Vintage Love

by Clarissa Ross

  “I doubt it,” she said. “It’s more likely you never saw me realistically before.”

  “I wonder,” he said quietly. And he kissed her again.

  After that they got into their respective beds and he turned out the light. She stared up into the shadows of the room, trying to sort out all the troublesome questions, and trying to decide what she should do. Soon she heard his even breathing, indicating he was deep in sleep. A wave of tenderness went through her. She knew how hard he worked, how dedicated a doctor he was. She had no wish to make things more burdensome for him. And yet she wanted him to face the mystery of the old stone house with her. She felt certain that they had not happened on it by chance. That they had a mission here.

  And suddenly as these thoughts filled her mind she had a feeling there was someone else in the room with them. Someone standing silently in the shadows. And the strong odor of roses which she’d encountered in the attic storage room suddenly filled her nostrils again.

  Chapter Eight

  Raising herself on an elbow, Lucy stared into the dimness. And there, outlined against the window, was a vague figure. She could not make it out plainly but it seemed to be a woman with a shawl over her head and shoulders. And the strong fragrance of roses which accompanied the weird apparition made her almost certain she was seeing the ghost of Jennifer.

  The scent of the roses and the spectral shape lasted for only a few seconds. Then everything was normal again. Lucy’s heart was beating rapidly as she lowered herself back on her pillow and stared up into the darkness with frightened eyes. Fred had slept quietly through the eerie materialization, and she knew he would never believe her if she told him about it.

  That was what made her plight so impossible. She had no one to turn to, at least no one but the venerable Dr. Matthew Boyce. Fred was no help at all. He seemed to feel that he had to be skeptical. That to show a belief in phantoms would be unmanly. It was too frustrating. She lay there for a long while again before sleep finally came.

  It was fine and sunny the next morning when she went down to the kitchen to prepare her husband’s breakfast. One of the things she most enjoyed were their breakfasts together. It gave them a chance to chat before he left for what was often all day and most of the evening. It was the one time she could count on his having the meal she’d prepared, and on not being alone.

  Fred came into the kitchen a little later with the morning paper. He gave her a knowing smile as he sat down at the table. “I know what happened to your roses last night,” he said.

  She turned from the stove where she was frying bacon, upset that he should bring the roses up again. Anxiously she said, “What do you mean?”

  “I went into the living room just now out of curiosity and I found them,” Fred said.

  “But you couldn’t have,” she protested. “I’ve already explained to you I discovered them upstairs strewn over those old portraits.”

  Her husband showed a smug reaction to this. “You are sure they were spirited up there by ghostly hands?”

  She took the frying pan from the stove and transferred the bacon to some paper napkins to sop up the fat. “If you want to put it that way, yes.”

  Fred was sitting back in his chair with the folded newspaper in one hand. He pointed the newspaper at her. “Yet when you took me up there to show me the roses they were not in evidence.”

  “I can’t help that,” she said despairingly. “I saw them there earlier.”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t. That was more of your nerves.”

  “No!”

  “I say yes,” her husband said with stern emphasis. “I went into the living room just now and I found the roses in a vase just as you had described them. But they were on an end table at the opposite side of the room to where you looked for them.”

  “They couldn’t be!”

  “You can go see for yourself,” Fred said with bland assurance. “What has happened seems obvious enough to me. You were busy arranging the flowers in the vase to put on the table at the other side of the room when something must have interrupted you. You never did get back to moving the flowers, but you had a mental picture of their being on that other table.”

  Lucy listened with a growing uneasiness. He made it seem so plausible that she was almost prepared to believe it. And yet she knew it couldn’t be true. It just wasn’t so.

  She said, “I distinctly remember where I put the bouquet.”

  “And I count on facts,” Fred said with a hint of annoyance. “The roses are where I said they were. And you allowed your imagination to make up all the rest. Go see for yourself.”

  Reluctantly she did. She left the kitchen with a feeling of apprehension which did not ease as she entered the big, shadowed living room. It looked so cold and impersonal even on this fine day, for the sun did not reach it in the early morning. First she looked at the vase where she was certain she’d placed the roses and it was empty, as it had been the night before. Then she slowly moved down the length of the room until she came to the missing bouquet on another smaller table.

  She gazed at the still fresh roses with disbelief. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t even recognize the vase they were in. And she was sure the explanation Fred had offered wasn’t true. This wasn’t another example of her bad nerves and memory. But how could she convince him? As he’d pointed out, he accepted only facts. And it was a fact the roses were there in that vase.

  Feeling utterly confused, she turned and made her way back to the kitchen. Fred was having coffee and reading the paper. He looked up at her with a knowing expression.

  “Well?”

  “I saw them,” she said slowly as she seated herself at the table across from him.

  “So you realize I was right?”

  She hesitated. Then she said, “No. I don’t admit that.”

  “Then you’re being stubborn and petty.”

  “I’m sorry you think that of me,” Lucy said in an unhappy tone.

  “You’re the one who’s being unreasonable,” he said. “I realize you’ve been under strong pressures. All the gossip around this town about Moorgate being haunted. And then Henry Farley behaving so childishly last night and leading you on in your wretched beliefs.”

  “I know this house is haunted,” she said quietly.

  “By the ghost of Jennifer, I suppose?”

  “I think so,” she said. “And it may even go beyond that.”

  “Beyond it?” he queried sharply, putting down his paper.

  “Yes. There must be other unhappy spirits here as well. The house is burdened by them.”

  Fred studied her unhappily. “Farley was probably right. I will have to move from Moorgate. I can’t have you going on in this fashion.”

  “If you’d only pay some attention to me,” she begged him.

  “And wind up with your crazy ideas? No, thanks.”

  Her eyes were earnest as they met his. “Perhaps they aren’t all that crazy and impossible. Perhaps those people who lived here long ago are trying to reach us. Trying to send us some sort of message through their spirits.”

  Her husband gave a sound of exasperation. “I might expect to hear sentimental talk like that from some of the local servant girls. But I hardly expect it from you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t intend to upset you.”

  His mood changed, a smile flickered across his face. “And I won’t let you do it,” he said. Rising, he touched a hand gently on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault. Too many people rushed in to warn you against Moorgate. There’s been too much idle gossip.”

  “Perhaps,” she said in a resigned voice. No use to have him leave her in an angry mood. Better to keep her views to herself.

  Fred bent down and kissed her. “I’m going to talk to Dr. Boyce about this. Maybe the old man can give us some good advice. You seem to have a lot of confidence in what he says.”

  “I do.”

  “Then we’ll wait until we have his views,” Fred
told her. “I’ll keep in touch with you through the day. And I’ll make an effort to be home for dinner tonight.”

  “Please try,” she said, rising with a smile and accompanying him to the front door. But no sooner had she seen his car drive off than that eerie sense of melancholy began to flood through her. She could feel it taking hold of her and causing her to seem like a different person.

  In a kind of bewilderment she went back into the house and straight to the living room. She went to where the vase of roses was and stared at it. And again she had the feeling she was not alone, that someone else was in the old house with her. Someone standing unseen at her side and trying to communicate with her. She glanced around the shadowed room with fear on her face. But there was no evidence of even the vague shadow she’d seen in their bedroom in the night.

  Now she slowly moved on to the library and to the roll-top desk used by Fred where she’d placed the note from Frank Clay to Jennifer which she’d found. When she’d searched for the note a while before it had vanished. Now her trembling fingers ransacked the pigeonholes of the old desk once more in an effort to find the thin folded piece of paper with its long-ago message.

  And suddenly she came on it. She withdrew it from the rear of one of the many compartments, folded just as she’d left it. Why hadn’t she been able to discover it before? It had apparently gotten far back in the pigeonhole and she’d missed it. She had to tell herself that, or accept that it had temporarily been whisked away by ghostly hands.

  She opened the paper again and read its faded message, the message which gave credence to the scandal of a hundred years ago. And she still refused to believe it meant that Jennifer had been an unfaithful wife. Surely the wistful blonde woman could have been a friend of Frank Clay’s without betraying her husband. And Frank Clay might have taken her friendship for something more serious. He must have been a narrow, proud man who clung to his opinions with the arrogance of an eccentric. So when she was drowned he reveled in spreading the story that she had meant to leave her husband for love of him. It didn’t have to be true. It might be only a malicious lie against the dead.

  She was determined not to lose the note again. She went upstairs to the bedroom and locked it in her jewel case, then she carefully put the case away in the dresser drawer. After that she busied herself making the beds. And when she had finished she went to the open window to gaze out. The window at which she’d been so confident she’d seen Jennifer’s pale ghostly face.

  From the window she had a marvelous view of the village below and the islands in the harbor beyond it. On Minister’s Island, directly across from Moorgate, the old white house gleamed in the sunlight, despite its worn paint. She was sure that Jennifer must have often stood in this window just as she was doing. That the long-dead girl must have often gazed at the distant house and thought about Frank Clay.

  Why had it all ended in tragedy? What had happened on the night of that hurricane so many years ago? Her own conflicting attitudes were putting her mind in a turmoil. It was possible that all that Frank Clay had said in his near-demented state of sorrow was true. That Jennifer had been on the point of leaving her husband to join him, and that Graham Woods had killed his pretty young wife in rage, only to die himself as he tried to dispose of her body in a manner to take suspicion from him.

  All the love between the young doctor and his wife, all the good times and the dancing at lively local parties had ended in the blasting wind and rain on the storm-tossed bay. Ended in grief and despairing anger. That was the legend which had come down through the years. And the ghosts in Moorgate appeared to bear it out. What further evidence could come to light now to change any of it? She might do well to accept it all and try to dismiss it from her mind.

  Perhaps then she would have peace. The ghosts did not intrude on Fred because he didn’t believe in them. Perhaps if she adopted the same attitude she would also find peace. But she knew she couldn’t do that. She was too much involved in it all. Cynical, taunting Henry Farley knew that. The crippled millionaire had a keen mind. He knew that she’d fallen a victim to Moorgate, and he had been generous enough to offer to help her by buying back the house. Or had he been cleverly exposing her inability to cope with Moorgate in the hope she’d give up on the house and her marriage and leave the way open for Shiela?

  It was very disconcerting. She suddenly felt alone. The dark mood grew to overwhelming proportions in her. She left the window and crossed the bedroom to the dark hallway. It was as if she were being guided by someone else. In this strange state she went to the stairs and made her way up to the attic and the storage room with which she had become so familiar. Going inside, she went to the portraits leaning against the wall.

  She first brought out the portrait of Dr. Graham Woods. The sensitive, somber face of the man who had lived at Moorgate a hundred years ago and drowned in the bay that stormy night gazed at her with what struck her as an infinite sadness. And she determined that he and his wife would no longer languish in the shadows of the attic. Shiela had wondered why Fred had not hung the portraits downstairs, and Lucy found herself wondering the same thing. More than that, she was going to do something about it.

  She took the doctor’s portrait down first and hung it in the living room where Fred had previously had a seascape. She took the seascape back to the attic and on her return trip downstairs brought the wistful blonde Jennifer’s portrait with her. This time she replaced a still life hanging in the hallway with Jennifer’s portrait. It meant that anyone entering the house would see the fine old painting at once. Lucy felt it deserved a place of honor.

  When she had accomplished these changes she experienced a deep sense of satisfaction. A mood of near relaxation replaced her previously tense, confused one. She sat for a little while in the living room with her eyes fixed on the portrait of Graham Woods and again felt that the eyes in the painting came alive in some strange way, as if they were appealing to her, trying to give her some message.

  She spoke aloud to the portrait, saying, “At least you’re not neglected any longer.”

  It was not lost on her that Fred might resent what she had done and complain about the two portraits being hung so prominently downstairs. It seemed to bother him that Graham Woods and Jennifer had lived at Moorgate. He pretended not to care, but she felt that the tragic legend secretly troubled him. Otherwise why should he react so strongly to it?

  She went out to the garden for a stroll. The warm sun brought out the scent of the trees, the flowers and ferns. She halted by the old well where she thought she’d heard her name whispered. And then she gazed into its depths. As she stared down at the shining black water far below she gave a small gasp. For the face reflected down there did not appear to be her own, but rather that of the blonde Jennifer!

  As she continued to gaze into the well the illusion vanished and it was her own face which stared up at her. But for just a moment she had been certain she had seen that other ghostly face down there. Moving back from the well, she found herself shivering in spite of the warm sunshine. And she wondered why she so feared the ghost of Jennifer, if it had been her ghost she’d seen? Was it because she was slowly but surely becoming more identified with the lovely phantom? Was Jennifer gradually taking her over and controlling her thoughts and actions?

  And if so, would the marriage between herself and Fred end in the same tragic fashion in which Jennifer’s had? She refused to believe it. And yet she knew she was even now not completely herself. She was doing things and thinking thoughts which were alien to her. What could explain that?

  The feeling of fear drove her along the almost hidden path linking Moorgate with the Farleys’ estate. And she found herself walking through the heavily wooded area in a kind of daze. The woods were lazy with the hum of summer insects under the mid-day sun. Dry leaves and ends of branches crackled under her feet as she moved along with a blank expression in her lovely green eyes.

  She emerged on the grounds of the great Tudor house. She found t
he crippled man stretched out on a chaise longue by the sparkling aqua and white swimming pool at the rear of the big house. A wide orange umbrella protected him from the sun. He wore a white robe over a bathing suit and dark glasses hid his alert eyes, but he greeted her in his usual crisp manner.

  “What a pleasant surprise, Mrs. Dorset. I regret that Shiela isn’t here.”

  She stood staring at him, still somewhat in a daze. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “Of course not,” the tall, thin man said with a smile. He waved a twisted hand to indicate a chair near him. “Won’t you sit down and join me in a drink?”

  “I’ll sit with you a moment,” she said. “But I don’t want a drink.”

  “Just as you say,” Henry Farley replied agreeably. “I’m too grateful for your company to insist you do anything.”

  Sitting opposite him, she said, “I don’t really know why I came here. A kind of impulse took over and made me do it.”

  “Let’s not worry about it,” he said. He glanced at the pool. “The only athletic endeavor left to me is swimming. That is why the pool is such a blessing to me. Of course Shiela only spends a little time here. She enjoys riding and golf and so much else.”

  “I’m sure she does,” Lucy said. And then giving the crippled man a questioning look, she asked, “Were you making cruel fun of me last night, Mr. Farley?”

  The white-haired man smiled slightly. “Whatever made you think that?”

  “Your talk about Moorgate and the ghosts.”

  “If anything, I was being sympathetic,” Henry Farley said. “And I’m rarely that.”

  “Then you think Moorgate is truly haunted?”

  He nodded. “Judging from what I’ve heard and all that you’ve told me, I’d say yes.”

  “And you were serious when you said you were willing to buy it back?”

  “Never more serious.”

  “Why?”

  He hesitated. Then he said, “Because I’m fearful about what the house may do to you. It seems your husband isn’t daunted by the ghosts and has precious little patience for your terror of them. That is too bad. It could lead to a tragedy if you try to go on living there.”