"I did not wear any clothes," said Essie, "and I used to lie on the
moss in the sun. It is delicious to lie on moss, warm moss in the sun.
Once when I was a small child I asked my governess when those happy days
would come back when we should wear no clothes, and she told me I was
very naughty. I never spoke to her of the dream forest again. She did
not understand any more than you did the first moment. I think the
natural instinct of the British mind if it does not understand is to
look about for a lurking impropriety. I saw other children sometimes,
but never close at hand. They went to the temple singing, garlanded and
gay, but when I tried to join them I passed through them. They never
took any notice of me."
"Were you a ghost?"
"I think not. I imagine I am an old old soul who has often been in this
world before, and by some strange accident I have torn a corner of the
veil that hides our past lives from us, and in my dreams I became once
more a child as I had really been once, hundreds and hundreds of years
ago, perhaps in Greece or Italy."
"And do you still have that dream every night?"
"Not for many years past. I lost my way to the forest for several years,
until I was again in great trouble. That was when--then one night when I
had cried myself to sleep I saw the same track through the thicket, and
I found the forest again. Oh! how I rejoiced! And in the middle of the
forest was a garden and a wonderful old house, standing on a terrace.
And there was no lake any more. It was a different place altogether, in
England no doubt. And the house door was open. It was a low arched door
with a coat of arms carved in stone over it. And I went in. And as I
entered all care left me, and I was happy again, as I was among the
islands in the lake. I can't tell you why I was so happy. I have
sometimes asked myself, but it is a question I can't answer. It seemed
my real home. I have gone back there every night since I was seventeen,
and I know the house by heart. There is only one room I shrink from,
though it is one of the most beautiful in the house. It is a small
octagonal panelled room leading out of the banqueting hall where the
minstrels gallery is. It looks on to the bowling green, and one large
picture hangs in it, over the carved mantelpiece. A Vandyck I think it
must be. It is a portrait of a cavalier with long curls holding his
plumed hat in his hand."
"Did you meet people in the house?"
"No, not at first, not for several years, but I did not miss them. I did
not want companionship; I felt that I was with friends, and that was
enough. I wanted the repose, and the beauty and the peace which I always
found there. I steeped myself in peace, and brought it back with me to
help me through the day. The night was never long enough for me. And I
always came back, rested, and refreshed, and content, oh! so deeply
content. I am a very lucky person, Beatrice."
"It explains you at last," I said. "You have always been to me an
enigma, during the five years I have known you."
"The explanation was too simple for you."
"Do you call it simple? I don't. I should hardly be able to believe it
if it were not you who had told me. And the house was always empty? You
never saw anyone there?"
"It was never empty, but I could not see the people who lived in it. I
could see nothing clearly, and I had no desire to pry or search. I was
often conscious of someone near me, who loved me and whom I loved. And I
could hear music sometimes, and sweet voices singing, but I could never
find the room where the music was. But then I did not try to find it.
Sometimes when I looked out of the windows I could see a dim figure
walking up and down the terrace, but not often."
"Was it a man or a woman?"
"A man."
"And you never went out to the bowling green and spoke to him?"
"I never thought of such a thing. I never even saw his face till--till
that Christmas I was so ill with pneumonia. Then I fled to the house,
and for the first time I could find no rest in it. And I went into the
octagonal room, and sat down near the window and leaned my forehead
against the glass. My head was burning hot, and the glass was hot too.
Everything was hot. And there was a great dreadful noise of music. And
suddenly it seemed as if I went deeper into the life of the house, where
the light was clearer. It was as if a thin veil were withdrawn from
everything. And the heat and the pain were withdrawn with the veil. And
I was light and cool, and at ease once more. And the music was like a
rippling brook. And _he_ came into the room. I saw him quite clearly at
last. And oh! Beatrice, he was the cavalier of the picture, dressed in
blue satin with a sword. And he stood before me with his plumed hat in
his hand.
"And as I looked at him a gentle current infinitely strong seemed to
take me. I floated like a leaf upon it. I think, Beatrice, it was the
current of death. I felt it was bearing me nearer and nearer to him and
to my real life, and leaving further and further behind my absurd little
huddled life here in Kensington, which always _has_ seemed rather like a
station waitingroom.
"We neither of us spoke, but we understood each other, and we loved each
other. We had long loved each other. I saw that. And presently he knelt
down at my feet and kissed my hands. Doesn't that sound commonplace,
like a cheap novelette? but it wasn't. It wasn't ... and then as we
looked at each other the gentle sustaining current seemed to fail
beneath me. I struggled, but it was no use. It ebbed slowly away from
me, leaving me stranded on an aching shore alone, in the dark, where I
could not breathe or move. And I heard our doctor say, "she is going."
But I wasn't going. I had nearly, nearly gone, and I was coming back.
And then there was a great turmoil round me, and I came back in agony
into my own room and my own bed, and found the doctor and nurse beside
me giving me oxygen, and poor Ted as white as a sheet standing at the
foot of the bed.... They forced me to--to stay. I had to take up life
again."
And for the first time in all the years I had known her Essie was shaken
with sudden weeping.
"That was three years ago," she said brokenly.
For a time we sat in silence hand in hand.
"And do you still go back there?"
"Every night."
"And you meet him?"
"Yes and no. I am sometimes aware of his presence, but I never see him
clearly as I did that once. I think at that moment I was able to see him
because I was so near death that I was very close to those on the other
side of death. My spirit had almost freed itself from the body, so I
became visible to him and he to me. I have studied the pictures of
Charles the First's time, and his dress was exactly of that date, almost
the same as that well-known picture--I think it is Charles the First--of
a man with his hand on his hip, standing beside a white horse. Do you
think it is wrong of me to have a ghostly lover, who must have lived
nearly three hundred years ago?"
"Not wrong, but strange. It is a little like "The Brushwood Boy," and
"Peter Ibbetson," and Stella Benson's "This is the end." I suppose we
have all been on this earth before, but the cup of Lethe is well mixed
for most of us, and we have no memory of previous lives. But you have
not drunk the cup to the dregs, and somehow you have made a hole in the
curtain of oblivion in two places. Through one of those holes you saw
one of your many childhoods, probably in Greece, a couple of thousand
years ago. Through the other hole you saw, in comparatively modern times
your early womanhood. Perhaps you married your beautiful cavalier with
the curls."
"No," said Essie with decision, "I have never been married to him, or
lived in his house. It is my home, but I have never lived there. I know
nothing about him except that we love each other, and that some day we
shall really meet, not in a dream."
"In the Elysian fields?"
"Yes, in the Elysian fields."
At this moment the front door slammed, and Ted banged up the stairs, and
rushed in. If I had not known him I should have said he was drunk.
He was wildly excited, he was crimson. He careered round the room
waving his arms, and then plumped on to the sofa, and stretched out his
short legs in front of him.
"I've bought it. I've got it," he shouted. "Do you hear? I've bought it
dirt cheap. The young ass is in such a hurry, and he's apparently so
wealthy he doesn't care. And two hundred acres of timber with it. Such
timber. Such walnut, and chestnut and oak. The timber alone is worth the
money, I've got it. It's mine."
"The house in Essex?"
"Kenstone Manor, in Essex. It's a nailer. It's a--a--an old world
residence. It has no central heating, no bathrooms, no electric light,
obsolete drainage and the floors are giving way. I shall have to put in
everything, but I shall do it without spending a penny. I shall do it by
the timber, and it's nine miles from a station, that's partly why no one
wanted it. But the railroad is coming. No one knows that yet except a
few of us, but it will be there in five years, with a station on the
property. Then I shall sell all the land within easy reach of the
station in small building lots for villas. I shall make a pile."
Ted's round eyes became solemn. He was gazing into the future, leaning
forward, a stout hand on each stout knee.
"Teddy shall go to Eton," he said, "and I shall put him in the Guards."
A week later Ted took us down by motor to see Kenstone. It was too far
for us to return the same day, so he engaged rooms for us in the village
inn. His "buyer" was to meet him, and advise him as to what part of the
contents of the house he should offer to take over by private treaty
before the sale.
On a gleaming day in late September we sped along the lovely Essex
lanes, between the pale harvested fields.
"There's the forest," shouted Ted, leaning back from his seat in front,
and pointing to a long ridge of trees which seemed to stretch to the low
horizon beyond the open fields.
"When we're over the bridge we're on the--the property," yelled Ted.
We lurched over the bridge, and presently the forest came along the
water's edge to meet us, and we turned sharply through an open gateway
into a private road.
Such trees I had never seen. They stood in stately groups of birch and
oak and pine with broad glades of grass and yellowing bracken between
them.
"Ancient deer park once," shouted Ted. "Shall be again."
Essie paid little attention to him. We had made a very early start, and
she was tired. She leaned back in the car with half closed eyes.
The trees retreated on each side of the road, and the wonderful old
house came suddenly into sight, standing above its long terrace with its
stone balustrade.
Ted gave a sort of yelp.
"Oh Essie!" I cried. "Look--look! It's perfect."
She gazed languidly for a moment, and then she sat up suddenly, and her
face changed. She stared wildly at the house, and put out her hands as
if to ward it off.
The car sped up to the arched doorway, with its coat of arms cut in grey
stone, and Ted leaped out and rushed up the low steps to the bell.
"Not here! Not here!" gasped Essie, clinging to the car. "I can't live
here." She was trembling violently.
"Dear Essie," I said amazed, "we can't remain in the car. Pull yourself
together, and even if you don't like the place don't hurt Ted's feelings
by showing it."
She looked at me like one dazed, and inured to obedience got out, and we
followed Ted into the house. We found ourselves in a large square hall.
She groaned and leaned against the wall.
"I can't bear it," she whispered to me. "It's no use, I can't bear it."
"A glass of water, quick," I said to Ted, who turned beaming to us
expecting a chorus of admiration. "Essie is overtired."
"What is the matter?" I said to her as he hurried away. "What's wrong
with this exquisite place?"
"It's the house I come to at night," she said brokenly. "The dream
house. I knew it directly I saw it. Look! There's the minstrels'
gallery."