XIII: The Fabric of a Dream
"And that night . . . . a dream of that place came to Florian, a dream which did for him the office of a finer sort of memory, bringing its object to mind with a great clearness, yet, as sometimes happens in dreams, raised a little above itself, and above ordinary retrospect. The true aspect of the place . . . . the fashion of its doors, its hearths, its windows, the very scent upon the air of it, was with him in sleep for a season. . . ."
—The Child in the House.
COUSIN MARY'S home was a little, old, brick house standing flush with the street. A woodshed where the cat slept in summer extended easterly from the house and in the angle thus formed was a diminutive garden where such old-fashioned flowers as holly-hocks, bachelors' buttons, sweet william and larkspur seemed to bloom earlier and last longer than elsewhere.
Everything about Cousin Mary's home was on a small scale. She herself was a very small and slight old lady, but she had inherited from the hardy New England race from which she sprang a certain tradition of vitality and longevity which she lived long enough to exemplify in her own person. Other family legends of uncomfortable eccentricity and general worrisomeness she utterly disproved, for never was there a kindlier or more placid soul than she.
Of course she wore a cap with lavender ribbons and gowns of black bombazine for every day and black silk with lace at the throat for great occasions. She seldom ventured out of doors, except into her garden, or, on such annual celebrations as Thanksgiving and Christmas, to a neighboring relative's home where she was with difficulty persuaded to take at dinner a glass of port or Madeira, though she always protested that she did not really need it. Most of her life was spent in the southeast downstairs sitting-room, where she used to sit in the smallest, oldest rocking-chair ever seen. On memorable occasions she would take possession of the kitchen, against the protests of Drusilla, her companion, and make gingerbread that was famous in the neighborhood, especially among the children.
To childish imaginations there always seemed something mysterious about the rooms in Cousin Mary's house—doubtless merely because we never visited them,—except the sitting-room and the kitchen. The sitting-room communicated with another room—I think it was called the "parlor"—by folding doors. These were generally open, but in there the blinds were always closed and the room was in a kind of perpetual dusky twilight. We could dimly see within, but no recollection of entering remains, though there is a faint memory of an obscure marble-topped center-table—were there not wax flowers on it under a glass cover?—and ancient mahogany chairs.
We never reached the upper floors, at least till after Cousin Mary's death, when it seems as if there was an expedition to the attic in company with some older person of authority. It was a brief and somewhat nervous experience. Those were the days when all ghost stories might possibly be true and the attic, like the "parlor," was dark. The visit was long enough to leave only a memory of dim corners, piles of old horse-hide trunks, a remarkable collection of ancient cooking utensils adapted for use over the open fires of colonial and Revolutionary days—where, we wonder, has all this old kitchen equipage gone?—and rafters from which hung dried roots and leaves of one kind and another. It was a distinct relief to get out of doors again.
But of course the mysterious qualities we attributed to certain precincts of Cousin Mary's house existed entirely in our youthful minds. No one could be imagined who had less to conceal than this serene old lady. Yet it was natural that there should be romantic stories about her.
She had never married and it was not strange that speculations about her past should concern themselves with early love affairs. These fancies crystallized into the quite customary tradition that she had been engaged in her early youth to a young man whose future was then so uncertain that her parents objected to the match. The years have dimmed recollection of the details of the story—there were other romantic complications—but at all events the young man afterwards married another and lived to disprove the early doubts of sceptical parents as to his chance of success in life. But Cousin Mary remained true to her early love.
Many years after her death one of the children who used occasionally to call upon her, and to whom even now the odor of certain old-fashioned flowers will bring back a vivid picture of that little garden, had a curious dream about her.
He was again in that familiar sitting-room, but in some way he was invisible to the other two occupants. One was of course Cousin Mary—but quite a different Cousin Mary. Youth had come back to her. She was a young girl again—and one of the prettiest young girls the dreamer had ever seen. Her hair was dressed high at the back of her head. A great comb was in it. Curls hung down over her cheeks, as sitting in the familiar diminutive rocking-chair she bent her head forward listening to the words of her visitor. Old lace was about her throat which was of a singular whiteness and beauty. Her gown was of some shimmering stuff, high-waisted, with many flounces. Her whole figure gave the beholder a sense of delicate and rather fragile beauty. She was a creature of race—a thoroughbred.
Seated close before her and talking softly and eagerly was a good-looking young man in the uniform of a naval officer of, I should guess, the period of the second war with Great Britain. His sword and cap lay on the floor beside his chair.
Incongruities in dreams are generally accepted without surprise, but in this case the sleeper afterward recalled a sense of astonishment at the character of this stranger. Who was he? So far as was known no sailor had ever been associated with Cousin Mary's life.
Even in dreams a sense of the proprieties sometimes follows one and it was evident to the dreamer that his presence was superfluous. He turned to the dark "parlor" and for the first time entered.
It was a queer place. All sorts of curios from the East were scattered about it—yet "scattered" is not the right word for there was a method in the arrangement, grotesque though it was. The dreamer, however, had little opportunity to observe all this for he was drawn at once to a corner where was a strange, spiral staircase, built of some light Indian wood, and leading through the ceiling to the story above. He ascended and emerged into the unknown region overhead.
It was a wonderful place. The details are gone—one recalls only an impression of happiness, sunshine, scents of exotic flowers, the singing of innumerable birds, the tinkling sound of a hidden fountain. It was no longer a room—it was a new country. Here, it seemed, dwelt peace, content, beauty. A fragment of a familiar poem drifted into the dreamer's fancies—
"It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles
And see the great Achilles whom we knew—"
And there was more than a sense of well-being. There was, for a little moment, a fantastic sensation of fulfillment in one's presence there. There was a feeling of power. Here, one was somehow assured, ambitions would be accomplished, hopes would come true. Here could be done the things one always wanted to do.
The dreamer wished to go on, to explore, to find the happy secret of this region, but this, for some reason, was denied him. Some all-powerful influence compelled him to go back, to descend the little staircase into the darkened parlor.
Standing there he looked through the open folding doors into the well-known sitting-room and the picture he saw halted him.
Cousin Mary and her sailor lover were standing in the middle of the room. His arms were about her, her hands were on his shoulders, her face raised to his. . . .
Almost as soon as it was perceived the vision began to fade, receding slowly into the formless, tenuous clouds of semi-consciousness. In a moment the sleeper awoke. For an instant it was difficult to disassociate from the spirit of his dream the golden light of the early spring morning, the twittering of birds, the light drip from the eaves of the brief rain left by the vanished April shower.
The later history of the spot where Cousin Mary dwelt offers its commentary on a fast changing civilization. Soon after her death the little brick house was pulled down and the cubic space it occupied was filled with heavy machinery which daily filled with its reverberations this place which was once the very epitome of quietude. Now, in their turn, the huge presses have given way to one corner of a vast office building where an army of busy clerks pursues the urgent and exacting routine of a great corporation.
The Latin poets liked to believe that every locality had its own peculiar divinity—the "genius of the place." What has become of the goddess who for so long dedicated to peacefulness this abode of a benign old age? Is it that she was so closely identified with the one who dwelt there that when that life ceased the guardian angel fled with the departing spirit to some still fairer abode—or is the genius of the place really called Memory, who, in the minds of those who cherish her, effectually preserves against any merely material desecration the places she once held dear?