"Yes, Ted is all right," I said, "but how about you? I used to think you were absolutely characterless, and humdrum, but I know better now. Don't you--miss anything?"

"No," said Essie, "nothing. You see," she added tranquilly with the faintest spice of malice, "I lead a double life."

I gasped, staring at her open-mouthed, horror-stricken. She ignored my cra.s.s imbecility, and went on quietly:

"I don't know when it began, but I suppose when I was about five years old. I found my way to the enchanted forest, and I went there in my dreams every night."

"In your dreams!" I stuttered, enormously rea.s.sured, and idiotically hoping that she had not noticed my hideous lapse.

"In my dreams. I had an unhappy childhood, but I never was unhappy any more after I learned the way through the forest. Directly I fell asleep I saw the track among the tree trunks, and then after a few minutes I reached the wonderful glade and the lake, and the little islands. One of the islands had a temple on it. I fed the swans upon the lake. I twined garlands of flowers. I climbed the trees, and looked into the nests. I swung from tree to tree, and I swam from island to island. I made a little pipe out of a reed from the lake, and blew music out of it. And the rabbits peeped out of their holes to listen, and the squirrels came hand by hand along the boughs, and the great kites with their golden eyes came whirling down. Even the little moles came up out of the ground to listen."

I gazed at her, astonished.

"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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s. My head was burning hot, and the gla.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e 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 a.s.s 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 Ess.e.x?"

"Kenstone Manor, in Ess.e.x. 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 Ess.e.x 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.