked the main school yard, the cobbles, the King’s statue and the side of the towering chapel.
The day’s newspapers and some journals were set out upon the desk, decanters of sherry and port stood on a
table. I unpacked, bathed and, comfortable in robe and slippers, warmed myself with a glass, beside the fire.
I had brought fresh writing books and a set of new pencils and these I set out, fully determined that first thing the next morning, on being conducted to the library, and shown the Vane archive, I would assume the mantle of scholar and biographer, and work quietly and steadily through the next few days. The vision appealed to me greatly, for though I had been a traveller for so long, an adventurer even, and rarely settled in any one place, I had read and studied and tried to make up for the gaps in my education and had even written, too, perhaps in emulation of Vane, some slight descriptive articles about the east and my journeys there. I began to dream now, sitting by the bright fire, of seeing my name in gold letters on the spines of impressive volumes, hearing myself referred to as ‘James Monmouth the scholar, Monmouth the writer’.
My harmless fantasies were interrupted briefly by the arrival of a tray of supper, simple, excellent food, cooked, he said, by the porter himself, ‘school’s being down, sir, and therefore the cook’s away’. He also brought a letter from Dr Dancer, come by the late post.
My dear Monmouth,
This is to welcome you to Alton, and to apologise for my unavoidable absence this evening. I trust you will find all comfortable and to your convenience and liking. Biglow will see to things for you, and I shall expect to be with you tomorrow morning – I return very late tonight, weather permitting, but will not disturb you – to give you as much help as I am able, though that, I fear, will be little enough. Would you give me the pleasure of dining with me tomorrow evening?
Yours etc.
Valentine Dancer.
Later, in pulling out my watch to wind it, I came upon the small card I had earlier tucked into my waistcoat pocket.
Her troubled face peering through the window of the railway carriage came to my mind, and, sitting in my armchair, beside the fire, I thought calmly over her peculiar warnings and the forebodings she had expressed to me, but could still make no more sense of them than of those from other quarters, nor, in these safe, agreeable surroundings, take them at all seriously. But I resolved to accept her invitation for Christmas nevertheless, because I had liked her, and, I suppose, been flattered, as well as grateful, but more, because I felt that the time had come to enter at least some way into English society and begin to make myself known there.
I had always been a generally abstemious man but, that evening, drank a glass more port than was sensible, half-dozing before the heat of the fire, so that, when I stood to go to bed, I felt momentarily light-headed. But the bedroom was colder and I opened the window wide, and the smell of the fresh, snow-filled night air quickly brought me to my senses and cleared my head. As I leaned out a little way a thick seam of snow fell in a flurry far down into the yard below.
Not a light showed, the buildings around me were silent. The sky had cleared and there were bright stars.
My Guardian had sometimes spoken to me when I was a boy, about his Cambridge days, and I had formed a picture in my mind, augmented by engravings and pictures in books, of ancient walls and inner courts, quiet places
devoted to learning and also echoing with the eager voices and swift steps of young men, and perhaps, though I was not a clever or very bookish boy, I had secretly begun to long for them and the longing had never quite left me, but remained, secret and half-forgotten. Now, it was stirred alive again, for I recognised that the school had many of the features of the old universities, and I stood for a long time looking down into the snow-covered yard, remembering my Guardian, happy to be at last a part of such a world.
As I undressed, I speculated about Dr Valentine Dancer, whom I was to meet the next morning, and about the pile of black notebooks on my desk, and what was to fill them, and felt anticipation and satisfaction in equal measure. It had been a good day. I had much to look forward to. I counted myself a fortunate man.
But then a chill breeze blew suddenly across the yard, and through my open window, and I shivered, and closed it, ready, now, for bed and sleep.
As I turned, a gleam of light struck the mirror on the opposite wall, and I looked up to face, as I thought, my own reflection. But there was none, there was nothing but a blurred, dark outline. Due, I supposed, to some trick of the atmosphere, the mirror was quite misted over. But, as I came up close to it, I saw quite clearly through the blur, my own eyes, staring, glittering, wild with a dread and alarm, terror even, that I was quite unaware of feeling. The bed was a wide one, neatly made, with pillows piled up high but when I slipped in between the tightly banded sheets they were cold, cold as winding sheets and felt like running water to my touch, though when I had turned them back they had felt quite crisp and dry. The pillows, as I sank back into them, collapsed with a little puff. Outside, the clock chimed the half-hour, a clear, double stroke, echoing towards me.
I lay shivering, and wide awake, and feeling nothing so much as a terrible sense of frustration and anger, that I
was somehow to be forbidden peace of mind and pleasant expectations, that, whenever I was lulled and soothed and put at my ease by outward circumstances, I was then to be jerked out of that peace, my nerves were to be pulled taut as marionette strings, I was not allowed repose, but must be repeatedly startled and shocked into a state of fear and bewilderment and a sense of strangeness and dread by some slight but sinister and incongruous happening. I saw a pale, ragged boy, now here, now there, now following me, now a little ahead; I encountered hostility and was warned to leave, go back, beware. I was teased, I saw peculiar objects, and scenes that for no apparent reason awakened terror in me and made me want to run away, I heard singing and crying and then silence, in an empty house. The mirror had misted over.
I had been made so welcome, spent as serene and happy an evening in this place as I could have wished and then – I almost cried out in a sudden surge of desperation. I felt trapped, I did not know what was happening to me, or what I was meant to do.
Were the incidents linked, or quite random? Were they meaningless? Was I making connections where none existed? Had they meaning? Had anything? Were the phantoms and warnings and fearful moments brought about by anything outside myself, or was I losing my sanity? Was there nothing without, only things within?
I lay stiff between the icy sheets and heard the next hour chime and then another, and saw the pale snow-light reflected in the mirror, and the walls and the coverlet of the bed, and at last, calmer, told myself that the unaccustomed wine and tiredness had disturbed me and heated my blood, and so, believing, drifted to sleep.
But it was a restless and fretful one, wound about with veils of weird dreams. I seemed to be travelling, moving, wandering, unable to settle or find a way or distinguish anything that lay about me. I caught odd cries, then a
shout, I seemed to fall, to sweat, to be sinking down through dark, turbulent, sucking water – all the stuff of fever and nightmare.
When I woke, I was certain that, once again, a singing or crying had filled the room – or filled my head.
But there was only a sweet and peaceful stillness and silence and, beyond the half-drawn curtains, the falling snow. The clock chimed two. My mouth was cracked and dry, my throat sore. I wanted water and knew that I would not easily sleep again and did not want to lie there for hours, a prey to yet more dreams and fantasies, so that I rose briskly, dressed and went into the sitting room.
There was still a glow in the heart of the fire, which I had banked up, and I stirred it carefully to make a cavity, out of which soon came a lick of flame, and a little warmth. For a while, I sat, huddled, close beside it in the darkness, drinking a glass of water, and, gradually, I was composed again, the last trails of nightmare had loosened and dissolved away and I was returned to my old strength and even a feeling of vigour. It was curious, a repeat of what had happened before, as though, once out of some fit of nervousness and depression, I gained a fresh strength and command of myself again. I had never been prey to such complete and dramatic changes of mood and even of physical state. But, almost as if to prove to myself that I was man again, I decided to take a turn beyond my set of rooms, to explore some way down those corridors, gain a better sense of my surroundings. It could do no harm after all, no one would prevent me, and no sooner had I thought of the idea than I was full of it, restless, and almost excited, keyed up like a small boy, off exploring. I put on my overshoes and coat, mindful of the snow, should I venture outside the buildings, and, taking up the torch that had been provided for me, went quietly out, down the steep, short flight of stairs and through the door below, into the long, panelled corridor.
It was utterly silent. I stood still, sensing the walls and windows of the old buildings around me, and thought that I could almost hear the air itself as it settled back after I closed the door. Opposite me, the silvery light filtered through the leaded windows, set in their stone embrasures, and I noticed now that various large old books lay on the ledges. I opened one, and then others at random, but they were in Greek, Latin and Hebrew quite impenetrable to me, their pages musty and yellowing. I wondered how long it had been since anyone had last touched one.