Short Stories 1927-1956 (39 page)

‘What Dreams May Come'

‘What Dreams May Come'
*

Emmeline did not know what had happened to her, but at once supposed she had been asleep. Her body gently swaying and rocking in passive obedience to the almost soundless motion of the coach, she gazed out blankly into the window glass, cold and lustrous as a frozen pool in some outlandish and benighted valley. Vaguely reflected there, she scanned her pale and solemn face – ‘a nice tidy face', as a friend had once summarized it – wide brows, high-boned oval cheeks, a firm, quiet mouth, and these now darkly questing, searching, startled eyes. No answer to any question there. She turned towards the hunched-up shape of the driver seated in his glass cab; and continued awhile to survey the great hump of his shoulders and sprawling arms as if through a faint inward mist. He sat crouched
together
, his hands seemingly clasped on the steering wheel, his high-angled coat-collar helmeting a motionless head.

No wonder he was cold! A jagged hole gaped in his glass screen like a huge black star. This was no surprise, yet it filled her with perplexity. What was wrong? Surely the blazing light had dismally dimmed in the bulbs over her head? And how came it that she was
alone
now in the strange vacancy of the coach – a vacancy faint with fumes to which she herself could give no name? Fumes familiar enough, but not of petrol – sweeter, more
nebulous
, dangerous, affrighting. Alone! Why, but an instant before, that faint image of herself had been smiling at another reflection beside it in this very glass! Her glance came to rest at last on the angle of the seat on which she was sitting, and there it stayed. What inconceivable, sudden and violent wrench could have twisted sidelong like that its heavy metal framework?

It must have been raining, too, while she slept – and slept through this! Raining heavily, if so; the dark stain on the thick grey fabric of the seat had soaked it through. She put out a tentative finger but refrained from
touching
it; then craned round her head in search of the conductor. The
wreathing
mist which dimmed her eyes obscured him too a little; but there he was, huddled and stooping forward on the backmost seat of all, elbows on knees,
his face cupped in his hands, his eyes, it appeared, fixed on the floor. He might so have sat for ages, like a wax image immured in a museum, like Rodin's
Le
P
enseur.
Nevertheless of the immediate past the sight of him had recalled not a vestige.

Where had she come from? Where was she going to? Her mind was in a terrifying confusion. Apart from this deadly lethargy as of a profound and leaden slumber, she felt no pain, no discomfort even. The grey suede
handbag
beneath her clasped, gloved hands still lay in her lap. This she had
instantly
recognized. It was brand-new; it had been a gift. But when? From whom? Tears, it seemed, had begun forlornly rolling down her cheeks from out of her eyes. She opened the bag, fumbling hastily through its familiar contents, and found among them a scrap of paper – the remains of a broken envelope, scribbled over with what appeared to be a singularly eccentric handwriting.

This object, surely, she had
never
seen before, and yet in its dinginess, in its extreme familiarity, it seemed now far more actual than the rest. She stooped, gazing at it, then lifting it into the dingy light endeavoured in vain to read what it said. The divisions between the words, the words
themselves
, arranged like those of an address, even the ridiculously prolonged loops of the letters – all this was clear enough, and yet she could decipher not a single syllable. A misery of misgiving swept over her; what dreadful fate had overtaken her? What next?

The cumbrous vehicle swayed stolidly on, its hidden engine throbbing hardly more audibly then if it were within her own breast. It was country here – bare, high tangled trees to the left, skirting the road which glimmered on in front of her into the faint vague starlight; fields fading out obscurely on the right. She was lost – all memory gone. What next? And yet again those dark reflected panic-stricken eyes in the glass encountered her own; vividly, senselessly pleading for an answer.

Clutching in panic at the bar in front of her, she raised herself to her feet, turned, and stumbling unsteadily along from seat to seat, leaned close over the man, the conductor, where he sat by the yawning door. ‘Where am I?' she called at him. ‘Where are we going to? What is wrong?'

He did not stir. Only his eyes cold and blue as turquoises in his face, quietly lifted themselves and confronted her own, as if in some
long-postponed
and secret assignation. She thrust out her scrap of paper. He stared at it, but still said nothing. And she in turn continued to watch him, appalled yet not astonished.

‘I want to stop,' she called at last. ‘I want to get out. There was
someone
…' It was as if the driver had himself been expecting the summons. The pace of the coach had instantly slackened, the wheels drew to a standstill.

‘All I want to know is where we are – what has happened?' she called.
‘But there,' her voice had softened as if she were addressing a child, ‘I am sorry – sorry. I see you are ill. You, too, have suffered!' But
had
she spoken, or merely supposed that she had spoken? As if in unspeakable relief, his
eyelids
gently obscured again the bright blue eyes. He had resumed, it seemed, an inexhaustible reverie.

Her handbag clutched under her elbow, she descended from the coach. But before she could advance even a pace or two towards the driver, she heard the grinding of the gears; and the low, stertorous throbbing of the engine – so near and inward that it seemed a pulsation in her own body rather than a movement from the outer world – had become audible once more. He mustn't let
that
stop for long, she muttered cajolingly to herself; and smiled as if amused at the notion. And already, in utter silence now, the coach had vanished round the turn of the road.

It was odd that she should be less horrified, and even less confused now that she was alone, as completely alone, indeed, as a derelict ship at sea – a ship abandoned by her crew. She hesitated an instant, her eyes fixed on the constellation of the Great Bear. ‘North' – an inward voice reminded her. At which, as if bidden, she at once began to walk in its direction, while she tried her utmost to restrain that voice from making any further comment, from asking any further questions.

Instead, she kept her inward eyes fixed on the reflected image of the face, of her own face, as she had seen it in the coach window glass. After all, she argued, so long as she kept
that
steadily in view she was sure of all that
mattered
most. She couldn't be utterly helpless, utterly astray, with her own
inward
eyes for guidance. You will always have
someone
with you, surely, so long as you have yourself, a self, she meant, still in some degree triumphant however dreadfully cowed at – well, at
this
kind of experience!

The death-still, leafless woods to her left hand had begun to thin a little, and presently high iron gates, shielded, it appeared, with coats of arms,
revealed
themselves, glistening faintly in the gloom. But not with dew. She had realized this instantly. They were coated with the winter night's first faint hoar-frost. She could detect the tiny, delicate crunch of the crystals even
beneath
her gloved fingers as she stood pondering, her hand clasping the iron bar. And at its cold, she had become suddenly as completely detached from her surroundings as a character who has escaped from a story.

A dense avenue of evergreen trees – ilex? holly? yew? – lay beyond the iron bars, a cave of impenetrable darkness. Still, this, too, was quite simple. She would go in. It seemed indeed that her dream in the coach from which she had been so rudely awakened had prepared her for this – and even for what might lie in wait.

The hinges made no sound at all as she pushed the gate open. It was as if they had been carefully oiled for her coming. There must be a well-kept
and an old house beyond this, she thought to herself. Her foot fell silently on the gravel, owing, she supposed, to the moss beneath her shoe; since there were no weeds, and the turf fell gently away to its neatly trimmed edges under the dark prodigious branches. It occurred to her that ages, ages ago, she had once looked down into a place as full as this of stones. She could have counted them, although the place itself was past recollection; and very cold.

She fancied, too, she could discern wheel-marks; and even these dim rounded pebbles glimmered with the stars. So she went on, one urgent
question
on her lips. Apart from the diffused and dusky starshine, there was no light at all under the porch. To take breath she had paused again, her eyes on the iron bell-pull.

‘“Emmeline”,' she whispered to herself. ‘“Emmeline”, I must remember that!'

And then the door had swung gently open, as if into a softly glowing cavern of light, dazzling at first after the dark, like Ali Baba's. At which she secretly smiled to herself, for she had been on the very point of saying to the man who had so immediately answered her summons,
Sesame!
when but an instant before she had been steadily reminding herself to say, Emmeline.

Although not a single feature of it was perceptible, somewhere,
some
where
, she had seen this dark lean meditative face before – these clothes even, the dove-grey waistcoat, the funereal morning coat. And, while she strove in vain to place this memory, she heard herself explaining, while he quietly listened – a face, however vigilant, that one could never suspect of eavesdropping! – that there had been an accident, a dreadful accident, and that the coach had gone on. ‘You see, I'm really not sure, not at all sure, where I am; and – and what I am. Would, do you think,
this
be of any help?'

It was absurdly unconventional, she knew that well enough, talking to this butler-man as though he were her father confessor; but then what does one expect in such crises as these? She might have read of it all in a book.

The man had solemnly nodded over the scrap of paper – much too solemnly to be really convincing. He might have come out of one of the
Alices
!
‘Yes, madam,' he said. And now she had been
definitely
reminded of something real – of an hotel, of a busy entrance hall, and of someone actually with her there whom she knew very well indeed, but who was out of sight, behind her.

‘Yes, madam; this is right. This is the house. Have you any luggage?'

It seemed so preposterously meaningless a question that she had been quite unable to inquire
what
‘house' – how could it possibly be
the
house – before she had found herself following her guide's sinister coat-tails as he moved on swiftly and silently in front of her, as if on wheels, over the paving
stones. Paving stones! Emmeline watched them closely, as she followed him, trying, like a child, with the utmost care to avoid stepping on the cracks
between
them. A strange house indeed, and yet again one not wholly
unfamiliar
. The hall, the succession of rooms, the corridors through which she followed on, were all of stone, nothing but frigid lifeless echoing stone. It was as if a pyramid had engulfed her. Her guide then must be Cheops. She knew
that
name well enough – Cheops. And yet the air, while thin and stifling, was laden with the delicious odour of flowers – of spring flowers, too, beneath which, nonetheless, hung and haunted the nameless fumes of the motor-coach.

‘He seems to know
his
way,' she thought to herself, ‘and soon …' But the man had stopped, had opened a door, allowing her to pass on in front of him. ‘This is the room,' he said. ‘My master will be here directly.'

His ‘master'! ‘But I wanted …' she began; ‘I shouldn't have come if …' Her heart was throbbing now so thickly yet flutteringly – and faster far than any engine – that she could hardly utter the words. And then it was too late. The man had gone, had shut-to the door behind him. ‘My paper! My paper!' she cried after him, in consternation.

But though she listened intently, not an echo of a footfall on the flagstones outside had answered her. She was alone again – abandoned. And this room also was of stone – floors, walls, and ceiling! and lit solely by two candles, flanking a wide chimneypiece – a chimneypiece far more closely resembling an altar stone than any she had ever seen before. And beyond it, that
door-less
vacancy – could that be another way out?

Out, and without an instant's delay, and before that other, the master, came, Emmeline
knew
she must get. But when, after listening again, she attempted to move, it was as if she were pushing her way through a
deepening
sea of heavy water, which threatened every instant to rise and engulf her. The faint light of the two candles scarcely blurred the gloom of the room beyond. But she could see there what appeared to be a bed, a bed which had no footboard and was draped with the dimly luminous
whiteness
of a vast sheet that hung in heavy vertical folds on either side of it down to the floor. And beneath it she knew there lay concealed what she dared not look at, and yet what also she knew with her whole soul now depended upon her. For what?