CHAPTER VIII.
WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple; If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with 't.
-- THE TEMPEST.
Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland's old mansions, and the beauty of it is more theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan Manor; for although the latter is the older of the two, the former is not only spectacular by reason of its spaciousness, the delicacy of its architectural details, and the splendor of its dreamlike terraced gardens, but also for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic age--a look which makes one think of a wonderful old lady; a belle of the days of minuets and powdered wigs and patches; a woman no less wonderful in her declining years than in her youth, but wonderful in another way; a proud old aristocrat, erect and spirited to the last; her bedchamber a storehouse of ivory lace and ancient jewelry, her memory a storehouse of recollections, like chapters from romantic novels of the days when all men were gallant, and all women beautiful: recollections of journeys made in the old coach, which is still in the stable, though its outriders have been buried in the slaves' burying ground these many years; recollections of the opening of Hampton, when, as the story goes, gay Captain Charles Ridgely, builder of the house, held a card party in the attic to celebrate the event, while his wife, Rebecca Dorsey Ridgely, a lady of religious turn, marked the occasion simultaneously with a prayer-meeting in the drawing room; of the ball given by the Ridgelys in honor of Charles Carroll's granddaughters, the exquisite Caton sisters; of hunt meets here, long, long ago, and hunt balls which succeeded them; of breakneck rides; of love-making in that garden peopled with the ghosts of more than a century of lovers; of duels fought at dawn.

Of such vague, thrilling tales the old house seems to whisper.
Never, from the moment we turned into the tree-lined avenue, leading to Hampton, from the moment when I saw the fox hounds rise resentfully out of beds which they had dug in drifts of oak leaves in the drive, from the moment when I stood beneath the stately portico and heard the bars of the shuttered doors being flung back for our admittance--never, from my first glimpse of the place, have I been able to dispel the sense of unreality I felt while there, and which makes me feel, now, that Hampton is not a house that I have seen, but one built by my imagination in the course of a particularly charming and convincing dream.
Stained glass windows bearing the Ridgely coat of arms flank the front doorway, and likewise the opposing doorway at the end of the enormous hall upon which one enters, and the light from these windows gives the hall a subdued yet glowing illumination, so that there is something spectral about the old chairs and the old portraits with which the walls are solidly covered.

There are portraits here by Gilbert Stuart and other distinguished painters of times gone by, and I particularly remember one large canvas showing a beautiful young woman in evening dress, her hair hanging in curls beside her cheeks, her tapering fingers touching the strings of a harp.

She was young then; yet the portrait is that of the great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother, of present Ridgelys, and she has lain long in the brick-walled family burying ground below the garden.

But there beneath the portrait stands the harp on which she played.
One might tell endlessly of paneling, of the delicate carving of mantels and overmantels, of chairs, tables, desks, and sofas of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Phyfe and Sheraton, yet giving such an inventory one might fail utterly to suggest the feeling of that great house, with its sense of homelike emptiness, its wealth of old furniture and portraits, blending together, in the dim light of a late October afternoon, to form shadowy backgrounds for autumnal reverie, or for silent, solitary listening--listening to the tales told by the soughing wind outside, to the whisper of embers in the fireplace, the slow somber tick of the tall clock telling of ages past and passing, the ghostly murmur of the old house talking softly to itself.
From the windows of the great dining-room one looks away toward Hampton Gate, a favorite meeting place for the Elkridge Hunt, or, at another angle, toward the stables where the hunters are kept, the old slave cabins, and the overseer's house, with its bell tower--a house nearly two hundred years old.