“It does not seem so,” she replied. “I feel as if I had been here
before, and often, or for a long time.” She paused; then she said: “Do
let me go into the house. There ought to be a room there--a room--I seem
almost to see it. Come! Let us go in.”
She took my hand and drew me towards the hall door. The servants were
carrying in the luggage, and there was a certain amount of confusion and
noise, but she did not seem to notice it. She was intent on something; I
could not tell what.
“Do show me the house, Ronald--the drawing-room, and--and--there is
another room I wish to see.”
“You shall see them all, dear,” I said. “You are excited. It is natural
enough. This is the drawing-room.”
She glanced round it hastily.
“And now the others!” she exclaimed.
I took her to the dining-room, the library, and the various apartments
on the ground-floor.
She scarcely looked at them. When we had finished exploring, “Are these
all?” she asked, with a wavering accent of disappointment.
“All,” I answered.
“Then--show me the rooms upstairs.”
We ascended the shallow oak steps, and passed first into the apartment
in which my grandmother had died.
It had been done up since then, refurnished, and almost completely
altered. Only the wide fireplace, with its brass dogs and its heavy
oaken mantelpiece, had been left untouched.
Margot glanced hastily round. Then she walked up to the fireplace, and
drew a long breath.
“There ought to be a fire here,” she said.
“But it is summer,” I answered, wondering.
“And a chair there,” she went on, in a curious low voice, indicating--I
think now, or is it my imagination?--the very spot where my grandmother
was wont to sit. “Yes--I seem to remember, and yet not to remember.”
She looked at me, and her white brows were knit.
Suddenly she said: “Ronald, I don’t think I like this room. There is
something--I don’t know--I don’t think I could sit here; and I seem to
remember--something about it, as I did about the terrace. What can it
mean?”
“It means that you are tired and overexcited, darling. Your nerves are
too highly strung, and nerves play us strange tricks. Come to your own
room and take off your things, and when you have had some tea, you will
be all right again.”
Yes, I was fool enough to believe that tea was the panacea for an
undreamed-of, a then unimaginable, evil.
I thought Margot was simply an overtired and imaginative child that
evening. If I could believe so now!
We went up into her boudoir and had tea, and she grew more like
herself; but several times that night I observed her looking puzzled and
thoughtful, and a certain expression of anxiety shone in her blue eyes
that was new to them then.
But I thought nothing of it, and I was-happy. Two or three days
passed, and Mar-got did not again refer to her curious sensation of
pre-knowledge of the house and garden. I fancied there was a slight
alteration in her manner; that was all. She seemed a little restless.
Her vivacity flagged now and then. She was more willing to be alone than
she had been. But we were old married folk now, and could not be always
in each other’s sight. I had a great many people connected with the
estate to see, and had to gather up the tangled threads of many affairs.
The honeymoon was over. Of course we could not always be together.
Still, I should have wished Margot to desire it, and I could not hide
from myself that now and then she scarcely concealed a slight impatience
to be left in solitude. This troubled me, but only a little, for she was
generally as fond as ever. That evening, however, an incident occurred
which rendered me decidedly uneasy, and made me wonder if my wife were
not inclined to that curse of highly-strung women--hysteria!
I had been riding over the moors to visit a tenant-farmer who lived at
some distance, and did not return until twilight. Dismounting, I let
myself into the house, traversed the hall, and ascended the stairs. As I
wore spurs, and the steps were of polished oak and uncarpeted, I walked
noisily enough to warn anyone of my approach. I was passing the door
of the room that had been my grandmother’s sitting-room, when I noticed
that it stood open. The house was rather dark, and the interior was dim
enough, but I could see a figure in a white dress moving about inside.
I recognised Margot, and wondered what she was doing, but her movements
were so singular that, instead of speaking to her, I stood in the
doorway and watched her.
She was walking, with a very peculiar, stealthy step, around the room,
not as if she were looking for anything, but merely as if she were
restless or ill at ease. But what struck me forcibly was this, that
there was something curiously animal in her movements, seen thus in a
dim half-light that only partially revealed her to me. I had never
seen a woman walk in that strangely wild yet soft way before. There was
something uncanny about it, that rendered me extremely discomforted; yet
I was quite fascinated, and rooted to the ground.
I cannot tell how long I stood there. I was so completely absorbed in
the passion of the gazer that the passage of time did not concern me
in the least. I was as one assisting at a strange spectacle. This white
thing moving in the dark did not suggest my wife to me, although it
was she. I might have been watching an animal, vague, yet purposeful of
mind, tracing out some hidden thing, following out some instinct quite
foreign to humanity. I remember that presently I involuntarily clasped
my hands together, and felt that they were very cold. Perspiration broke
out on my face. I was painfully, unnaturally moved, and a violent desire
to be away from this white moving thing came over me. Walking as softly
as I could, I went to my dressing-room, shut the door, and sat down on a
chair. I never remember to have felt thoroughly unnerved before, but now
I found myself actually shaken, palsied. I could understand how deadly
a thing fear is. I lit a candle hastily, and as I did so a knock came to
the door.
Margot’s voice said, “May I come in?” I felt unable to reply, so I got
up and admitted her.
She entered smiling, and looking such a child, so innocent, so tender,
that I almost laughed aloud. That I, a man, should have been frightened
by a child in a white dress, just because the twilight cast a phantom
atmosphere around her! I held her in my arms, and I gazed into her blue
eyes.
She looked down, but still smiled.
“Where have you been, and what have you been doing?” I asked gaily.
She answered that she had been in the drawing-room since tea-time.
“You came here straight from the drawing-room?” I said.
She replied, “Yes.”
Then, with an indifferent air which hid real anxiety, I said:
“By the way, Margot, have you been into that room again--the room you
fancied you recollected?”
“No, never,” she answered, withdrawing herself from my arms. “I
don’t wish to go there. Make haste, Ronald, and dress. It is nearly
dinner-time, and I am ready.” And she turned and left me.
She had told me a lie. All my feelings of uneasiness and discomfort
returned tenfold.
That evening was the most wretched one, the only wretched one, I had
ever spent with her.
*****
I am tired of writing. I will continue my task to-morrow. It takes me
longer than I anticipated. Yet even to tell everything to myself brings
me some comfort. Man must express himself; and despair must find a
voice.