Next morning, if Ian himself slept late, Milly slept later still. The
strained and troubled look which he had seen upon her face even in sleep
the night before, had passed away in the morning, but she lay almost
alarmingly still and white. He was reassured by remembering that once
when they were in Switzerland she had slept about sixteen hours and
awakened in perfect health. He remained in the house watching over her,
and about four o'clock she woke up. But she was very pale and very
quiet; exhausted, he thought, by her strange mental and physical
exertions of the night before.
She came down to tea with her pretty hair unbecomingly twisted up, and
dressed in a brownish-yellow tea-gown, which he fancied he remembered
hearing her denounce as only fit to be turned into a table-cloth. He did
not precisely criticise these details, but they helped in the impression
of lifelessness and gloom that hung about her. It was a faint, gleamy
afternoon, and such sun as there was did not shine into the study. The
dark panelling looked darker than usual, and as she sat silent and
listless in a corner of the old sofa, her hair and face stood out
against it almost startling in their blondness and whiteness. She was
strangely unlike herself, but Stewart comforted himself by remembering
that she had been odd in her manner and behavior, though in a different
way, after her long sleep in Switzerland. After he had given her tea, he
suggested that they should walk in the garden, as the rain was over.
"Not yet, Ian," she said. "I want to try and tell you something. I can
do it better here."
Her mouth quivered. He sat down by her on the sofa.
"Must you tell me now?" he asked, smiling. "Do you really think it
matters?"
"Yes--it does matter," she answered, tremulously, pressing her folded
hands against her breast. "It's something I ought to have told you
before you married me--but indeed, indeed I didn't know how dreadful it
was--I didn't think it would happen again."
He was puzzled a moment, then spoke, still smiling:
"I suppose you mean the sleep-walking. Well, darling, it is a bit
creepy, I admit, but I shall get used to it, if you won't do it too
often."
"Did I really walk?" she asked--and a look of horror was growing on her
face. "Ah! I wasn't sure. No--it's not that--it is--oh, don't think me
mad, Ian!"
"Tell me, dearest. I promise I won't."
"I've not been here at all since you've been living in this house. I've
not seen you, my own precious husband, since I went to sleep in
Switzerland, at the Hôtel du Chalet--don't you remember--when we had
been that long walk up to the glacier and I was so tired?"
Stewart was exceedingly startled. He paused, and then said, very gently
but very firmly:
"That's nonsense, dearest. You have been here, you've been with me all
the time."
"Ah! You think so, but it was not _I_--no, don't interrupt me--I mean to
tell you, I must, but I can't if you interrupt me. It was awfully wrong
of me not to tell you before; but I tried to, and then I saw you
wouldn't believe me. Do you remember a dinner-party at the Fletchers',
the autumn before we were engaged--when Cousin David had just bought
that picture?"
"That portrait of Lady Hammerton, which is so like you? Yes, I remember
it perfectly."
"You know I wanted my First so much and I had been working too hard, and
then I was told that evening that you had said I couldn't get it--"
"Silly me!"
"And I felt certain you didn't love me--"
"Silly you!"
"Don't interrupt me, please. And I wasn't well, and I cried and cried
and I couldn't leave off, and then I allowed Tims to hypnotize me. We
both knew she had no business to do it, it was wrong of us, of course,
but we couldn't possibly guess what would happen. I went to sleep, and
so far as I knew I never woke again for more than six months, not till
the Schools were over."
"But, my darling, I skated with you constantly in the Christmas
Vacation, and took your work through the Term. I assure you that you
were quite awake then."
"I remember nothing about it. All I know is that some one got my First
for me."
"But, Mildred--"
"Why do you call me Mildred? That's what they called me when I woke up
last time; but my own name's Milly."
Stewart rose and paced the room, then came back.
"It's simply a case of collapse of memory, dear. It's very trying, but
don't let's be fanciful about it."
"I thought it was only that--I told you, didn't I, something of that
sort? But I didn't know then, nobody told me, that I wasn't like myself
at all those months I couldn't remember. Last night in my sleep I
knew--I knew that some one else, something else--I can't describe it,
it's impossible--was struggling hard with me in my own brain, my own
body, trying to hold me down, to push me back again into the place,
whatever it was, I came out of. But I got stronger and stronger till I
was quite myself and the thing couldn't really stop me. I dare say it
only lasted a few seconds, then I felt quite free--free from the
struggle, the pressure; and I saw myself standing in the room, with some
kind of white floating stuff over my head and about me, and I saw myself
open the door and go out of the room. I wasn't a bit surprised, but I
just lay there quiet and peaceful. Then suddenly it came to me that I
couldn't have seen myself, that the person, the figure I had seen go
out of the door was the other one, the creature I had been struggling
with, who had stolen my shape; and it came to me that she was gone to
steal you--to steal your heart from me and take you away; and you
wouldn't know, you would think it was I, and you would follow her and
love her and never know it was not your own wife you were loving. And I
was mad with anger; I never knew before what it meant, Ian, to be as
angry as that. I struggled hard to get up, and at last I managed it, and
I came down-stairs after her, but I couldn't find her, and I was sure
that she had gone and had taken you away with her. And you say I really
did come down-stairs."
"Yes, darling, and if you had been awake instead of asleep, as you
obviously were, you would have seen that this nightmare of yours was
nothing but a nightmare. You would have seen that I was alone here,
quietly arranging my papers before going to bed. You gave me a fright
coming down as you did, for there was a tremendous thunderstorm going
on, and I am ashamed to say how queer my own nerves were. The electrical
state of the atmosphere and a very loud clap of thunder just overhead,
account for the whole business, which probably lasted only a few seconds
from beginning to end. Be reasonable, little woman, you are generally
the most reasonable person I know--except when you talk about going to
Dieppe."
Milly gave him a strange look.
"Why am I not reasonable when I talk about going to Dieppe?"
He drew her to him and kissed her hair.
"Never mind why. We aren't going to excite ourselves to-day or do
anything but make love and forget nightmares and everything
disagreeable."
She drew herself away a little and looked with frightened eyes in his.
"But I can't forget, Ian, that I don't remember anything that has
happened since we were on our honeymoon in Switzerland. And now we are
in Oxford, and I can see it's quite late in the summer. How can I forget
that somehow I am being robbed of myself--robbed of my life with you?"
"Wait till to-morrow and you'll remember everything right enough."
But Milly was not to be convinced. She was willing to submit on the
question of last night's experiences, but she assured him that Tims
would bear her out in the assertion that she had never recovered her
recollection of the months preceding her engagement. Ian ceased trying
to convince her that she was mistaken on this point; but he argued that
the memory was of all functions of the brain the most uncertain, that
there was no limit to its vagaries, which were mere matters of nerves
and circulation, and that Dr. Norton-Smith, the nerve and brain
specialist to whom he would take her, would probably turn out to have a
dozen patients subject to the same affliction as herself. One never
hears of half the ills that flesh is heir to until the inheritance falls
to one's own lot.
Milly was a common-sense young woman, and his explanation, especially as
it was his, pacified her for the time. The clouds had been rolling away
while they talked, the space of deep blue sky overhead growing larger,
the sunshine fuller. There was a busy twittering and shaking of little
wings in the tall pear-tree near the house, where the tomtits in their
varied liveries loved to congregate. July was not far advanced and the
sun had still some hours in which to shine. Ian and Milly went out and
walked in the Parks. The tennis-club lawns were almost deserted, but
they met a few acquaintances taking their constitutional, like
themselves, and an exchange of ordinary remarks with people who took her
normality for granted, helped Milly to believe in it herself. So long as
the blank in her memory continued, she could not be free from care; but
she went to sleep that night in Ian's arms, feeling herself protected by
them not only from bodily harm, but from all those dreadful fears and
evil fantasies that "do assault and hurt the soul."