He had not his key to the new house, but he knew a way of getting into
it through the cellar. No reason in doing so; nevertheless he must get
into it, must localise his dream in it! He crouched down under the
blank east wall, and, feet foremost, disappeared slowly, as though the
house were swallowing him. He stood on the stillage of the cellar, and
struck a match. Immense and weird, the cellar; and the doorless
doorway, leading to the cellar steps, seemed to lead to affrighting
matters. He was in the earth, in it, with the smells of damp mortar and
of bricks and of the earth itself about him, and above him rose the
house, a room over him, and a room over that and another over that, and
then the chimney-cowl up in the sky. He jumped from the stillage, and
went quickly to the doorway and saw the cellar steps. His heart was
beating. He trembled, he was afraid, exquisitely afraid, acutely
conscious of himself amid the fundamental mysteries of the universe. He
reached the top of the steps as the match expired. After a moment he
could distinguish the forms of things in the hall, even the main
features of the pattern of the tiles. The small panes in the glazed
front door, whose varied tints repeated those of the drawing-room window
in daytime, now showed a uniform dull grey, lifeless. The cellar was
formidable below, and the stairs curved upwards into the formidable.
But he climbed them. The house seemed full of inexplicable noises.
When he stopped to listen he could hear scores of different
infinitesimal sounds. His spine thrilled, as if a hand delicate and
terrible had run down it in a caress. All the unknown of the night and
of the universe was pressing upon him, but it was he alone who had
created the night and the universe. He reached his room, the room in
which he meant to inaugurate the new life and the endeavour towards
perfection. Already, after his manner, he had precisely settled where
the bed was to be, and where the table, and all the other objects of his
world. There he would sit and read rare and beautiful books in the
original French! And there he would sit to draw! And to the right of
the hearth over bookshelves would be such and such a picture, and to the
left of the hearth over bookshelves such and such another picture...
Only, now, he could not dream in the room as he had meant to dream;
because beyond the open door was the empty landing and the well of the
stairs and all the terror of the house. The terror came and mingled
with the delicious sensations that had seized him in the solitude of the
garden of the Orgreaves. No! Never had he been so intensely alive as
then!
He went cautiously to the window and looked forth. Instantly the terror
of the house was annihilated. It fell away, was gone. He was not alone
in his fancy-created universe. The reassuring illusion of reality came
back like a clap of thunder. He could see a girl insinuating herself
through the gap in the hedge which he had made ten minutes earlier.
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