EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF HUGH PAULL.
July—, 18—.
Am I awake? Is my visit to the Pinewood a dream? No, no, it has all
happened—one of the strangest experiences that ever befell mortal man.
It has been like a visit to some new world: the impressions have been so
strong. It is the Pinewood which seems the reality, and this, my
hospital life, a dream. To my horror, things are growing shadowy. I
cannot concentrate my thoughts upon my cases; and when the fellows or
the nurses ask me anything, I am not “all there.” At last the climax
came this morning. An epileptic case came in, and Dr. Hildyard asked my
opinion upon his diagnosis. My mind was a blank. Suddenly I could have
sworn I heard a laugh—_her_ laugh.
I will write it all down, that is what I will do; then perhaps I may
forget.
I left London last Saturday week morning, in the full possession of my
senses (of that I feel sure). I can remember everything—all the details
of the journey down to F——, through the heathery moorland, the firwoods,
the cornfields.
No one waiting at F—— station. Taking my bag, I was leaving, intending
to make inquiries as to the whereabouts of the Pinewood and to walk,
when an old coachman, perched up on the driving-seat of a high dogcart,
touched his hat and said:
“The gentleman for the Pinewood?”
“I am going to the Pinewood,” I said.
“The doctor, sir, what attended Sir Roderick in London?”
“Yes.”
I got up, and we drove off. The skittish bay (Reindeer) went like the
wind at first along the smooth highroad, through snug villages, past
outhouses, between hop-gardens, till we came to the hills covered with
pine-forest.
“This is the Pinewood, sir,” said the old man; “as far as you can see a
tree.”
That was much farther than I could see. The slopes were clad with the
straight, tall trees, from slim saplings to lofty giants, until the dark
green outlines of the hills melted into the lilac haze of the horizon.
Driving less quickly uphill, he told me something about his master and
his habits.
“You must excuse my not believin’ in you at first sight, sir,” he said;
“but so few gen’l’men comes here, and they’re not young gen’l’men, but
them as pokes about after beetles or goes butterfly catching. Some goes
out with a hammer, and knocks the stones about. And as for a lady—well,
sir, I suppose you know Sir Roderick can’t abide the sight of a
petticoat?”
I murmured something. I was certainly not going to discuss my host with
one of his servants. Fortunately, we were now in the grounds.
What a dream of beauty!
Velvety, mosslike hillocks, among the stern clumps of pines; whole
glades of bracken in narrow dells, fairy sporting grounds; then, an
occasional oasis of garden, apparently growing spontaneously among the
woodland. Here and there a flight of steps, leading to the shrubbery of
high laurels and conifers, or a small white-stone temple; now and again
a stone bench, flanked by cypresses and urns on pedestals—such a bench
as one sees in the gardens in Italy.
Then, suddenly, a dip in the land to the right, disclosing a tiny park,
with some beeches and elms, and in its centre a circular garden,
surrounding a white-domed building.
“A chapel?” I asked.
“It was wonst,” my conductor told me; “but not in my time. We none of us
knows nothink about wot’s inside. They do talk about that chapel, folks
do. My opinion is, that there’s nothink in it; it just amuses Sir
Roderick to tease their curiosity.”
Then a sharp turn and a short drive between thick firwoods brought us to
a strange place.
A long, high wall—the wall of a solid building; for there was a porch, a
door, and long, narrow windows on either side. If the whole façade had
had windows it would have looked like a museum, for on the top there was
a balustrade crowned at intervals with small, funereal-looking urns.
The place looked mouldy and dismal even on this glorious summer day.
“Well?” I said, for Thomas drew up before the door.
“Well, sir, if you just give that bell hanging to the right of the door
a good pull, they’ll hear you.”
Did Sir Roderick’s eccentricity extend to his living in a semi-tomb? As
I pulled the bell, and heard a distant, feeble clang, I looked somewhat
disconsolately after the comfortable-looking dogcart driving away,
remembering some of the ancient Greek philosophers’ predilections for
doing their work among the tombs.
Out of perversity, I daresay, I felt utterly disinclined for
philosophical disquisitions in this tomb-like place; in fact, I yearned
for a real boyish holiday in those grounds with young, merry companions
(I had better be truthful with myself).
What was my dismay when a solemn-looking old servitor in black (he had
white hair and a “white choker,” and looked like a _major-domo_ of State
funerals) ushered me into a vault-like crypt. There were niches in the
walls and more urns. He offered to take my bag. I clutched it tight,
expecting some grim jest on the part of my host. When he said, “Will you
please walk this way, sir,” and, opening a door, disclosed a long,
vault-like passage, I hesitated; but he slouched off at such a rate, and
the echo of his footsteps clattering on the stone pavement was so loud,
I could not stop him, so I followed in silence—down a flight of stone
steps, round a corner, down another darker and narrower staircase (all
lighted dimly by tiny yellow-glass windows in the wall), until, when I
was emerging into total darkness, I paused.
“I can’t see!” I shouted, really annoyed.
Sir Roderick could not be living underground—that was all nonsense. He
was playing a trick upon me, and would think it fine fun.
“I will strike a match,” I added, crossly; but the old man pulled open a
door.
The landing just below me was suddenly flooded with light. Stepping
down, I turned and followed him into a large conservatory.
What a magical change! The blue clear light from the glass dome showed
up each frond of the great tree-ferns, each grand leaf of the palms,
each yellow orange and white-waxen blossom of the orange-trees. Huge
crimson blooms hung upon the thick festoons of the sub-tropical creeping
plants, and there was my friend the Cape jessamine strengthening the
warm, intoxicating perfume of the gardenias, daphnes, and, above all, of
the orange-blossom.
It was a relief to be out of the scented atmosphere and in an ordinary,
square hall, which had a billiard-table in the centre.
My _cicerone_ asked me to wait; but after opening various doors and
exploring several rooms, he came to me with a rueful expression.
“They _was_ here half-an-hour ago,” he said; “but they must be out now.
Lor! why they’re on the lawn. Come along, sir!”
He must have caught sight of “them” through a window. He opened the
hall-door, and I saw a lawn with spreading trees, under one of which Sir
Roderick was seated in a basket-chair, smoking. At his feet lay a huge
mastiff. By his side sat a lady, bending over a book, her face shaded by
a broad-brimmed hat.
My conductor had shut the door, and left me to my fate. I walked across
the lawn, thinking to myself that under that hat was the face I had seen
in Sir Roderick’s locket.
No—as she suddenly looked up—it was not the same! What! that wild-rose,
tender young face, with large grey eyes, the same as that saucy,
imperious minx of the portrait? No relation, I could swear it.
“Well, Hamlet!” Sir Roderick was quite warm in his welcome.
“I didn’t look myself. No, unmistakably I did not. Overwork, of course;
the foul atmosphere, too. Oh! I might say what I liked. Mine was a good
hospital in its way, doubtless; but all the same, the atmosphere was a
foul one. Else, why the disinfectants?”
“You mentioned some unheard-of sum that you annually spend in
disinfectants, and you can’t deny it,” he said. “Well, here you will
have Nature’s disinfectants—pure air, and the scent of the pines and the
heather and the hay. But I have not introduced you. Lilia, this is Dr.
Paull.”
The lovely girl, who wore white stuff with something red twisted round
her waist, had been looking at me like children taken to the Zoo for the
first time look at the wild beasts.
She did not bow to me. I felt the blood come to my face. What on earth
was she staring at? Then she turned to him, and said slowly:
“_Doctor_ Paull?”
It was not flattering, but I understood.
“You are right—not _Doctor_,” I said. “There is much work before me
before I can claim that title. I am only a medical student—”
“Bosh!” interrupted Sir Roderick. “I know what Lilia means. I never have
any young men here; she expected one of the old fogies. That’s it, isn’t
it, child?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “But—do you care for butterflies or beetles?
No? Dear me! Oh, you are a botanist!”
I hastened to disclaim the soft impeachments.
“Then”—she knit her brow, and looked like a child making up an old
woman’s face—“then you like geology?”
I remembered Thomas’ mention of the visitors who went about with
hammers, and responded gravely to my catechist.
“I prefer to look at Nature and to ask no questions,” I said.
Then there was some talk of the covered way from the road above, which
my host informed me was built by his father.
“He had some peculiar pleasure in startling people,” he said. “He used
to give out that he was a social hermit; and although he lived down here
much like other people live, would go about in town strangely dressed
and behave oddly. My poor father was very eccentric.”
He made the remark so innocently that I involuntarily glanced at his
companion. She seemed unaware that there was anything _naïf_ in those
words, and met my eyes with a deep, enquiring look. I have never seen
such child eyes in a woman’s face.
Then the luncheon bell rang, and I was conducted to my room by a
blushing youth in livery. I was burning to know who “Lilia” was—for that
brief introduction was all that I had had—but I could not ask the
_gauche_ young footman (evidently a “new hand”). So I washed my hands
and wondered, as I gazed round the quaint old room. It must be an old
house, although from the lawn it looked modern, and foreign, with its
brilliantly white walls and bright green shutters. The flooring, though
spotless, was old; the ceiling low. There was a fourposter of carved
wood black with age, and the mahogany furniture, which shone like
mirrors, was of an ancient pattern. White dimity hung about, and there
was a fresh scent of lavender.
Going downstairs, I noticed that the shallow stairs were of old oak,
likewise the balustrade; but the dining-room, to which Sir Roderick, who
met me in the hall, escorted me, was of newer fashion—a square room with
massive furniture, and hung with paintings.
“All Pyms,” said my host, following my eyes as, seated at “Lilia’s”
right, I ate my soup. Then ensued some talk about the various dark
visages that frowned down from the black canvases. To all appearance,
misanthropy ran in the family. Most of these bilious-looking ancestors
seemed to have done something strange; and the nearer they had drifted
to contempt of social law, the more unctuously Sir Roderick related
their exploits. Meanwhile the gentle Lilia listened with wide-open eyes
and evident interest.
“But that? Surely that one is not a Pym!” I said, indicating a portrait
in an oval Florentine frame that hung conspicuously over the
mantelpiece—in fact, in solitary glory, while the other portraits were
somewhat huddled together.
“And pray, why not?” asked my host dryly, after a moment’s pause.
I looked again. A sunbeam lighted up the laughing face of a fair young
man, with large blue eyes and the very much-curved lips which always
produce the effect of a sneer. To me they are painful, recalling the
cruel _risus sardonicus_ which I have never seen without distress.
“Why not?” I repeated, stupidly. “Oh! because he is so unlike all the
others, I suppose.”
“Do you not see any likeness?” he quietly asked presently, after he had
carved a fowl and insisted on giving me the breast.
I looked around.
“Oh, not to the pictures—to Lilia!” he cried, impatiently.
“No, I cannot say I do,” I said, glancing at my hostess.
I smiled; but I did not feel at all like smiling. My—was it dread?—to
find so young a girl the wife of so old a man made me flinch at any
suggestion which strengthened such a possibility.
“They are both Pyms!” he said, quite irritably. “You have evidently no
eye for likenesses. Of course, there are dark Pyms and fair Pyms. The
fair Pyms are upstairs in a corridor.”
“Women,” said the fair Lilia explanatorily to me. “Papa dislikes women
so much, he won’t have their portraits about him.”
I had been on the point of calling the child Lady Pym, and she was his
daughter! Fool that I had been!
“Because they simper and attitudinise,” said Sir Roderick. “If they
behaved as sensibly as men I should like them as well.”
“That’s not saying very much,” said Lilia, with an amused look at me.
“Papa is not enamoured of his fellow-men.”
“Do you want me to be hail-fellow well-met with Tom, Dick, and Harry?”
he said, frowning at the daughter who was so unlike him that I began to
think more charitably of my mistake.
“You know I don’t. I like you just as you are!” said his daughter,
looking adorable with an infantine smile of love and trust brightening
her sweet face.
It was like a personal sunshine. I felt it so, later, when she deigned
to shine upon me; and every time it humbled me, and made me feel coarse,
clumsy, unworthy, a very clod; and now it, or the memory of it, comes
back here—it shines suddenly upon a poor sufferer’s face upon the
pillow, and the patient vanishes and I see Lilia.
This won’t do. I must return to my statement.
After luncheon, Sir Roderick sent me out into the grounds with his
daughter. From first to last he purposely threw us together. What his
motive was I cannot imagine. Motive he has: I have seen enough to know
that he never acts without one.
Lilia told me so much as we wandered, first about the Italian garden
just outside the dining-room windows, then across the lawns into the
pinewoods. It was so difficult to check her childish confidences, which
she poured out as a little creature just finding the use of its tongue
will babble as it trots along holding one’s hand. They treated me, all
of them, at the Pinewood, except one, of whom more presently, with
simple trust; even Nero, the old mastiff, slouched along at our heels
with his big tongue out, panting, as if I were an old friend. I must
never, even in thought, betray that trust. I must never forget that to
aspire would be a breach of that sacred confidence—never, never! On this
subject I pray, as the octogenarian said in Dickens’ _Haunted Man_,
“Lord, keep my memory green!”
She talked of her father—well and good.
“Papa has no patience with frivolity,” she said. “He only has sympathy
with people who do their duty. That is what every one ought to feel, is
it not? Ah! I thought you would say ‘Yes.’ Of course, it is much nicer
when you like doing your duty, isn’t it? Those old men who come here and
beetle-hunt and botanise, or go poring over the books in the library,
not only like what they have to do in life, they love it. I do envy
them.”
“But you—you like your life, do you not?” I asked.
Just then we came to a clearing in the wood. A giant pine, lately
felled, lay prone among the ferns and mosses. She stopped.
“Let us sit down a moment,” she said; “you take my breath away.”
She seated herself on the trunk, looking like the embodied spirit of the
pinewood in her white gown. Nero stood for a few minutes watching me as
I sat down beside her, then slouched up and lay down at his mistress’
feet, one eye fixed on me. Evidently this proceeding was new to him. The
botanists and gentlemen of the hammer did _not_ care to sit on felled
trunks and talk with the daughter of the house.
“I said that,” she went on, “because it was just as if you knew how
treasonable my thoughts have been lately. I have actually been wishing
to travel, and see the world!”
I asked her what treason there was in that.
“Such an idea, in me, is treason itself!” she said, almost
indignantly—“when my father despises the world, and would rather
anything should happen than that I should go beyond the Pinewood.”
Then I was amazed by the disclosure that this sweet young creature had
lived all her life shut up in the Pinewood, almost as much a prisoner as
a princess in a fairy-tale immured in a high tower. Her only companions
and friends had been her nurses, the clergyman and his wife, and her
cousin Roderick, the fair young man with a sneer whose portrait I had
said to be unlike the Pyms.
Without governesses or tutors, Lilia has managed to learn a great deal.
Latin and Greek are not dead languages to her, and she and her father
chatter away in Italian like natives. But in the ordinary affairs of
life, poor dear child, how ignorant she is!
Sitting there with myself, still almost an absolute stranger, she spoke
out her heart as if I were a dear old friend returned after a long
separation, and actually asked my advice. Mine!
It seemed that she had mentioned this desire to see other places to her
cousin Roderick, who was a favourite nephew of her father’s, although he
would not have anything to do with his family. She and this Roderick had
been brought up together like brother and sister playing and
sympathising and bickering in the usual fashion. Only when she had
confided her treasonable ideas to him had he shocked her by a
supplementary suggestion, which seemed to have made a terrible
impression upon her.
“We have quarrelled, and never, never can be the same again,” she told
me in much agitation. “My father does not know it, and has asked
Roderick to dinner to meet you. What _shall_ I do?”
She was quite tragic. I could hardly help smiling. But seeing how
sensitive she was—a natural sensibility greatly increased by a life of
unnatural seclusion—I repressed a smile, and said:
“See your cousin before dinner, and ‘make it up,’ as the children say.”
“Oh, I _couldn’t!_” she said, in distress. “He won’t make it up.”
“Then you have tried him?”
She nodded.
“It has been a dreadful shock to me,” she said. “If you knew, you would
understand.”
After a little coaxing, she spoke, or rather blurted out:
“If you _must_ know—he actually—asked me—to marry him!”
Nothing so very dreadful, I suppose; but, under the circumstances, rash,
to say the least—for Lilia admitted that her father was in total
ignorance.
“He would never look at Roderick again,” she assured me. “Don’t say
‘nonsense.’ I tell you he would not. I am never to marry!”
“Why not?” I asked, perversely.
She looked at me almost with indignation.
“Marriage means misery,” she said, oracularly.
“You mean, that Sir Roderick thinks it does,” I suggested.
“He knows it,” she said, with emphasis, below her breath.
I was silent with confusion. The next word, and Lilia might unbosom
herself of secrets not her own—sacred to her father—not from any malice
aforethought, but through the spontaneity to which she was bred by that
very father. It behoved me to be cautious.
“I really should tell Sir Roderick if I were you,” I hazarded. “It is
only what he would reasonably expect. Cousins often marry. The
contingency must have occurred to him.”
At that moment I was inclined to think that such an issue might even
have been planned by my self-sufficient host.
“I thought you knew him!” she cried, recoiling from me a little.
Nero got up and stood between us, looking suspiciously at me.
I explained, apologetically, that although Sir Roderick and I had talked
over the questions of humanity in the abstract, we had not arrived at
the domestic problems.
“The most important of all,” she said, somewhat pompously.
“Granted,” I said. “And problems that can, unfortunately, only be solved
by individual experience.”
“Ah! you acknowledge that,” she said, with a sort of exultation. “You
really uphold my father’s theory—that the risk is too great. He loves
both Roderick and myself so well that he has preached the delights of
celibacy to us ever since I can recollect.”
“His preaching has had more effect upon you than upon your cousin,
evidently,” I suggested.
“I fear so,” she said, in a sorrowful tone which reproached me for my
feeling this talk, so seriously in her estimation, almost absurd. “Poor,
dear Roderick! I would rather do anything than ‘sneak,’ as he used to
call it. But papa will be sure to notice something.”
“Cannot you act—pretend?” I hazarded.
She shook her head.
“I never tried,” she said; “it has never been necessary.”
“I daresay he will be equal to the occasion,” I said. “Your cousin is in
the army, is he not? Oh! he is captain already? He has told you a good
deal about life in camp, in barracks?”
“Lots,” she said.
(Doubtless lots, Captain Pym!)
“Well, you know, officers can be silent when necessary, and know how to
veil their opinions and feelings.” (I yearned to say, “know how to tell
lies,” but checked myself.) “If I were you, I should be just the same to
him to-night: I should ignore his unlucky suggestion, and behave exactly
as if he had never made it.”
Lilia resolved to take my advice, and we strolled in the gardens and
into the enclosed park. I tried to find out something about the chapel
in the circular garden, but she was evidently on guard.
I thought of her, dear child, while I was dressing. How few real friends
she could have had! These Mervyns, the rector and his wife, seemed the
only ones. I was anxious to see them. They had been invited for the
evening. Lilia told me “they never would come to dinner; it was no use
asking them.”
I went downstairs very soon after the second dressing bell rang. The
drawing-room, which is all chocolate-colour, white, and gilding, struck
me as like a picture I had recently seen. The room was lighted by short,
thick wax-candles in wall candelabra. In the middle of the room an
enormous china bowl of white roses on a round black table perfumed the
air. The other object which attracted my attention was a huge grand
piano in ebony.
I was just going round to ascertain the maker’s name, when someone
jumped up from an easy-chair—Captain Roderick.
“Hulloa!” he said (he had a newspaper in his hand), “it’s Mr. Paull,
isn’t it?”
I shook hands with him. A prodigiously good-looking fellow, this cousin,
and good company. It was a lively dinner-table. Lilia, child as she is,
soon cast aside the stately manner she had put on outside the
drawing-room door when she came sailing in to interrupt our
_tête-à-tête_; and she laughed and talked with us all till over dessert
we none of us noticed how time fled, until the footman announced that
“Mr. and Mrs. Mervyn were in the drawing-room, and coffee was served.”
Mr. Mervyn, the clergyman of the parish, is a tall, dark man with white
hair and keen black eyes. His wife is one of those large, soft, fair
women with gentle faces and sweet manners, who can nevertheless be stern
and unflinching when there is a question of right and wrong—the very
woman for a sick nurse.
While we men talked over our coffee, Roderick sat down to the piano and
sang: little Italian folk-songs and German _lieder_. When he was
singing, there was a simplicity about him that gave him a likeness to
_her_. She hung over the piano, and seemed almost to forget where she
was. When I remembered her confidences a few hours ago, I was puzzled.
Did she love him—or his music?
Presently, my question was answered. When he had sung half-a-dozen
_chansonnettes_, he rose and came across to us.
“You like music, doctor?” he asked.
“I like yours,” I said emphatically.
“Has Lilia sung to you yet?” he asked.
“No, and I do not intend to,” said the young lady, jumping up from the
sofa where she was sitting by Mrs. Mervyn, and joining us.
“And pray why not?” asked Sir Roderick.
She shook her head and turned aside. For a minute or two I naturally
felt embarrassed. But I saw that Mrs. Mervyn was expostulating with her,
and presently, after I had taken part in a conversation suddenly started
by Mr. Mervyn on the strange vagaries of nervous diseases, _apropos_ of
an afflicted poor person he wished me to see, Lilia rose and came back,
looking penitent.
“Can I speak?” she began, humbly, when a pause came. “Thanks! I will
sing for you with pleasure, Mr. Paull.”
“Not unless you tell us the reason of your extraordinary caprice,” said
Sir Roderick, half-bantering, half annoyed. “Come, out with it!”
“You insist, papa?” She spoke pleadingly.
“I do.”
“Mr. Paull reminds me of that dreadful time you were ill—away. I could
not sing anything lively; I should choke.”
It was good to see the expression on that old man’s face. There was such
a royal content on his fine old features as he looked up at his child.
“Sing one of your morbidities, then,” he said. “Ha! I know! Sing Hamlet
that little Danish song. He ought to like that, naturally.” He was
suddenly in high good humor.
She went obediently to the piano, took off her long mittens and
bracelets (which she handed to Roderick as a matter of course), and sang
a sweet, weird melody to Ophelia’s pitiful verses; sang it simply, with
a clear, noble voice, the voice of a human being with a great soul.
It affected me, and I think that my emotion was the cause of my curious
nervous condition that night.
We retired to our rooms pretty early. My old-looking chamber, with the
blackened mahogany furniture, was flooded with moonlight. I had no
intention of dreaming thoughts of the day over again all night long, as
I have done when sleep has followed some hours’ concentration of thought
on one subject; so I had borrowed a book from Sir Roderick—a treatise on
“Somnambulism and other irregular manifestations of the Nervous Force,”
translated from a work by some Dutch writer, name unknown, which he had
spoken of.
Armed with this, I subsided into my feather-bed. (That feather-bed had
something to do with what followed, I believe. I here vow myself to
further the abolition of feather-beds; they should be taxed, and
heavily.) I placed two candles on the little table by my bed, propped
myself up against my pillows, and began to read.
The first chapters of the ponderous tome were soon dismissed. Exploded
pathology and ancient fallacies filled Part I. of the Dutchman’s
treatise. Had I felt at all sleepy, I should have laid down the book
there and then, and have chaffed Sir Roderick next day for recommending
me such old-fashioned stuff. But I felt absurdly wideawake. So I went
on.
The introductory page to Part II. of the volume startled me somewhat. At
first I doubted my eyesight. But there, sure enough, were the words—
“ON THE AGE OF SOULS.”
“What does he mean, the fool?” I thought, turning over. I soon knew.
The man, whoever he may have been, believed in that doctrine of
transmigration, attributed in its raw state to Pythagoras, who is by
some thought to have learnt it from the Egyptians; a fantastic notion
which is still believed in by many Easterns, notably by the Buddhists.
This Dutchman spoke of the soul (the “breath of God”) as being born
again and again, according to its moral progress; incarnations being its
rule, until it should become sufficiently purified to be reabsorbed into
the atmosphere of Divinity (something very like the Nirvana of
Buddhism). I smiled, and thought that, judging by the people I had met,
the world (according to the Dutchman) is likely to be well populated for
a good many years to come.
“By their fruits shall ye know them,” wrote the Hollander, who was
addicted to quotations, especially from Holy Writ. The good man, in
enumerating the fatal signs of future reincarnation in individuals (whom
he spoke of compassionately, for he evidently regarded human life as the
greatest of ills), mentioned two particular signs, frivolity and
self-absorption. Frivolity he seemed to hold in special abhorrence, as
being so very far away from any attribute that might be termed eternal
or divine.
This chapter “On the Age of Souls” was such diverting reading, that I
grew wider and wider awake. At last, when two o’clock struck, I got up
and dressed.
Looking out of window, the garden, bathed in moonlight, was such a
ravishing sight that I thought—Why not go out for a stroll?
I would. I blew out my candles (I am certain I did), and opening my
bedroom door as quietly as possible, crept downstairs, shoes in hand.
Did ever stairs creak like those? Certainly not in my experience.
Wondering where the dog Nero was, and whether he would be as amiably
disposed towards a midnight marauder as he was towards his master’s
guest in broad daylight, I gained the hall.
Then I remembered the bolts and bars. Should they be in as noisy a
humour as the stairs, I should have to give up and go back—not to that
hot feather-bed, but to my room.
Without in the least thinking it possible that the door to the garden
would be unlocked, I tried the handle.
To my surprise, the door was unlocked. I was so astonished, that I stood
there for a whole minute thinking how foolhardy was Sir Roderick, or how
culpably careless were his servants. Open gates to the grounds, open
doors to the house! It was positively inviting burglars to do their
worst!
I thought of this as I walked along the white path, which crackled under
my feet. I wanted to get out of sight and out of the hearing of any
wakeful member of the household, so I went on and on, disregarding the
tempting odour of the orange-blossoms in the Italian garden, the
tempting sight of the terrace, with its white marble urns, benches,
straight cypresses, and picturesque aloes, and was soon in the pinewood,
among the gloomy trees.
It was gloomy. Standing still to listen, the silence was oppressive.
Then, all of a sudden, there was a shrill skreel that made me start; and
some bird, I suppose, came flapping out of the darkness and went
fluttering away into the shadow. It must have been a bird, although it
looked too big even to be a giant owl or a raven.
I laughed at my scared sensation, and walked briskly onward. Presently I
came to a clearing where the grass was mown, and there was a bench
against a clump of tall laurels.
I was going towards this with the intention of resting awhile, when I
stopped short. A lady was seated in the corner, in the shadow.
Good heavens! It might be Lilia! She was just the girl to wander about
out of doors on a hot night. I did not know whether I was glad or sorry
when the being rose and came towards me. To my amazement, I saw a very
graceful woman, in a white gown of some stuff which shimmered in the
moonlight. A veil of black gauze or lace was about her head and neck.
“You are not—angry?” she said in a slow way; she had a foreign accent.
“Come, I must speak.”
As she said the word “must,” she actually placed her hand on my arm in
the most familiar way, and half led me across the grass plat.
“We will go to the terrace and talk,” she said presently, in quite an
imperious manner.
I was so numbed by surprise, that I had gone passively with her some
distance along the path that led away from the house or grounds before I
had made up my mind what to do. She was no ghost. As she pressed close
against my arm, I felt solidity and warmth. Then it flashed across me.
She was dressed in quite queenly fashion. Of course! An escaped lunatic
from a well-known private asylum in the neighbourhood. I stopped,
withdrew her hand gently and respectfully, and suggested that she must
be very tired.
“Allow me to take you home, princess,” I said, haphazard.
I had seemingly struck the right chord.
“Do not call me that any more!” she said, passionately. “I am less than
you! Far less!”
Once more she took my arm, and hurried me along an uphill path I had not
seen. To our left, below us, was the park, with the round chapel in the
garden; to our right was a plateau, a long, wide, grassy avenue, with
fine trees on either side.
My strange companion turned abruptly to the right, and almost dragged me
along a grassy path that went straight to the end of the avenue, between
beds of overgrown shrubs and tangled weeds. My wits were returning. I
felt inclined to go through with the adventure. She was evidently a
lady. There was no hidden danger, I felt that.
Half-way up this avenue there was a broken-down fountain. Around was a
circular grass plat. As we reached this the lady relinquished my arm,
stepped back, and began speaking rapidly in a language I have not yet
heard. At the end, she seized my hand, and before I could snatch it
away, kissed it.
I felt horribly unnerved. I begged her to let me take her home.
“It is by far too late for you to be here—alone,” I said.
“Late?” she cried, in English. “It is not late!”
“It must be three o’clock,” I said.
Then I took out my watch and tried to see it in the moonlight. Just as I
did so, a clock struck three.
“You hear?” I said, turning round.
_She was not there!_
It gave me a shock. Then I remembered how swift and noiseless lunatics
can be. There had been time enough for her to slip away under the trees.
First, I listened. Not a sound; not the rustle of a falling leaf, not
the crackle of a twig. Then I searched, and called; until a sudden
uncanny sensation that I was the subject of some temporary delirium sent
me, flying almost, towards the house.
I was thankful to see its white walls, to find the door open, and to
gain my room.
As soon as I had done so, I felt such sudden fatigue that I got back
into bed again as quickly as I could, and fell asleep directly.
I have set this down just as it seemed to me to be happening, neither
more nor less.
Now comes the, to me, most curious part.
I was awakened by the footman bringing me the hot water. After he had
gone out of the room, I turned to get up, when my attention was arrested
by the china candlesticks on the table by the bed. The candles were
burnt out, and the china rims were blackened.
“I put those out; I could have sworn it,” I said to myself. I remembered
noticing the peculiar shape of one of the gutterings. It was like a
monkey crawling up a stick. Could I have lit them on my return? I
thought. No! I remembered throwing off my clothes in the moonlight, my
eyelids weighed down by sudden drowsiness.
While I had my bath and dressed I pondered. No result came from my
ponderings.
Then I heard fresh young voices, and hurried my dressing. Some feeling
urged me to interrupt a bantering _tête-à-tête_ between Roderick and
Lilia. Going down, I found them in the hall: Lilia was standing against
the billiard-table, frowning; Roderick was talking earnestly to her. He
stopped speaking when I came in. She blushed.
Why blush? It was no business of mine, of course; but I did not wish to
find that charming young creature utterly inconsistent. And any
parleying from a lover point of view, with her cousin, after yesterday’s
confidences, would prove her undeniably inconsistent.
But the blush faded, and she looked grave when she saw me.
“I am afraid you have had a bad night, Dr. Paull,” she said, kindly.
“Why?” I asked, nodding back good-morning to Captain Pym.
“You look so tired.”
I vouchsafed that I had an early morning stroll, and spoke of the
unfastened door.
“The door into the garden?”
She looked amazed; and then walked to that door and tried it.
“It is locked and bolted now, whatever it was then,” she said.
I joined her, and sure enough it was.
“The omission must have been found out and rectified,” I said.
Indeed, I was absolutely certain on that point. That door was unchained
and unbolted at two o’clock that morning.
She was concerned, and begged me as a favour not to mention the fact to
her father. I did not. He just came into the hall then, and we went in
to breakfast.
After breakfast, Captain Pym took leave, and started for the camp. Sir
Roderick settled, in his dogmatic way, that after church (this was
Sunday) Lilia should take me round the grounds. He seemed astonished
that I should wish to accompany her to morning service.
“I thought you and I agreed on those subjects,” he said. “I had been
looking forward to a pipe and a chat while Lilia was on her knees trying
to propitiate her Fetishes.”
“Just as you please,” I said.
Glancing at Lilia, I fancied she looked disappointed. But Fancy seemed
to have got me in a vice and to shake me like a dog shakes a rat, all
the time I was at the Pinewood.
It was settled I should accompany her. Meanwhile I went into the study
with Sir Roderick, and presently we got upon the subject of the
Dutchman’s treatise.
“How did you like it?” he asked.
“It is hardly a question of liking,” I said. “The man is as illogical as
Swedenborg, without the originality or the power.”
He looked surprised.
“How?” he said.
“That chapter ‘On the Age of Souls’ seems to me almost an absurdity,” I
could not help saying.
“On _what_?” he said, taking his long pipe from his mouth, and staring
curiously at me.
I repeated what I had said, adding comments on the extravagance of that
part of the treatise.
He shook his head, puzzled.
“You must be dreaming,” he said. “I have no book in my library
containing stuff of that sort. Where is it?”
I offered to fetch it, but he had already sounded his hand-gong, and
James was sent for the volume.
He was absent but a minute, but the time seemed long to me. Sir Roderick
puffed away at his pipe, with an amused smile which was peculiarly
exasperating.
His hand went out for the volume as soon as James appeared, and of
course the young man gave it to his master, who carefully looked it
through, then handed it to me.
“I cannot find this redoubtable chapter,” he said; “perhaps you can. But
I flattered myself I knew the book well.”
I began at the beginning, turning over the pages carefully one by one,
and recognising what I had read overnight. By the time I had come to the
end of the first chapter I felt more assured. But when I turned over to
the second, it was totally unfamiliar. I had certainly never read a word
of it before; and its heading was “On Ordinary Somnambulism.”
I went on turning the pages, feeling as if I was bewitched, until I came
to the end; but there was no chapter that even alluded to any doctrine
of transmigration, and certainly no heading bearing the faintest
resemblance to that curious title, “On the Age of Souls.”
“It is most extraordinary!” I cried. “I could swear to having read what
I told you about. I remember the very words and the quaint turning of
the phrases.”
He asked me how I had read it; then laughed at me.
“I hit the mark when I said you were dreaming, Hamlet,” he said. “It has
often happened to me to continue thinking after dropping asleep, and
nice bathos the thoughts are!”
He dismissed the matter as a joke; but it was no joke to me. I was
bewildered. When I think of it now the bewilderment is greater, the
sense of confused perceptions more alarming.
During the talk which followed, I tried to gain a clue to the strange
lady I met in the grounds. I casually alluded to the asylum in the
neighbourhood, and asked if the authorities there were not almost lax in
their vigilance.
“I cannot help thinking that I met an escaped madwoman, when I was
taking a walk early this morning,” I said. “She looked, and I think must
be, insane.”
“You could not have met a lady patient of Dr. Walters’, my dear Hamlet,”
said Sir Roderick.
I asked, “Why not?”
“For a very good reason, the best of reasons,” he replied: “he hasn’t
any. He only takes men. In which, I may add, he shows his wisdom, for
female lunatics are the most disgusting creatures on earth. Pah! let us
change the subject.”
I was only too glad. But I was not in the least fit for a scientific
discussion with my host. I felt a dread gradually investing me—a dread
lest I should find that the deserted spot the strange lady dragged me to
last night actually existed in the grounds.
If I should come upon it just as it was, I should believe in my
adventure as a fact. In that case, how about the missing chapter “On the
Age of Souls”? For if my adventure actually happened, I was not asleep
and dreaming immediately beforehand; at all events, it was extremely
improbable that I was.
I was getting considerably strung up, when a tap came at the door, and
Lilia came in, fresh, sweet in her muslin summer dress, like Dawn
dispelling the dismal darkness of my thoughts.
“A quarter-past ten, and service begins at eleven,” she said.
“And it is about seven minutes’ walk to the church. Sit down, we are
talking,” said Sir Roderick, dictatorially.
She looked wistfully at me.
“I thought you wanted to see the grounds,” she said.
“So I do, very much indeed,” I said.
My host did not look best pleased. He little knew what was in my mind.
Nor did she, sweet girl, as we started; and she would stop here and
there to show me some choice foreign shrub or some new plant, or the
view from this or that particular spot. All the time I was wondering how
I should introduce the subject of the neglected plateau with the
broken-down fountain.
The opportunity came.
“Your father does not allow any part of his shrubberies to run wild,” I
said; “but I fancied I saw a wild-looking spot among the pines, where
there were neglected flower-beds and the grass was unmown.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know of any place about like that,” she said, reflectively.
“No! I am sure that none of the flower-beds have weeds. Papa hates
weeds: and weeding gives employment to people who cannot do much else.”
I had hardly time to be reassured by this support of the theory that the
events of last night meant nightmare and nothing else, when we suddenly
came upon that clearing with the grass plat. That bench under the
laurels, where the lady had been sitting, was there. It was the same
spot I had seen by moonlight—the very same.
“I come here and read sometimes on summer afternoons,” said Lilia,
looking up at me innocently. “Why, what is the matter, Mr. Paull? You
are frowning.”
“I was thinking that this is rather a damp place,” I said, “and
cheerless looking.”
“Not to me,” she said. “But I only come here on really sultry days. When
it is simply mild, I prefer the terrace. You haven’t seen the terrace.
Do come, it has a history.”
The terrace! The terrace with a history! So it was _not_ a dream; no,
something far more disagreeable. Then and there I began to wonder
whether I had not hit upon a family mystery. As we strolled along the
path I had walked over but a few hours since with an unknown lady
hanging familiarly upon my arm, I was imagining a possible elucidation
of my mystery. Lilia’s mother—of whom I had heard absolutely
nothing—perhaps mentally afflicted, shut up in some cottage or house on
the estate, and wandering by night? Other even more extravagant ideas
occurred to me.
No! that idea was untenable, for my moonlight acquaintance was
indisputably a very young woman, almost a girl.
At that moment we came to the upward path leading to the plateau. I
recognised it at once. Below was the park, with the chapel.
But—yes, it _was_ the plateau, but not as I had seen it. The trees were
pruned, the grass-walks smooth as green velvet, the flower-beds
brilliant with blossom.
“We often have tea here, papa and I,” said Lilia. “The story goes that
this was _the_ flower-garden of the old house two hundred years ago, and
that they used to have afternoon gatherings here, like the
garden-parties people have now.”
She must have thought me abnormally stupid that Sunday morning. When I
saw a marble fountain, with water splashing into a basin where gold-fish
were swimming, instead of the wrecked, broken-down object in my dream, I
took refuge in silence; and as soon as I could, I left the uncanny spot.
Whether I had dreamt of it, or of some place like it, of that I felt
sure—the spot was uncanny.
While we walked through the wood towards the church, Lilia talked, but I
heard little of what she said. She was telling me some story of a duel
between the former proprietor of the Pinewood and a supposed friend,
which had taken place on the terrace, and the chapel below was erected
in memory of the event. If it was not exactly this, it was very much
like it; and really I do not care. All that I want now is to find out
whether my brain played me false that night, and whether I am likely to
be the victim of brain disease if I go on working as hard as I have
worked.
That darling girl! How good she was to me, how patient!
In spite of my inward anxiety, I shall always remember that Sunday with
pleasure. The little whitewashed church, with the honest rustics singing
hearty hymns to the quavering organ, while sunbeams came and went upon
the walls, and the quivering foliage of an elm in the churchyard cast
green lights upon my open prayer-book. The Mervyns are nice people. Mrs.
Mervyn is a trifle too sharp, perhaps; I saw her eyes fixed upon me now
and then with rather too scrutinising an expression. But it is very
pretty, almost touching, to see her ways with that motherless girl. She
loves her really, the good woman! When we were walking in the garden,
Lilia and Mr. Mervyn strolling on in front of us, she was so good as to
tell me she was glad I had come.
“Lilia knows so few young people, and no girls,” she said. “It is a law
of her father’s, and always has been. Poor dear child! she is really not
fit to face the world. She knows absolutely nothing of it.”
“Let us hope she may not be called upon to face the world,” I said.
[Here the written pages in a notebook of Hugh Paull’s abruptly ended.]