Ghosts by Gaslight (41 page)

“Look, stupid book,” I said. “Just tell me what I want to know, all right?” I closed my eyes and opened the book at random. I looked down at the pages I had opened. There it was:

In the autumn of 1817, Lord Collingswood invited the poet Christopher Raven, whom he had met in London, to Collingswood House. Lady Collingswood was taken with the handsome youth, who was supposed to look like an English Adonis, although some critics asserted that he wrote like a second-rate Shelley. The Collingswood library, which was extensive, had fallen into a state of disarray, and Lord Collingswood hoped that Raven would catalogue it. However, the two men quarreled before the work got under way, and the poet left in the middle of the night to join Shelley and Byron in Switzerland. He was overtaken by the snows, and is supposed to have perished in the Alpine passes. Lady Collingswood, who had a tender heart, particularly for poets, artists, and small dogs, was said to have been inconsolable for weeks.

I had found a poet. And he sounded like the right poet. Adonis had been Greek. He would have had curling black hair, the kind they call hyacinthine.

“I think I’ve found him,” I told Eleanor, Mary, and Tollie that afternoon. “His name is Christopher Raven. He was a poet, and I think he was in love with Lady Collingswood. And maybe she was in love with him.”

“Why do you think we’re dreaming about him?” asked Tollie. “If someone had dreamed about him before, we would have known about it, wouldn’t we? I mean, he would be the Collingswood ghost or something. It would have been like calling the picture Old Nosey. Everyone would have known.”

“Maybe it’s because we’re in her room,” I said. “The book only says that she was taken with him, but I bet all the things he says to us are the things he said to her. I mean, seriously, none of us has a neck like a swan’s, do we? And hair like a forest fire—she had red hair. I bet no one else has slept in her room for a hundred years. That’s why we’re dreaming about him, when no other girls have.”

“The question is, what do we do now?” asked Eleanor. “He doesn’t scare me, but that dream Mary had—yes, I know you can’t talk about it, but we all know what it was about. If we’re dreaming about him and Lady Collingswood, where is this going?”

W
HERE INDEED
. I
’LL
give you this, Christopher Raven. I have known love since those days as a schoolgirl at Collingswood, and you loved her as passionately as any poet loves a woman. There is always some selfishness in such a love, always some inclination to turn your love into poetry. But when you walked with her down the garden paths, when you stood beside her on the tower and looked out over the countryside, when you called her the moon and said you were the tide, following her motions, you loved her as passionately as poets love, who are always thinking of the next line. We experienced it, the four of us—experienced that love when we were only schoolgirls and should have been attending to our lessons. We felt the kisses in the darkness, your hand on her shoulder, your fingers running along her collarbone. We felt you slip off her dress of grayish-blue silk and felt what we should not have, a passion we were not ready for.

We changed, in those weeks. We grew languorous, as though we were always walking in a dream. We could not attend to our lessons. Eleanor gave up tennis, and she and Tollie used to sit in our room, talking in whispers about their dreams of the night before. Mary took to praying throughout the day. She told us she was convinced that the dreams were wrong, but like the rest of us, she did not want them to end. She developed dark shadows under her eyes, and sometimes she would jump for no reason, as though she had been frightened by a sound that the rest of us could not hear. And what about me? I was as dreamy as the rest, but my lethargy frightened me, and Mary’s condition was a constant source of worry. I felt as though we were all slipping away into some dreamland, losing touch with the prosaic world of school.

Finally, Miss Halloway spoke to me. “Lucy,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder as I leaned over a composition book, tracing the letters CR over and over with my pencil, “what is going on with you girls? Yesterday, Millicent almost fell asleep in Latin, and I’m told that Mary is starting to look, and behave, quite oddly. Is something happening that I should know about?”

I should have told her then, but how could I bear to lose those kisses, the black eyes looking into mine and whispering words sweeter than I had ever heard before, calling me “goddess” and “love”?

“I think we’re staying up too late talking,” I told her, and looking at me doubtfully, she left it at that.

And so it might have continued, if Eleanor had not woken up one morning screaming.

“Lord Collingswood killed him!” she cried. “He found them together and hit him with his cane! There was blood everywhere!” And then she began to sob into her hands. I had never imagined that Eleanor Prescott could weep, and the sight sent a shiver down my spine.

The next night it was Tollie, and then me. We all dreamed the discovery, the terrifying blow to the back of the head. We all saw blood pooling on the floorboards. And then nothing—that was where the dreams ended. Only Mary was spared. Perhaps the ghost decided that she had seen enough. Certainly she could not take any more.

This time we were all summoned to Miss Halloway’s office. “What in the world is going on with you girls?” she asked. “I’ve heard reports of moans in the night and screams early in the morning. And you all look as though you haven’t slept for the past week.”

“Miss Halloway,” I told her, “we’re being haunted. By a ghost.” And then I told her everything.

“Good Lord,” she said. “That such things should be going on right under my nose! The idea that you’re being haunted is ridiculous. There’s no such thing as a ghost, Lucy. However, the atmosphere of the room, together with what you read about Collingswood House, may have prompted these dreams. I will move you out of that room immediately.”

We were moved into Miss Halloway’s own room, for observation. But the dreams did not stop.

“Blood, and then nothing,” said Tollie. “I can’t see anything after he falls down. Blood on the floor, and then it’s as though everything just goes dark.”

“But I can still hear something,” said Eleanor. “Like Tollie’s uncle:
thump, thump, thump.
”

“Miss Halloway,” I said, “Lord Collingswood hit him in the front hall, and then there was this sound, as Eleanor said. I think he dragged the body down the stairs. To the cellar.”

“I think it’s time to summon a brain specialist,” said Miss Halloway.

We all stood looking at her silently—Mary looked especially reproachful. “Oh, all right, girls,” she said. “The cellar it is.”

“T
HERE’S NOTHING DOWN
here,” said Tollie.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Eleanor. “We haven’t even checked for a priest’s hole yet. Hillingdon has one, and a secret staircase. Of course some people don’t have such things in their houses, but I’m quite familiar with them, I assure you.”

For the first time in several weeks, I would have liked to hit Eleanor Prescott, but it was obvious from the shrillness of her voice that she was both excited and afraid. And she was actually doing something useful, walking along each wall and knocking carefully, up and down, listening for anything unusual. These were the foundations of the house, which went back to Norman times. I knew that from having read
The History of Collingswood House,
at least to page 157. They seemed so solid.

But Eleanor said, “Can’t you see that the cellar isn’t as large as the house?” And she was right.

Of course Tollie had exaggerated in saying that there was nothing in the cellar. In addition to the usual things one finds in cellars, such as the coalbox and stacks of wood, old brooms, a tin bucket, it was filled with the detritus of a girls’ school: broken chairs, a pair of crutches, boxes of sports equipment. There were skis stacked against the wall, and an astonishing number of broken tennis rackets.

“There!” said Eleanor. “Can you hear it?”

And we could. Against one wall stood a tall bookshelf that had no doubt once been in the library, but was now water-stained and covered with dust. On the shelves stood boxes containing what looked like onions, but labeled “tulips—early,” “tulips—late,” “tulips—Rembrandt,” pairs of ice skates leaning against one another, and a few books that were too damaged for use even by schoolgirls.

“That’s where old Amias keeps his bulbs,” said Miss Halloway. “He says this is the perfect place to store them.”

“Well, there’s a space behind it,” said Eleanor. And indeed, we had all heard the echo when she knocked.

“All right, girls,” said Miss Halloway. “Let’s see what’s behind that shelf.”

Mary held the lamp while the rest of us helped Miss Halloway stack the books and skates and boxes of tulip bulbs on the floor. “It’s going to be heavy,” she said. “Should I summon Amias and some of his boys?” We all shook our heads. I think we wanted to see what was behind as quickly—and as privately—as possible. “All right then,” she said. “Put your backs into it.”

Once, while moving the shelf, as we were taking a momentary rest, we looked at one another—Tollie, Eleanor, and me. When I saw their white faces, I knew mine must be white as well. The lamplight jumped up and down on the walls, no doubt because Mary’s hand was trembling. But Miss Halloway looked grim and determined, and I decided then that I rather admired her, despite her boring lectures. All things considered, it would not be a terrible thing to be like Miss Halloway.

When the shelf had been moved, slowly and awkwardly, back from the wall, we could see that it had covered an arched opening—through which we saw only blackness.

I will give us the credit to say that we all, including Mary Davenport, stepped through the archway together. It opened into a smaller room, the other part of the cellar, which must once have held wine. There were still wine racks on the walls.

There, in the circle of light cast by the lamp, was the skeleton of a man. We could still see the shreds of his white shirt, the remains of black boots that had long ago been nibbled away by rats. Around his ankle was an iron cuff, linked by a chain to an iron ring in the wall. Just out of his reach was a bowl that might once have held water.

We stood silent. Then Mary, with a sigh, crumpled to the floor. Miss Halloway caught the lamp just before she fell. The rest of us stood there for what seemed like an interminable moment. Then we followed Miss Halloway, who carried Mary, up the stairs and into the autumn sunshine of the first floor, which seemed so strange to us, after the lamplight and the cellar. She put Mary on the sofa and brought her around with smelling salts, then gave us each a glass of sherry, which made Tollie cough.

Finally, Miss Halloway said, “What a terrible story.”

“Do you think she knew?” asked Tollie. “He must have been down there—”

“Dying,” I said. “For days.”

“She didn’t know,” said Eleanor. “I think we dreamed exactly what she saw. She didn’t know anything after Lord Collingswood hit him with the cane. I think she fainted, like Mary.”

“She must have thought he was dead,” said Tollie.

“And Lord Collingswood must have told everyone that they’d had a fight, and Raven had left for Switzerland,” I said.

“But she must have been here doing all sorts of things—getting dressed and walking in the garden, and eating her dinner—while he was dying below!” said Mary. She started to gasp and sob, and Miss Halloway waved the sal volatile under her nose again.

“Last summer, after I was hired as headmistress here,” she said, “I read that book Lucy thought was so dull,
The History of Collingswood House
. If you’d read a little farther, girls, you would have known that Lord Collingswood died in 1818, just a year later. He was said to have died of heart problems, but there was a rumor that he might have been poisoned—digitalis, which comes from foxgloves, is toxic in a high enough dose. Lady Collingswood created this school and specified that Lord Collingswood’s portrait was to be hung over the main staircase in perpetuity. I wonder, now, if that was her idea of a joke?”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“She moved to France. Eventually she became a painter, not a great one but there is a picture of hers in the National Gallery. She particularly liked painting flowers.” Miss Halloway was silent for a moment. “We’ll have to give him a proper burial,” she said. “I think the dreams will stop now.”

The dreams did not stop, not as long as we stayed at Collingswood. But they changed character. For the rest of that year, we dreamed that we were with him—sitting by the fire in the parlor, browsing through books in the library and reading lines of poetry to one another, walking through the garden, where the roses were blooming, including the white rose called Lady Collingswood. He still murmured lines of poetry to us, we still felt kisses on our hands, even our shoulders, but the dreams no longer had the passion, the urgency, that we should not have experienced and that changed us, permanently. When we left Collingswood, Eleanor for a London season, Mary for her father’s parish, where she would teach Sunday school, Tollie for Newnham Teachers’ College, and me for Girton, we were no longer the girls who had glared at one another on the first day of term. We were older, we knew more about the joys and pains of the world, and we were friends.

The remains of Christopher Raven were buried in the garden, and a stone was placed over him with the words “Here lies the poet Christopher Raven, lover of Lady Collingswood, 1797–1817” carved on it, followed by lines of his own poetry:

Let her eyes guide me like bright stars, and bring

Me to the birthing-place of poetry.

I read some of his poetry later—he had published two books, called
Aurora and Other Poems
and
Poems for the Rights of Man
. He was good, and might have become great if he had lived, although he would never have been a Shelley or a Keats. But when I remembered his kisses in the dark, the whispered words, it did not matter. I do not think it mattered to her either. She loved the man, and the poet was part of the man. At least that is what I think now that I have learned something of love—the love one has for a poet, like my Louis.