She exclaimed, “There’s a house on Minister’s Island!”
Fred had come to stand beside her. “Yes. That’s how it got its name. It was built there originally by a Presbyterian minister called Dr. Macintosh. When he died he left it to his nephew Frank Clay. The Clay family lived in it until they all died off. Then it remained empty. The Farleys own it now, along with most of the property in this area.”
“And is the house still unoccupied?” she asked.
“Yes. Most people don’t like the idea of having to go back and forth by boat, or only by car when the tide is out. So the house has been shut up. Tourists still drive over there for the novelty of it, but the road up from the beach is fenced off to cars. So they just make the round trip without venturing as far as the Clay house.”
That odd melancholy feeling came over her again as she stared at the distant island and the house showing between trees on a hill. She couldn’t understand the feeling. There was no reason for it. This should be one of the happiest days of her life. It had to be!
In an effort to capture some of the gaiety she’d felt earlier in the afternoon she turned to her young husband and threw her arms about his neck. “It’s all like some magic story,” she said. “The two of us beginning our married life here together. It seems like something in a book.”
He gazed down at her with a fond smile. “I hope it will be better than any book,” he said. “What about dinner? There are the hotels.”
She shook her head. “No. I want us to have this time alone in the house together. You have plenty of groceries already in, haven’t you?”
“Almost anything you’d need,” he said. “I’ve been living here the past few weeks. And before I left for our honeymoon I had the freezer stocked.”
“Good,” Lucy said. “I’ll get dinner with what’s available. And tomorrow I’ll go shopping like an old married woman.”
“You’ll never seem that to me,” Fred assured her as he gave her another kiss before she left him to go to the kitchen.
The brief romantic interlude with her new husband, plus her activity in the kitchen, served to shake off the melancholy mood for a while. She felt much better as she prepared a meal of steak and scalloped potatoes. The kitchen was the large old-fashioned type with an eat-in nook which overlooked the woods at the rear of the house. And it was in this breakfast nook that they had their first meal at Moorgate.
In the early evening the phone rang, and it was a summons to the sickbed of a patient suffering a terminal illness. Fred sighed as he put down the phone, but there was no question that he had to make the call. He got his bag and promised to be back in a short time. And she assured him it didn’t matter at all. It would give her a chance to clean up the dishes.
At first she didn’t mind being alone. But when the dishes were finished and dusk began to settle she found that strange feeling of sadness deepening and combining with a sense of uneasiness. She wandered about in the ground floor rooms of the big house asking herself why she was so nervous. It wasn’t like her.
She finally couldn’t bear being in there alone any longer. So she went outside. There was a garden at the end of the house nearest St. Andrews. And in the garden was an old-time well with a bucket hanging from a bar to be lowered into it. She was fascinated by her discovery, and made her way between the flowerbeds to examine the well.
It was built of stone, and the upper wooden frame holding the bucket was a weathered gray. Daylight was fading and soon the soft blur of blue would turn to darkness. She leaned forward to gaze into the depths of the well, and as she did so she heard her name whispered softly.
A chill raced through her, and with a look of alarm she glanced around to see who it was who had gently said her name. But she was completely alone, and she realized that the whisper had seemed to come up from the dark depths of the well. But that couldn’t be!
There was a ripple of wind in the birch trees overhead, and again it seemed she heard her name. At once she decided it had been the wind in the birches before. It had to be! But the experience had left her trembling slightly. She moved away from the well and hurried back to the front steps. The very sound of her own footsteps on the stones of the path seemed to add to her nervousness.
Now she stood on the steps staring at the distant island. And the memory of that face she was sure she’d seen in the window came to haunt her again. It flashed across her mind in a terrifyingly vivid way. She was sure someone had been in the house waiting for them when they arrived, no matter what Fred said. Perhaps whoever it was had slipped out the back way, knowing they would want to be alone. That surely was the explanation of it.
Darkness increased and still she could not make herself go into the house. It was foolish of her, but she was afraid to go in alone. So she stood on the steps and waited. She watched the cars moving along the main highway below, their lights cutting vivid yellow streaks in the darkness. To the left the street lamps of the town had come on and there were lights in the windows of the houses and stores. St. Andrews looked larger and more glamorous by night, she decided.
Then her heart gave a tiny leap as she saw a car turn off the main highway and come up the road to the house. As it approached, its headlights bathed her and the house in their glow. The car came to a halt, the driver turned off the lights and got out. And a moment later Fred was coming up the steps to join her.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
She tried to sound casual. “Waiting for you.”
“You’d have been more comfortable inside. It gets chilly here at night. Even in June.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed watching the lights.”
She could see the tense look on his young face under the amber glow of the front door lantern. He said, “You weren’t frightened of being left alone?”
“Of course not,” she lied gallantly.
“I hope not,” he said, looking worried. “In my profession I’m often called out at night.”
“I was a nurse, remember? I know all about that.”
“Then you weren’t nervous?”
“No.”
“Sorry,” he said. “My patient died. It kept me there longer than I expected.”
“How awful,” she said sympathetically.
“He was very old and very ill. I couldn’t call it a tragedy,” he said. “Let us go inside.”
The rest of the evening went well and she forgot all about her earlier nervousness. They went to bed fairly early, and because she was thoroughly exhausted she sank into a deep sleep. But it did not last. She came awake in the middle of the night without understanding why. But suddenly she was very widely awake.
Raising herself on an arm in the darkness, she heard her husband’s even breathing as he slept soundly in the adjoining bed. And then she held her own breath as she heard more than that. From the hallway there came the sound of shuffling footsteps and they were coming nearer. She lifted the edge of the sheet and covered her mouth with it in a gesture to stifle her urge to scream. The footsteps seemed to halt directly outside their door.
Next there was a cough, a gentle cough. But it sounded distinctly enough for her to be sure what it was. She waited, ready to scream in the next moment and ask Fred to investigate what was happening in the hall. And the sound of shuffling footsteps came again, only this time they were moving away. She listened until there was no sound at all.
She was perspiring and her heart was beating much too rapidly. Fred turned in his bed and gave a small, restless moan. The sound was reassuring to her. She no longer felt alone in an eerie world of darkness and terror. What had those footsteps meant? There must be someone in the house. Perhaps someone was hiding in an attic room or in the cellars without Fred being aware of it. She must somehow find out.
At last she forced herself to lie back on her pillow. And in time drowsiness took over and she went to sleep again. But it was a troubled sleep filled with dreams of a dark phantom lurking in the old house and calling out he
r name, seeming to ask her help, trying to say something to her.
“Lucy!”
She blinked her eyes open in fear, to see that it was a dressed and smiling Fred who was bending over her bed.
“It’s morning,” he told her. “I’ll soon be leaving to make my rounds and visit the hospital in St. Stephen. Do you want to have breakfast with me?”
She sat up at once. “Of course I do. I’ll be down to prepare it in a moment.”
“I’ll get it under way,” he said as he started out of the bedroom.
And by the time she reached the kitchen he had the orange juice on the table, the toast in the toaster, the eggs boiling and the bacon in the frying pan. He was presiding over the bacon like a veteran when she joined him.
“You’re a model husband,” she said, leaning on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Then she took over the preparations for breakfast on her own.
A little later at the table he asked her, “Did you sleep well last night?” It was a casual question, but for some reason she felt he had asked it with a special look of interest on his face.
She hesitated over her coffee. “I did for the most part,” she told him. “But I did wake up once. And I had a strange experience.”
His eyebrows raised. “What sort of experience?”
“I was sure I heard someone in the hall,” she said, staring at him hard to get his reaction.
Fred Dorset frowned. “You must have been dreaming.”
“No,” she said determinedly. “I heard shuffling footsteps. They came to the door of our room and stopped. Then someone coughed. And a little while later whoever it was went away.”
“We’re the only ones in this house,” her husband reminded her. “I thought I’d made that clear before.”
“You did. But you must be wrong.”
“How can I be wrong about a thing like that?”
She stared down at her half-empty cup of coffee. “I don’t know exactly. Perhaps someone has a key to the house without your knowing it. Old houses like this do have keys that might be in other hands. They could be hiding in the attic or somewhere. You know I was sure I saw the face of a young woman in our bedroom window when we first arrived.”
“That was nonsense,” he said, almost angrily.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her pretty face sober. “I’m not making any of this up.”
Her young doctor husband looked distressed. He reached out a hand to caress hers. “I’m the one to be sorry,” he said. “Forgive me for being so touchy. It wasn’t intended. I suppose I’m worried about you. And we’re still both tired after just getting back here.”
“I won’t talk about it any more,” she said.
“That’s not what I want,” he told her earnestly. “I want to know you’re at ease and happy in this house. And it doesn’t seem we’re off to a very good start.”
She saw his troubled face and at once felt guilty. As though she was letting him down. He’d gone to so much trouble to find this house and furnish it beautifully for her, she had no right to cause him the slightest concern about her happiness in the house.
She said, “Forget I mentioned it. It’s not important.”
“It is, if you really did hear footsteps,” he said. “In my opinion, you had a nightmare and the footsteps and the cough were part of it.”
“Maybe,” she said reluctantly.
It was all the encouragement he needed. “Sure,” he said, more confidently. “You had a bad dream, and that was that.”
“Let’s not talk about it at all,” she protested with a wry smile. “When will you be back?”
“Not until dinnertime,” Fred said. “I hate to leave you all day, but this is my first day back at my practice.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she assured him. “I have plenty to do here. Some unpacking, and then I want to do some grocery shopping.”
He smiled as he got up from the table. “You’ll have your own car. I’ll stop by the garage this morning and see that it’s brought up to you at once. It’s a good sturdy sedan and easy to drive. I’ve used it as a second car.”
A few minutes later he left and she went out to see him on his way. It would have been wrong to say that she had that overwhelming sense of melancholy again as soon as she was alone. But as she stood waving good-bye to him she did feel strangely desolate. More so than she should have. It was a common thing to see one’s husband off to his day’s work. Why should she be so disturbed by the experience?
Back in the kitchen, she sat down to make a grocery list. It was a fine day and the sun streamed in on her as she sat at the table in the breakfast nook with pencil and pad. When she completed the list she went to the sink and began washing the dishes. As she finished rinsing them she placed them on a counter next to her to dry.
It was as she was rinsing the last cup that she suddenly had the feeling she was not alone in the kitchen. That someone was standing beside her. She tried to contain her fear and tell herself it was nonsense. The big room was filled with sunshine, she hadn’t heard a sound, and yet she was trembling as she lifted the cup from the dishpan and she was thinking of ghosts.
She grimly forced herself to continue on as if nothing were bothering her. Carefully she placed the cup on the counter with the others. But as she did so a startling thing happened. The cup actually seemed to rise up from the counter, and it toppled off the edge and fell on the floor, to break into a dozen small pieces. It was as if it had been lifted by an invisible hand and dashed on the tile floor. She gave a frightened little gasp as she stared at the broken cup in dismay.
The sound of a car horn out front brought her out of her frozen shock. She quickly ran from the kitchen to the front door and opened it to see that her car had arrived and there was a grinning young man at the wheel.
“Mrs. Dorset?” he asked, poking a tousled head out the side window of the car. He was freckled, and was probably about nineteen.
“Yes,” she said faintly.
“Doc asked me to bring your car around,” the young man in the garage mechanic’s uniform said. “But you’ll have to drive me back to the garage.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, still flustered. “How far is it?”
“Only three minutes’ drive,” the youth said. “We’re on the main highway just before you get to town. It’s the only gas station and garage in that section.”
She came down the steps. “If it’s that handy I’ll go back with you right now.”
“Okay,” the youth said. “I’ll move over and you can take the wheel.” He put on the brake, opened the door on the driver’s side, and slid over.
Lucy got in and released the brake and started driving down the narrow private road to the highway. “Is the car filled with gas?” she asked. In her upset state she hadn’t looked at the indicator.
“Ready to drive,” he said. “You’re new here.”
“I just arrived,” she said.
“You’re going to live in Moorgate?”
“Yes.” She glanced at him. “Does that surprise you?”
“I guess the Doc knows what he’s doing,” the youth said as they reached the highway. “Though the last one who owned it before the Farleys bought it said he didn’t like it.”
“Why not?” she asked, as she headed along the highway.
“I heard him talking to the boss one day,” he said. “And he told him he didn’t sleep good at night. The way he put it the place was too old, full of creaks and groans.”
“That’s an odd description,” she said.
“It’s a pretty odd house, lady,” was the young man’s comment. “There we are. Just ahead — that’s the garage.” He pointed to a rambling, shabby structure that had the sign “Garage” over it. Out in front of it were a couple of red, white, and blue gas pumps.
She brought the car to a halt and let the young man out. Then she turned the car around and started back to Moorgate. Her conversation with the youth had been a strange one, and it had left her with the impression that
he must have heard more about the house than he had said. She found herself not at all anxious to go back to it, and this distressed her. She had to come to terms with the place for Fred’s sake.
When she got back she parked the car in front and ran up the steps and went inside. She hurried to the kitchen and saw the shattered fragments of the cup still on the floor. Finding a dustpan and brush, she cleaned up the mess and put it in the garbage container. She tried to force herself to believe that the cup had not been properly placed on the counter and had fallen off of its own accord. But she knew this just wasn’t so.
Brushing back a lock of her blonde hair, she sat down in the breakfast nook with the list she’d written for her grocery shopping. She went over the items on the list, but her mind kept wandering and she found herself looking up every now and then with frightened eyes, almost expecting to see someone standing in the middle of the kitchen watching her. But whenever she looked up the kitchen remained empty.
At last she locked the doors and set out for the town in her car. She felt easier once she was in the vehicle and away from the house. She drove directly to the town’s main street and located a good-sized grocery store.
Inside the bright serve-yourself store she picked up a shopping cart and began wheeling it between the shelves of groceries, choosing items along the way. She’d only gone a little distance when she came face to face with Mrs. Stevens, who was wearing a gray knit dress.
The mature woman gave her a good-humored nod. “I see you are settling down to your chores at once.”
“We needed groceries,” she said.
“This is a good place to get them,” Mrs. Stevens said. She had a well-filled tray of her own.
Lucy glanced around. “So it would seem.”
“Dr. Dorset won’t be too hard to cook for,” the older woman assured her. “He is one of those rarities, an agreeable man.”
Lucy managed a smile. “I had no idea they were so rare.”
“Consider yourself a lucky girl,” Mrs. Stevens said, bending near her in a confidential manner. “I’m sure Shiela Farley thinks you are.”
Vintage Love Page 183