soul, the clerk walked slowly across the fields. But on the way he
glanced once more at the post-card of instructions, and saw with dull
amazement that the inked-out sentence was quite legible after all
beneath the scratches made across it: “There _is_ a short cut through
the wood--the wood I want cut down--if you care to take it.” Only
“care” was so badly written, it looked more like another word; the “c”
was uncommonly like “d.”
“That’s the copse that spoils my view of the Downs, you see,” his client
explained to him later, pointing across the fields, and referring to the
ordnance map beside him. “I want it cut down and a path made so and so.”
His finger indicated direction on the map. “The Fairy Wood--it’s still
called, and it’s far older than this house. Come now, if you’re ready,
Mr. Thomas, we might go out and have a look at it....”
XVI
DREAM TRESPASS
The little feathers of the dusk were drifting through the autumn leaves
when we came so unexpectedly upon the inn that was not marked upon our
big-scaled map. And most opportunely, for Ducommun, my friend, was
clearly overtired. An irritability foreign to his placid temperament had
made the last few hours’ trudge a little difficult, and I felt we had
reached that narrow frontier which lies between non-success and failure.
“Another five miles to the inn we chose this morning,” I told him; “but
we’ll soon manage it at a steady pace.”
And he groaned, “I’m done! I simply couldn’t do it.”
He sank down upon the bit of broken wall to rest, while the darkness
visibly increased, and the wind blew damp and chill across the marshes
on our left. But behind the petulance of his tone, due to exhaustion
solely, lay something else as well, something that had been accumulating
for days. For our walking tour had not turned out quite to measure,
distances always under-calculated; the inns, moreover, bad; the people
surly and inhospitable; even the weather cross.
And Ducommun’s disappointment had in a sense been double, so that I felt
keen sympathy with him. For this was the country where his ancestors
once reigned as proprietors, grand seigneurs, and the rest; he had
always longed to visit it; and secretly in his imagination had cherished
a reconstructed picture in which he himself would somehow play some
high, distinguished rôle his proud blood entitled him to. Clerk to-day
in a mere insurance office, but descendant of romantic, ancient stock,
he knew the history of the period intimately; the holiday had been
carefully, lovingly planned; and--the unpleasantness of the inhabitants
had shattered his dream thus fostered and so keenly anticipated. The
breaking-point had been reached. Was not this inn we hoped to reach by
dark a portion of the very château--he had established it from musty
records enough--where once his family dwelt in old-time splendour? And
had he not indulged all manner of delightful secret dreaming in
advance?...
It was here, then, returning from a little private reconnoitring on my
own account, that I reported my brave discovery of an unexpected
half-way house, and found him almost asleep upon the stones, unwilling
to believe the short half-mile I promised. “Only another nest of
robbery and insolence,” he laughed sourly, “and, anyhow, not the inn we
counted on.” He dragged after me in silence, eyeing askance the tumbled,
ivy-covered shanty that stood beside the roadway, yet gladly going in
ahead of me to rest his weary limbs, and troubling himself no whit with
bargaining that he divined might be once more unpleasant.
Yet the inn proved a surprise in another way--it was entirely
delightful. There was a glowing fire of peat in a biggish hall, the
_patron_ and his wife were all smiles and pleasure, welcoming us with an
old-fashioned dignity that made bargaining impossible, and in ten
minutes we felt as much at home as if we had arrived at a country house
where we had been long expected.
“So few care to stop here now,” the old woman told us, with a gracious
gesture that was courtly rather than deferential, “we stand no longer
upon the old high road,” and showed in a hundred nameless ways that all
they had was entirely at our disposal. Till even Ducommun melted and
turned soft: “Only in France could this happen,” he whispered with a
touch of pride, as though claiming that this fragrance of gentle life,
now fast disappearing from the world, still lingered in the land of his
descent and in his own blood too. He patted the huge, rough deer-hound
that seemed to fill the little room where we awaited supper, and the
friendly creature, bounding with a kind of subdued affection, added
another touch of welcome. His face and manners were evidence of kind
treatment; he was proud of his owners and of his owners’ guests. I
thought of well-loved pets in our English country houses. “This beast,”
I laughed, “has surely lived with gentlemen.” And Ducommun took the
compliment to himself with personal satisfaction.
It is difficult to tell afterwards with accuracy the countless little
touches that made the picture all so gentle--they were so delicately
suggested, painted in silently with such deft spiritual discretion. It
stands out in my memory, set in some strange, high light, as the most
enchanting experience of many a walking tour; and yet, about it all,
like a veil of wonder that evades description, an atmosphere of
something at the same time--I use the best available word--truly
singular. This touch of something remote, indefinite, unique, began to
steal over me from the very first, bringing with it an incalculable,
queer charm. It lulled like a drug all possible suspicions. And in my
friend--detail of the picture nearest to my heart, that is--it first
betrayed itself, with a degree of surprise, moreover, not entirely
removed from shock.
For as he passed before me underneath that low-browed porch, quite
undeniably he--altered. This indefinable change clothed his entire
presentment to my eyes; to tired eyes, I freely grant, as also that it
was dusk, and that the transforming magic of the peat fire was behind
him. Yet, eschewing paragraphs of vain description, I may put a portion
of it crudely thus, perhaps: that his lankiness turned suddenly all
grace; the atmosphere of the London office stool, as of the clerk
a-holidaying, vanished; and that the way he bowed his head to enter the
dark-beamed lintel of the door was courtly and high bred, instinct with
native elegance, and in the real sense aristocratic. It came with an
instant and complete conviction. It was wonderful to see; and it gave me
a moment’s curious enchantment. All that I divined and loved in the man,
usually somewhat buried, came forth upon the surface. A note of
explanation followed readily enough, half explanation at any rate--that
houses alter people because, like dressing-up with women and children,
they furnish a new setting to the general appearance, and the points one
is accustomed to undergo a readjustment. Yet with him this subtle
alteration did not pass; it not only clung to him during the entire
evening, but most curiously increased. He maintained, indeed, his
silence the whole time, but it was a happy, dreaming silence holding the
charm of real companionship, his disappointment gone as completely as
the memory of our former cheerless inns and ill-conditioned people.
I cannot pretend, though, that I really watched him carefully, since an
attack from another quarter divided my attention equally, and the charm
of the daughter of the house, in whose eyes, it seemed to me, lay all
the quiet sadness of the country we had walked through--_triste, morne_,
forsaken land--claimed a great part of my observant sympathy. The old
people left us entirely to her care, and the way she looked after us,
divining our wants before we ventured to express them, was more
suggestive of the perfect hostess than merely of someone who would take
payment for all that she supplied. The question of money, indeed, did
not once intrude, though I cannot say whence came my impression that
this hospitality was, in fact, offered without the least idea of
remuneration in silver and gold. That it did come, I can swear; also,
that behind it lay no suggestion of stiff prices to be demanded at the
last moment on the plea that terms had not been settled in advance. We
were made welcome like expected guests, and my heart leaped to encounter
this spirit of old-fashioned courtesy that the greed of modern life has
everywhere destroyed.
“To-morrow or the next day, when you are rested,” said the maiden
softly, sitting beside us after supper and tending the fire, “I will
take you through the _Allée des tilleuls_ towards the river, and show
you where the fishing is so good.”
For it seemed natural that she should sit and chat with us, and only
afterwards I remembered sharply that the river was a good five miles
from where we housed, across marshes that could boast no trees at all,
_tilleuls_ least of all, and of avenues not a vestige anywhere.
“We’ll start,” Ducommun answered promptly, taking my breath a little,
“in the dawn”; and presently then made signs to go to bed.
She brought the candles, lit them for us with a spill of paper from the
peat, and handed one to each, a little smile of yearning in her deep,
soft eyes that I remember to this day.
“You will sleep long and well,” she said half shyly, accompanying us to
the foot of the stairs. “I made and aired the beds with my own hands.”
And the last I saw of her, as we turned the landing corner overhead, was
her graceful figure against the darkness, with the candle-light falling
upon the coiled masses of her dark-brown hair. She gazed up after us
with those large grey eyes that seemed to me so full of yearning, and
yet so sad, so patient, so curiously resigned....
Ducommun pulled me almost roughly by the arm. “Come,” he said with
sudden energy, and as though everything was settled. “We have an early
start, remember!”
I moved unwillingly; it was all so strange and dreamlike, the beauty of
the girl so enchanting, the change in himself so utterly perplexing.
“It’s like staying with friends in a country house,” I murmured,
lingering in a moment of bewilderment by his door. “Old family retainers
almost, proud and delighted to put one up, eh?”
And his answer was so wholly unexpected that I waited, staring blankly
into his altered eyes:
“I only hope we shall get away all right,” he muttered. “I mean, that
is--get off.”
Evidently his former mood had flashed a moment back. “You feel tired?” I
suggested sympathetically, “so do I.”
“Dog-tired, yes,” he answered shortly, then added in a slow, suggestive
whisper--“And I feel cold, too--extraordinarily cold.”
The significant, cautious way he said it made me start. But before I
could prate of chills and remedies, he quickly shut the door upon me,
leaving those last words ringing in my brain--“cold, extraordinarily
cold.” And an inkling stole over me of what he meant; uninvited and
unwelcome it came, then passed at once, leaving a vague uneasiness
behind. For the cold he spoke of surely was not bodily cold. About my
own heart, too, moved some strange touch of chill. Cold sought an
entrance. But it was not common cold. Rather it was in the mind and
thoughts, and settled down upon the spirit. In describing his own
sensations he had also described my own; for something at the very heart
of me seemed turning numb....
I got quickly into bed. The night was still and windless, but, though I
was tired, sleep held long away. Uneasiness continued to affect me. I
lay, listening to the blood hurrying along the thin walls of my veins,
singing and murmuring, and, when at length I dropped off, two vivid
pictures haunted me into unconsciousness--his face in the doorway as he
made that last remark, and the face of the girl as she had peered up so
yearningly at him over the shaded candle.
Then--at once, it seemed--I was wide awake again, aware, however, that
an interval had passed, but aware also of another thing that was
incredible, and somehow dreadful, namely, that while I slept, the house
had undergone a change. It caught me, shivering in my bed, utterly
unprepared, as though unfair advantage had been taken of me while I lay
unconscious. This startling idea of external alteration made me shudder.
How I so instantly divined it lies beyond all explanation. I somehow
realised that, while the room I woke in was the same as before, the
building of which it formed a little member had known in the darkness
some transmuting, substituting change that had turned it otherwise. My
terror I also cannot explain, nor why, almost immediately, instead of
increasing, it subtly shifted into that numbness I have already
mentioned--a curious, deep bemusement of the spirit that robbed it of
really acute distress. It seemed as if only a part of me--the wakened
part--knew what was going on, and that some other part remained in sleep
and ignorance.
For the house was now enormous. It _had_ experienced this weird
transformation. The roof, I somehow knew, rose soaring through the
darkness; the walls ran over acres; it had towers, wings, and
battlements, broad balconies, and magnificent windows. It had grown both
dignified and ancient ... and had swallowed up our little inn as
comfortably as a palace includes a single bedroom. The blackness about
me of course concealed it, but I _felt_ the yawning corridors, the gape
of lofty halls, high ceilings, spacious chambers, till I seemed lost in
the being of some stately building that extended itself with imposing
majesty upon the night.
Then came the instinct--more, perhaps, a driving impulse than a mere
suggestion--to go out and see. See what? I asked myself, as I made my
way towards the window gropingly, unwilling or afraid to strike a light.
And the answer, utterly without explanation, came hard and sharp like
this--
“To catch them on the lawn.”
And the curious phrase I knew was right, for the surroundings had
changed equally with the house. I drew aside the curtain and peered out
upon a lawn that a few hours ago had been surely a rather desolate,
plain roadway, and beyond it into spacious gardens, bounded by park-like
timber, where before had been but dreary, half-cultivated fields.
Through a risen mist the light of the moon shone faintly, and everywhere
my sight confirmed the singular impression of extension I have
mentioned, for away to the left another mass of masonry that was like
the wing of some great mansion rose dimly through the air, and beneath
my very eyes a projecting balcony obscured pathways and beds of flowers.
Next, where a gleam of moonlight caught it, I saw the broad, slow bend
of river edging the lawn through clumps of willows. Even the river had
come close. And while I stared, striving to force from so much illusion
a single fact that might explain, a little tree upon the lawn just
underneath moved slightly nearer, and I saw it was a human figure--a
figure that I recognised. Wrapped in some long, loose garment, the
daughter of the house stood there in an attitude of waiting. And the
waiting was at once explained, for another figure--this time the figure
of a man that seemed to me both strange and familiar at the same
time--emerged from the shadows of the house to join her. She slipped
into his arms. Then came a sound of horses neighing in their stalls, and
the couple moved away with sudden swiftness silently as ghosts,
disappearing in the mist while three minutes later I heard the crunch
of hoofs on gravel, dying rapidly away into the distance of the night.
And here a sudden, wild reaction, not easy of analysis, rushed over me,
as if that other part of me that had not waked now came sharply to the
rescue, set free from the inhibition of some drug. I felt anger,
disgust, resentment, and a wave of indignation that somehow I was being
tricked. Impulsively--there seemed no time for judgment or reflection--I
crossed the landing, now so oddly deep and lofty, and, without knocking,
ran headlong into my friend’s room. The bed, I saw at once, was empty,
the sheets not even lain in. The furniture was in disorder, garments
strewn about the floor, signs of precipitate flight in all directions.
And Ducommun, of course, was gone.
What happened next confuses me when I try to think of it, for my only
recollection is of hurrying distractedly to and fro between his bedroom
and my own. There was a rush and scuttling in the darkness, and then I
blundered heavily against walls or furniture or both, and the darkness
rose up over my mind with a smothering thick curtain that blinded
everything ... and I came to my senses in the open road, my friend
standing over me, enormous in the dusk, and the bit of broken wall where
he had rested while I reconnoitred, just behind us. The moon was rising,
the air was damp and chill, and he was shouting in my ear, “I thought
you were never coming back again. I’m rested now. We’d better hurry on
and do those beastly five miles to the inn.”
We started, walking so briskly that we reached it in something over
seventy minutes, and passing on the way no single vestige of a house nor
of any kind of building. I was the silent one, but when Ducommun talked
it was only to curse the desolate, sad country, and wonder why his
forbears had ever chosen such a wilderness to live in. And when at
length we put up at this inn which he made out was a part of his
original family estate, he spent the evening poring over maps and
papers, by means of which he admitted finally his calculations were all
wrong. “The house itself,” he said, “must have stood farther back along
the road we came by. The river, you see,” pointing to the dirty old
chart, “has changed its course a bit since then. Its older bed lay much
nearer to the château, flanking the garden lawn below the park.” And he
pointed again to the place with a finger that obviously now held office
pens.
XVII
LET NOT THE SUN----
It began delightfully: “Where are _you_ going for your holiday, Bill?”
his sister asked casually one day at tea, someone having mentioned a
trip to Italy; “climbing, I suppose, as usual?” And he had answered just
as casually, “Climbing, yes, as usual.”
They were both workers, she a rich woman’s secretary, and he keeping a
stool warm in an office. She was to have a month, he a bare three weeks,
and this summer it so happened, the times overlapped. To each the
holiday was of immense importance, looked forward to eagerly through
eleven months of labour, and looked back upon afterwards through another
long eleven months. Frances went either to Scotland or some little
pension in Switzerland, painting the whole time, and taking a friend of
similar tastes with her. He went invariably to the Alps. They had never
gone together as yet, because--well, because she painted and he climbed.
But this year a vague idea had come to each that they might combine,
choosing some place where both tastes might be satisfied. Since last
summer there had been deaths in the family; they realised loneliness,
felt drawn together like survivors of a wreck. He often went to tea with
her in her little flat, and she accompanied him sometimes to dinner in
his Soho restaurants. Fundamentally, however, they were not together,
for their tastes did not assimilate well, and their temperaments lacked
that sympathy which fuses emotion and thought in a harmonious blend.
Affection was real and deep, but strongest when they were apart.
Now, as he walked home to his lodgings on the other side of London, he
felt it would be nice if they _could_ combine their holidays for once.
Her casual question was a feeler in the same direction. A few days later
she repeated it in a postscript to a letter: “Why not go together this
year,” she wrote, “choosing some place where you can climb and Sybil and
I can paint? I leave on the 1st; you follow on the 15th. We could have
two weeks in the same hotel. It would be awfully jolly. Let me know what
you feel, and mind you are _quite_ frank about it.”
They exchanged letters, discussed places, differed mildly, and agreed to
meet for full debate. The stage of suggestion was past; it was a plan
now. They must decide, or go separately. One of them, that is to say,
must take the responsibility of saying No. Frances leaned to the
Engadine--Maloja--whereas her brother thought it “not a bad place, but
no good as a climbing centre. Still, Pontresina is within reach, and
there are several peaks I’ve never done round Pontresina. We’ll talk it
over.” The exchange of letters became wearisome and involved, because
each wrote from a different point of view and feeling, and each gave in
weakly to the other, yet left a hint of sacrifice behind. “It’s a very
lovely part,” she wrote of his proposal for the Dolomites, “only it’s a
long way off and expensive to get at, and the scenery is a bit
monotonous for painting. _You_ understand. Still, for two weeks----“;
while he criticised her alternative selections in the Rhone Valley as
“rather touristy and overcrowded, don’t you think?--the sort of thing
that everybody paints.” Both were busy, and wrote sometimes briefly, not
making themselves quite plain, each praising the other’s choice, then
qualifying it destructively at the end of apparently unselfish sentences
with a formidable and prohibitive “but.” The time was getting short
meanwhile. “We ought to take our rooms pretty soon,” wrote Frances.
“Immediately, in fact, if we want to get in anywhere,” he answered on a
letter-card. “Come and dine to-night at the Gourmet, and we’ll settle
everything.”
They met. And at first they talked of everything else in the world but
the one thing in their minds. They talked a trifle boisterously; but
the boisterousness was due to excitement, and the excitement to an
unnatural effort to feign absolute sympathy which did not exist
fundamentally. The bustle of humanity about them, food, and a glass of
red wine, gradually smoothed the edges of possible friction, however.
“You look tired, Bill.”
“I am rather,” he laughed. “We both need a holiday, don’t we?”
The ice was broken.
“Now, let’s talk of the Alps,” she said briskly. “It’s been so difficult
to explain in writing, hasn’t it?”
“Impossible,” he laughed, and pulled out of his pocket a sheet of
notepaper on which he had made some notes. Frances took a Baedeker from
her velvet bag on the hook above her head. “Capital,” he laughed; “we’ll
settle everything in ten minutes.”
“It will be so awfully jolly to go together for once,” she said, and
they felt so happy and sympathetic, so sure of agreement, so ready each
to give in to the other, that they began with a degree of boldness that
seemed hardly wise. “Say exactly what _you_ think--quite honestly,” each
said to the other. “We must be candid, you know. It’s too important to
pretend. It would be silly, wouldn’t it?” But neither realised that this
meant, “I’ll persuade you that my place is best and the only place where
I could really enjoy my holiday.” Bill cleared a space before him on
the table, lit a cigarette, and felt the joy of making plans in his
heart. Francis turned the pages to her particular map, equally full of
delight. What fun it was!
“All I want, Bill dear, is a place where I can paint--forests, streams,
and those lovely fields of flowers. Almost anywhere would do for me. You
understand, don’t you?”
“Rather,” he laughed, making a little more room for his own piece of
paper, “and you shall have it, too, old girl. All I want is some good
peaks within reach, and good guides on the spot. We’ll have our evenings
together, and when I’m not climbing, we’ll go for picnics while you
paint, and--and be awfully jolly all together. Sybil’s a nice girl. We
shall be a capital trio.” He put her Baedeker at the far corner of the
table for a moment.
“Oh, _please_ don’t lose my place in it,” she said, pulling the marker
across the page and leaving the tip out.
“I’m sorry,” he replied, and they laughed--less boisterously.
“You tell me your ideas first,” she decided, “and then I’ll tell you
mine. If we can’t agree then, we’re not fit to have a holiday at all!”