I therefore
leave them unmentioned in this history, just as my mind left them
unmentioned in that interminable final week. Our life went on precisely
as before--Mabel unreal and outwardly so still; Frances, secretive,
anxious, tactful to the point of slyness, and keen to save to the point
of self-forgetfulness. There were the same stupid meals, the same wearisome long evenings, the
stifling ugliness of house and grounds, the Shadow settling in so
thickly that it seemed almost a visible, tangible thing. I came to feel
the only friendly things in all this hostile, cruel place were the
robins that hopped boldly over the monstrous terraces and even up to the
windows of the unsightly house itself. The robins alone knew joy; they
danced, believing no evil thing was possible in all God's radiant world. They believed in everybody; their god's plan of life had no room in it
for hell, damnation, and lakes of brimstone. I came to love the little
birds. Had Samuel Franklyn known them, he might have preached a
different sermon, bequeathing love in place of terror! Most of my time I spent writing; but it was a pretence at best, and
rather a dangerous one besides. For it stirred the mind to production,
with the result that other things came pouring in as well. With reading
it was the same. In the end I found an aggressive, deliberate resistance
to be the only way of feasible defense. To walk far afield was out of
the question, for it meant leaving my sister too long alone, so that my
exercise was confined to nearer home. My saunters in the grounds,
however, never surprised the goblin garden again. It was close at hand,
but I seemed unable to get wholly into it. Too many things assailed my
mind for any one to hold exclusive possession, perhaps. Indeed, all the interpretations, all the "layers," to use my sister's
phrase, slipped in by turns and lodged there for a time. They came day
and night, and though my reason denied them entrance they held their own
as by a kind of squatter's right. They stirred moods already in me, that
is, and did not introduce entirely new ones; for every mind conceals
ancestral deposits that have been cultivated in turn along the whole
line of its descent. Any day a chance shower may cause this one or that
to blossom. Thus it came to me, at any rate. After darkness the
Inquisition paced the empty corridors and set up ghastly apparatus in
the dismal halls; and once, in the library, there swept over me that
easy and delicious conviction that by confessing my wickedness I could
resume it later, since Confession is expression, and expression brings
relief and leaves one ready to accumulate again. And in such mood I felt
bitter and unforgiving towards all others who thought differently. Another time it was a Pagan thing that assaulted me--so trivial yet oh,
so significant at the time--when I dreamed that a herd of centaurs
rolled up with a great stamping of hoofs round the house to destroy it,
and then woke to hear the horses tramping across the field below the
lawns; they neighed ominously and their noisy panting was audible as if
it were just outside my windows. But the tree episode, I think, was the most curious of all--except,
perhaps, the incident with the children which I shall mention in a
moment--for its closeness to reality was so unforgettable. Outside the east window of my room stood a giant wellingtonia on the
lawn, its head rising level with the upper sash. It grew some twenty
feet away, planted on the highest terrace, and I often saw it when
closing my curtains for the night, noticing how it drew its heavy skirts
about it, and how the light from other windows threw glimmering streaks
and patches that turned it into the semblance of a towering, solemn
image. It stood there then so strikingly, somehow like a great old-world
idol, that it claimed attention. Its appearance was curiously
formidable. Its branches rustled without visibly moving and it had a
certain portentous, forbidding air, so grand and dark and monstrous in
the night that I was always glad when my curtains shut it out. Yet, once
in bed, I had never thought about it one way or the other, and by day
had certainly never sought it out. One night, then, as I went to bed and closed this window against a
cutting easterly wind, I saw--that there were two of these trees. A
brother wellingtonia rose mysteriously beside it, equally huge, equally
towering, equally monstrous. The menacing pair of them faced me there
upon the lawn. But in this new arrival lay a strange suggestion that
frightened me before I could argue it away. Exact counterpart of its
giant companion, it revealed also that gross, odious quality that all my
sister's paintings held. I got the odd impression that the rest of these
trees, stretching away dimly in a troop over the farther lawns, were
similar, and that, led by this enormous pair, they had all moved boldly
closer to my windows. At the same moment a blind was drawn down over an
upper room; the second tree disappeared into the surrounding darkness. It was, of course, this chance light that had brought it into the field
of vision, but when the black shutter dropped over it, hiding it from
view, the manner of its vanishing produced the queer effect that it had
slipped into its companion--almost that it had been an emanation of the
one I so disliked, and not really a tree at all! In this way the garden
turned vehicle for expressing what lay behind it all ...! The behavior of the doors, the little, ordinary doors, seems scarcely
worth mention at all, their queer way of opening and shutting of their
own accord; for this was accountable in a hundred natural ways, and to
tell the truth, I never caught one in the act of moving. Indeed, only
after frequent repetitions did the detail force itself upon me, when,
having noticed one, I noticed all. It produced, however, the unpleasant
impression of a continual coming and going in the house, as though,
screened cleverly and purposely from actual sight, some one in the
building held constant invisible intercourse with--others. Upon detailed descriptions of these uncertain incidents I do not
venture, individually so trivial, but taken all together so impressive
and so insolent. But the episode of the children, mentioned above, was
different. And I give it because it showed how vividly the intuitive
child-mind received the impression--one impression, at any rate--of what
was in the air. It may be told in a very few words. I believe they were
the coachman's children, and that the man had been in Mr. Franklyn's
service; but of neither point am I quite positive. I heard screaming in the rose-garden that runs along the stable walls--
it was one afternoon not far from the tea-hour--and on hurrying up I
found a little girl of nine or ten fastened with ropes to a rustic seat,
and two other children--boys, one about twelve and one much younger--
gathering sticks beneath the climbing rose trees.